UC San Diego Library

In 2004, the Social Sciences & Humanities Library at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) implemented use of restaurant-style pagers for checking out Reserves Collection materials. Pagers are given to patrons when a desired reserves item is already in use. When the item is returned, the next patron is paged to the Circulation Desk to pick it up. The authors describe the UCSD Libraries’ process for initially implementing the pagers, explain the success they have seen with the pagers over the past four years, outline other libraries using similar pagers, and offer guidance for other institutions who might consider this innovative and user-friendly service enhancement.