Do you know what would be totally freakin' awesome?

[lokicarbis]

Imagine that your library's reservation system worked more like Netflix. Which is to say, imagine that:

• You could reserve literally hundreds of books at a time.
  
• You could control where they were ranked in the queue, including being able to specify the ranking in the queue for any new reserves you made (which would insert there, and push whatever

Comments

[squirmelia]

Hmm.. most of the time libraries don't have the books I want anyway, so I doubt I'd use this system. I like the idea, but not sure how many people would actually use it.

I'm not so familiar with how reservation systems work in libraries in Australia though- in the UK, at most public libraries, you have to pay to reserve a book. Is it the same in Australia?

[lokicarbis]

It depends on the library, but yeah, most of them charge a nominal fee (rarely more than a dollar) for a reservation.

I think that anyone who has an Amazon (or other bookseller wishlist) would use this - because that's basically what it is.

Libraries don't have what you're after? Are your tastes very specialised indeed? :)

[squirmelia]

Not that specialised tastes, but I used to read a lot, mostly library books, and the amount of times at libraries I had looked for a specific book, but they didn't have it, so I just ended up getting one by the same author (if they had any by them, at all, which often they didn't) and it was usually their not very good first book or whatever, was far too many.

Amazon has many, many books, but libraries often don't.

I guess I'd like a recommend books that the library actually has in stock feature though.

[lokicarbis]

Most libraries I know of have a request function, where you can ask them to get things in (either by purchase or by inter-library loan). Although they sometimes have astonishingly arbitrary reasons for turning down the requests.

[devs_alil_angel]

I so wish they did this. I get carried away, but then end up with 5 books at once, so I have my own little list that I update regularly, but it would be soooooooo good

[lokicarbis]

It would mean not having to remember them all yourself, and pleasant surprises as books you'd almost forgotten about suddenly became available :)

[isabelle_tea]

Huh...until I read leadgend's comments all I saw were things like Monsters Inc's door keeping system and futuristic libraries where machines do almost every thing and there is only the head librarian at the front desk.

[mysterysquid]

Hmm.

Interesting idea.

I can see that there would be more work collecting reserves, and less material on-shelf. I don't think these would be insurmountable

[lokicarbis]

I strongly suspect that we'd find that more of the obscure stuff got borrowed this way. So there'd be the same amount of material on shelf, but less in the stack :)

[fizit]

You can book up to 20 at ours, and if you know how to use it, there is a date setting that you can set the reserve to become active on - I think it's called 'not wanted until...'

It's not quite as detailed as what you're suggesting, but it's far better than just 'active' and 'inactive'

[lokicarbis]

Date setting is a good idea... hmmm, have to add that to the proposal.