Class Request Tool is a web application that 1) allows instructors to request assistance, space and time for teaching with primary sources at Harvard's archives and special collections repositories; and 2) assists library staff in establishing more effective and centralized management of seminar requests for classes. Class Request Tool describes policies and procedures for hosted classes, collects information necessary for booking, and reserves requested time and space.
Inscriptio is an online reservation system with functionality similar to selecting an airplane seat. It allows eligible library patrons to apply for a preferred study carrel or hold shelf based on a map of locations with related data, such as nearby call numbers, and provides more efficient reservation management than the previous paper-based system. Inscriptio facilitates communication between patrons who share a carrel (some carrels at Harvard may be assigned to up to four users) and eases the renewal process when a reservation nears its end date.
Awesome Box is an additional returns box that offers library users the ability to promote any item. Interact with an amazing or useful item from the library and return it to the Awesome Box instead of the normal drop box. That item gets recorded as Awesome so the community can see what others have found helpful, entertaining, or mind-blowing.
TagTeam is middleware that stands between tagging platforms and readers to harness the power of social tagging across multiple tagging tools. A creator can add a “hub,” or project, on a topic and designate any number of input feeds and output feeds. TagTeam enhances the standard social tagging process by removing duplicate items and spam, support both folksonomies, or user-supplied tags, and ontologies determined by a project creator.
How do students engage with the library collection, inside and outside the library building? Where and when do they make use of library materials they’ve checked out? Most libraries have limited empirical data describing how the community engages with resources, but Where the Wild Books Are sought to increase that knowledge by conducting a study in which students track their library engagement using a mobile application. Using an app on their own mobile devices, students simply scan the barcode of an item and the app stores the timestamp and geolocation data for analysis.