Customizing Your Library Website: Reserving Meeting Rooms

An essential part of a library website is the ability to reserve meeting and study rooms online. Having this ability reduces administrative time and allows for bookings 24/7.

Creating such a feature requires a flexible content management system and well thought out rules. What if one patron tries to book a study room for a whole week? What if someone wants audio visual equipment for their meeting? Because of these and many other situations we created a custom module just for this occasion.

The Watertown Free Public Library has both meeting and study rooms that their patrons book over 5,000 times a year. To take the burden off the library staff and increase room usage, we created a custom room reservation feature for their website. People can reserve a room by reviewing a calendar showing what times are available or booked and filling out a form.

The key features of this module include:

• Integrations with their Drupal Calendar to protect from double bookings
• Custom reservation rules specific to libraries
  • Cap on how many hours one person can book a room for a day
  • Allow additional time to setup and breakdown meetings
  • Confirm the reservation takes place during the library's open hours
  • Validate the reservation date is in the future
  • Email notifications to library staff for whom and when someone reserves a room
• And other advanced booking rules specific to libraries needs

If you regularly have rooms that are booked consider automating your reservation process. I had developed this module on the Drupal platform. The module uses rules which are flexible for adding and editing conditions. Contact us if you would like to learn more about how this room reservation system works and if it could be a good fit for your organization.