Hello, I just wanted to write a small complaint I have about the group study room reservation thing... this morning my friends and I got up at seven am because we had a lot of work to do and wanted to be sure to get a group study room because we find we are most productive in those rooms... but we didnt know anything about the reservation program so we got here early in order to secure a room but we got kicked out of three different rooms with no prior knowledge that that was going to happen. I hope you understand this is very frustrating for a group of hard working students who planned ahead to get a quite place to do work and were kicked out three separate times (!!) after getting all of our stuff out and set up. It would be helpful if perhaps reservations had to be done 24 hours in advance and there was a list in each room saying if and when it was reserved so that students could save themselves valuable work time and not get all of their stuff set up and be in the middle of an important assignment only to be interrupted and told to leave. I was seriously frustrated and aggravated by this today and I think there are plenty of better ways this program could be operated without just allowing students to uproot other students while they are in the middle of working. Please take this into consideration and look into changing the way this reservation process works because it really is the most frustrating thing to be in the middle of your work and get abruptly asked to leave without any prior knowledge of the room you are in being reserved. Thanks!
from: an undergraduate student
Teresa Doherty, Head of Circulation and Information Systems, replies...
The new group study room reservation system in the James Branch Cabell Library is in place to help you, and all our students, reserve a room in advance so that you can collaborate on group projects undisturbed. The online reservation system lets you find an available room with the resources you need and reserve it on behalf of your group for up to two hours at a time and up to fourteen days in advance. All rooms are open and available for anyone in the VCU community to use, up until the time when a group with a reservation comes to use the room they have reserved.
Because the reservation system is so dynamic, it is not possible to create a list of reservations to be posted each morning. On the other hand, because the system is so dynamic, you can reserve a room on the fly, by taking possession of the empty room, logging into the reservation system, and booking that room for your group. Since all students have equal access to the room reservation system, everyone has the same opportunity to guarantee a study space for group work. The system is also great for finding out which rooms on three floors of the library are not in use, saving you time in finding a place to study. One word of caution, though: if your group does not arrive to claim your room within the first 15 minutes of the reserved time, your reservation is forfeit and anyone else can use your room.
Since this is a new system, we have tried to get the word out to students in a number of ways, including leaflets and signs in the rooms, signs on the floor when you enter the room, postings on our library news page and in VCU's TelegRAM, and through Facebook. Please consider joining one of our growing Facebook communities or subscribing to our RSS feeds so you can keep up with all the exciting things that are happening in the library.
I hope you will reserve a room to study with your friends soon. Students who have tried it have told us they have been very pleased with this new way of sharing our common resources.