Booking the reading room
Physical records are read in the reading room, by appointment, so the staff can have them ready. A registered researcher books a visit; the staff confirm it, fetch the records, and check them out and back in.
Booking a visit
- Open Research, Book a visit (
/research/book). - Choose the reading room, the day and the time.
- Add the records you want to see, by their reference codes or from your collections.
- Say what the visit is for.
- Submit.
A booking is pending until the staff confirm it; you are told by e-mail. It can then be completed, cancelled by you or by the staff, or marked as a no-show. You can add records to a booking from its page after you have made it.
For the staff
Reading room desk (/reading-room/desk) is the day's work: who is booked today, who has arrived, their seats, and what they have in front of them. From it:
- confirm or decline bookings;
- check a researcher in on arrival, giving them a seat, and out when they leave;
- issue records to them and take them back.
Retrieval queues (/reading-room/queues) list what must be fetched from the strongroom for each booking, in shelf order, with retrieval slips to print and send with the person fetching them.
Reading rooms (/reading-room/rooms) defines each room: its opening hours, its seats and their types, such as a microfilm reader or a large-format table, and its rules.
Equipment
Equipment, such as a microfilm reader or a camera stand, can be booked with a visit where the room has it.