University of Strathclyde’s students use their award-winning mobile app to book library study rooms

The University of Strathclyde provides a wide range of services via its own mobile app which was developed at the University.

Library loans and book renewals were already available on the app and students were asking to book study rooms on their mobile phones as well – the answer was to add room bookings to the app.

The Library uses AdvaNova’s Sentry Resource Booking system to manage its study rooms, and the mobile app links to the room booking system via an API from AdvaNova. This is a software interface that allows the two systems to work seamlessly together. Judith Smart, who manages the University’s library system, explains: “If the API had not been available, we would have needed to write quite a lot of software ourselves – effectively duplicating the Advanova booking system.”

The API makes the entire room booking system available in the app – all of the functionality is available for mobile bookings. The University built the system this way because they wanted the room booking service in the app to be exactly the same in look and feel as their other mobile services.