A note for Jane Blume

[Edward Spodick]

I apologize for sending this reply to the whole list, but the Bellingham Technical College is refusing all e-mail from our server (and possibly all of Hong Kong?).

>   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
><JBlume at btc.ctc.edu>
>    (reason: 550 Blocked)
>
>   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
>... while talking to barracuda.btc.ctc.edu.:
>>>> DATA
><<< 550 Blocked
>550 5.1.1 <JBlume at btc.ctc.edu>... User unknown
>451 4.4.1 reply: read error from barracuda.btc.ctc.edu.

- - - forwaded reply - - -
Hi Jane,

We use MRBS - the Meeting Room Booking System, an open source package which works very well for us.  It does not come with a decent mobile interface, however, so we put in some programming time creating a secondary interface to it for mobile use.
MRBS can be found at http://mrbs.sourceforge.net/

-Spode


At 3:33 PM +0000 4/16/12, Jane Blume wrote:
>Hello Spode,
>
>What room booking software do you use? We are moving to a larger library and will have many more study rooms to book.
>
>I like your idea of a QR code to book to the room.
>
>Thanks.
>
>Jane
>
>Jane Blume
>Director, Library and Media Services
>Bellingham Technical College
>3028 Lindbergh Ave.
>Bellingham, WA 98225
>360-752-8472 - phone
>360-752-7272 - fax
>mailto:jblume at btc.ctc.edu
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Edward Spodick
>Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2012 7:16 PM
>To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU
>Subject: Re: [WEB4LIB] QR Codes
>
>One of the ways we use them is by adding QR Codes to the door signs for all of our bookable study rooms.  Each QR Code links the user directly to that day's bookings for that room, in the Mobile interface version of the room booking system.  So the user can immediately check when the people currently in the rom will be done and if it is free later in the day, etc.
>
>One notable problem encountered is that we require authentication to check these bookings, as we display the users' names.  So every link is to a secure URL (https).  Roughly 1/2 of all the QR Code reader programs I have tested are unable to properly parse https links, so they fail - often with no error message.  This increases frustration and is an important element for staff training for when users complain.
>
>When it works, the user is thrilled.  We started out doing this on 5 high-profile rooms, and have extended it to all the others.  We started this in March, and got 17 likes and a share or 2 on our FB post about it :)
>
>-Spode

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2012-04-17