Closing a Study Room

Overview

Sometimes it is necessary to close a study room and make them unavailable to reserve. Rooms are closed because:

• There is scheduled maintenance 
  • Usually to repair normal wear and tear damage
• Something in the room has broken, making it unusable.
  • Light is not working.
  • An outlet is damaged and/or has exposed wires.
  • Any other damage that could be a safety issue for our patrons.
• Do not close the room for things like peeling paint, bad smell, loose doorstop, and other wear and tear types of damage. This damage does not require immediate attention.

Because the rooms are so heavily used, we do everything we can to avoid closing a room. When a room must be closed,several things need to happen to ensure we avoid confusion and frustration for our patrons. 

• Advanced reservations must be moved to other rooms
• Patrons must be notified that their reservations have been moved
• The room must be made unavailable in Open Room

Moving reservations in Open Room

• This is the first step because once you close the room in Open Room, you can't easily see the reservations even though they are still there.
• Go to Open Room and, if needed, log in as an admin.
  • The staff computer should automatically log in as admin. You may need to sign in to your ONID first.
  • Your work station computer will also have admin privileges once you log in to your ONID.
• You are going to move every reservation for the remainder of the day.
• Click on an existing reservation in the room you are closing. Existing reservations show up as blue bars.
• Highlight and copy the username on the reservation.
• Make note of the reservation time
• Click on the green bar of an available room. A pop-up window will appear to reserve a room.
• Paste the username into the username field
• Set the reservation time either by typing in the time in the appropriate field or dragging the bars above the time fields.
• Click the "Reserve" button at the bottom of the pop-up. 
• Take note as you move the reservations. Write down:
  • The full name of the patron (you can get this by hovering the cursor over the blue reservation bar in Open Room)
  • The date of their reservation
  • Optional: the room they reserved and the new room you have moved them to
• Go back to the room you are closing and click on the original reservation.
• At the bottom of the field, click "Cancel Reservation". Open Room will confirm that you want to cancel this reservation. Confirm the cancellation.
  • If you don't cancel this reservation, when the patron shows up to check out their room, this reservation will be first in the list, even though the room is closed. 
  • If the room key is still in the drawer, desk staff may check out the key to the patron. 
  • By the time the patron realizes the room has been closed, Open Room may have truncated the reservation you made for the patron and now they don't have a room, and we have a problem. Oops. 

Making a room unavailable in Open Room

• Assuming you are already logged in, click on (Admin) next to your name above the small calendar.
• On the left there are several buttons. Click on Hours.
• At the bottom of the page, click on New Room Hour.
  • Important things to know about new room hours:
    
    • If this is unscheduled maintenance, close the room for more days than you think is necessary. This reduces the chances that reservations will be made that you later have to move because the room is still under repair.
    • Under the heading "Special Timings" is a key for inputting hours to either close or open a room. 
    • You may close a room for the entire day or for part of the day. You cannot set the room to close then open again in the same day using the hours function.
    • If you want to close the room for a short period of time, the easiest way is to set a reservation for yourself. Make sure you check out the key so the reservation doesn't get truncated.
• Select the room you are closing by checking the box next to its number.
  • There is a Toggle All check box at the bottom if you need to close all the rooms and a check box to close by floor. 
• Set the start and end time for the room.
  • 1:00 AM - 1:00 AM closes the room for the whole day
  • 00:15 - xx:xx closes the room at the time you set as xx:xx. For example, if xx:xx is 10 am, then the room is open from midnight until 10 am.
  • xx:xx - 00:15 opens the room at the time you set as xx:xx. For example, if xx:xx is 8 am, then the room is closed from midnight until 8 am.
• Click the Save button
• Click Front Page at the upper right corner of the page. This will take you back to the patron view. Check the calendar to make sure the hours are set the way you had intended.
• Create a blog post in the Circulation wiki to let everyone know you have closed the study room. You can also send an email to Library Circulation to make sure all your bases are covered.

Notifying Patrons

When you are moving reservations, patrons will get notified that their original reservation has been cancelled. This is why it is important to let them know that you have moved their reservation to a different room.

• Refer to the notes you took when moving reservations.
• Open Alma and go to "Manage Patron Services" under the Fullfillment menu.
• Enter the patron's name in patron search bar and pull up the patron's account.
• Click on the patron's id number. The should bring up the Identifiers tab as the default. If it doesn't, click on the Identifiers tab.
• The patron's email should be at the bottom of the list.
  • *Pro tip* If you want to verify the email address is the preferred contact email, you can click on the "Contact Information" tab.
• Right click the email address and select "copy cell value"
• Start a new email in Outlook and paste the email address in.
  • It may be tempting to send one bulk email to everyone you have moved. Don't do this. You risk giving out personal information to the wrong people.
• Make sure you are sending the email from Valley Circulation. That way other staff can respond to patrons if you are not available.
• Subject should be "Study room reservation change". 
• Below is an example of an email template you can use. It doesn't include the specific room switch but you may include that if you wish. It depends on how many people you are contacting and how much time you want to spend on this.