Margaret,
We've had a similar issue in the past. The college at large uses EMS,
but it has never worked for the library. The way our EMS instance is set up,
one has to make a booking at least 24 hours in advanced, while students
typically reserve our group study rooms the same day they use them. Prior to
2019, our IT department maintained a custom application which allowed students
to book group study rooms in less than 24 hours. I believe it used an EMS API,
although am not 100% sure. Eventually we replaced it with LibCal, which is
accessible from our web site
There are two ways we handle situations such as yours. First, some of our
bookable rooms are only in EMS. We consider them "meeting rooms" for use by
faculty and staff as opposed to the other "group study rooms" which students
will use and are only in LibCal. As a result the college has a few spaces
where administration, faculty, and staff can book meetings without interfering
with students. Although we only have one location, the meeting rooms are
mostly located on the fourth floor so people don't confuse them that much. All
reservable rooms in the library also have digital door signs with the ones
outside our group study rooms being white (iPads) and the others being black
(Crestrons). If, for some reason, a campus group needs to reserve a group
study room on a regular basis or in advanced they can reach out to the
library's administrative assistant who can do so on their behalf.
However you specifically mention an API so I'm guessing your looking for a
technological solution. LibCal's API does allow one to create space bookings.
We considered going this route, but I believe it requires some custom work on
the EMS side, as that system does not natively integrate with LibCal, which may
cost money. It was cheaper and easier for us to just maintain separate
systems, but in your case it may be worth pursuing a custom integration.
Alternatively, both EMS and LibCal can sync with Microsoft Exchange/Outlook.
The latter is a two-way sync (see here for Springshare's documentation:
https://ask.springshare.com/libcal/faq/2043) meaning if your campus uses
Outlook you could experiment with putting some or all of your rooms into it and
using it as middleware. So if a room is open, someone could make a booking in
EMS and it would show up in LibCal with no intervention needed. At least
that's how it seems to work in theory. Unfortunately I can't speak from
experience here.
Best,
Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries <CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG> On Behalf Of Margaret
Alexander
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2023 6:42 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG
Subject: [CODE4LIB] LibCal/EMS integration?
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Hi all,
Our university uses EMS for room bookings, and during COVID they started
scheduling some of the rooms in the library using EMS. We use LibCal for our
own room bookings, and unfortunately due to security we cannot simply share the
EMS info into LibCal, and are resorting to manual typing in each appointment to
LibCal to be able to keep track.
Has anyone used an API or other way to get EMS bookings into LibCal?
Thanks!
Margaret
Margaret Alexander | Core Systems Librarian (she/hers) University of Oregon |
Libraries Knight Library | 1501 Kincaid St 97403-1299
541-346-1864 (vm)
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