I've been asked "why do you write software?" a lot in my career, and particularly in my position here as Director of Scholarly Technology at GW Libraries, where we do write a lot of software. For me, the answer is simple, and it's the same answer I've always given, since I first went to library school: it is the work of a librarian to write software. This has always seemed natural and clear to me, but I understand that it's not obvious to everyone, especially in a broader organizational context.

So why is it important to have staff at a research library with appropriate skills and experience tasked with writing software?

First, navigating through the many information resources we provide -- both online and on our shelves -- isn't easy.  GW Libraries, like many research libraries, provides access to hundreds of online databases, thousands of online journals, and millions of physical items. To help people find what they need quickly, we have to offer the clearest possible paths for everyone to navigate for themselves.  Recently we wrote a software application that provides a new quick search box on our site at http://library.gwu.edu/ that searches a wide range of sources at once, and more importantly, it searches a range of types of sources at once.  This helps anyone searching our site to make two quick choices: what kind of resource they're looking for, and where to go within that category of resources to dig deeper.  This isn't a new idea - many of our peer institutions offer similar services, and we credit NCSU Libraries with pioneering this concept. But all of our libraries subscribe to different sources, and to put them all together in a way that made the most sense for GWU, we wrote our own software.  Over time, the sources themselves will change, but now we have the ability to adapt our application to new content over time without having to sacrifice the now-improved experience of finding information through GW Libraries.

Reservations fill up quickly for this popular service. Reservations may be placed online by logging on to the library’s Room Reservation System. Students may reserve two hours of study room time per day, placing reservations up to two weeks in advance. 

As you would expect, peak use occurs around mid-term and final exam periods. I generated a few detailed reports from the online reservation system. The reports show that:

• Approximately 250,000 reservations have been made using the online reservation system
   
• Rooms are as likely to be reserved between 11:00 pm and 1:00 am as between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm.
   
• New reservations are sometimes created at the rate of over 1,000 per day. (Figure at right)  
   
• All of the 33 group study rooms are booked most of the hours the Gelman Library is open.

Technical Summary

Our room reservation system is a customized version of a free, open source product.

• Product: phpScheduleit

• Operating system: Linux server

• Database: MySQL

• Web Server: Apache 2

• Programming Language: PHP

The Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC) and GW Registrar’s Office provide support for this popular service.

The WRLC:

• hosts the service in a stable environment capable of handling spikes for demand

• maintains a current database of students -- regularly updated by the GW Registrar

• provides an authentication service enabling students to login with their name and GWID

The Library Scholarly Technology Group

The Room Reservation System is maintained by members of the library Scholarly Technology Group. We are involved with developing new technology and supporting library services including: