Implementation of a secure room booking system at the University of Manitoba Libraries

Abstract

Providing group study rooms is an important service offered by a university library to support learning and collaboration. A good room booking system should be convenient for students to use and would require a minimum involvement of library staff regarding managing bookings and keys. This article studied the implementation of the Juno Secure Room Booking system at the library to replace LibCal, which is a popular room booking system used by a large number of university libraries in North America. This article discussed the advantages that the Juno system has compared to LibCal, the design of an online booking website using the Juno Application Programming Interface (API), and the enhancement the library designed and developed based on student feedback. This article also discussed how the library successfully engaged a college to use this system to manage study rooms for classes and exams.