[Web4lib] Loaning laptops

[John Fereira]

Phillip Whitford wrote:
>  We have been loaning laptops out for 4 or 5 years now. Generally they
> are not allowed to leave the building. We check them out via our ILS
> just like any other materials. Works fine. 
We use our ILS and have a page on our library web site which displays 
laptop availability.   Patrons can go to the page and see if any laptops 
are available for check-out, and if not, when the next one will become 
available.

I'm working on something that will loosely couple the web site with a 
service which managed laptop availabiilty information (right now to too 
tightly coupled).  It is part of a system which will essentially manage 
any library asset which can be catalogued (i.e. group/individual study 
rooms).  The goal is to provide a university wide service which can be 
called from the central library web  site as well as any  other unit 
libary websites and can support multiple views such that the equipment 
availability information can be presented on a web site or one of our 
display kiosks.  The libary assets service can be integrated with other 
services such that a patron could check if a laptop is available in the 
library that they are in, and if not, it could tell them that there 
might be laptops (or any other library asset) available in one of the 
other nearby libraries.

I actually submitted a proposal on this for the upcoming Code4Lib 
conference but it didn't get enough votes.