LibGuides: Equipment/Studio Self-Booking in the Library Catalog: Home

Steps of Reserving DMC Equipment

Please note:

Equipment reservation can be made up to 30 days in advance. If you need reservation more than 30 days in advance, please send your request to dmc-info@rice.edu.
Equipment can be checked out or reserved for up to 7 days at a time. Reservations are extended to the last open hour when the start time is outside of open hours and the next open hour when the end time is outside of open hours, which means reservations can be longer than 7 days.
Studios can be checked out or reserved for up to 4 hours at a time. Reservations are shortened to the open hours when the start and/or end time fall outside of open hours, which means reservations are limited to one day.

Using the OneSearch box on the library homepage
- Type in the key words in the OneSearch box such as Sony camera
- On the search result page, refine your results by selecting Digital Media Commons as the Library filter at the bottom left hand side.
Using the Advance Search box
- Search for DMC Equipment
- Type in any key words in the search filters and search
Using the Borrow Equipment shortcut located directly on the Fondren Library home page.
- Click directly on the fourth icon on the main page, a camera titled Borrow Equipment.
- On the "Borrowing Equipment" page, scroll directly to the bottom of the page. Listed are the shortcuts to the filtered lists by type (video, still, audio...) of equipment that Rice ID holders can check out of the DMC. You can also click the "Borrowing DMC Equipment" tab on the right; it will take you to the same shortcuts.
- For example, let's go through the process of reserving a still camera. Click on still camera, lenses, and accessories. If you want a specific model or brand, look to the left at filters. Here, we can go to author/creator to narrow our selection to only Sony Mirrorless cameras, lenses, and accessories. (Note: author/creator is like equipment subcategories.)
- We can now see a filtered list of results, making it easier to select our desired equipment to reserve. For the purpose of showing an example, let's select the last result, the Sony A6300, A6400 Mirrorless Camera to reserve.

When you click on an equipment title to reserve, make sure you sign-in using your Rice NetID.
Select Request Item box.
A reservation calendar will pop up. It is in military time; 13:00 is 1:00 pm.
Select the start and end date, hour, and minute.
- Under Start Date, choose the date you would like to begin your reservation from the calendar’s pop up window
- Choose the time of day by using the Hour and Minute drop down boxes
- Similarly choose the date, hour, and minute that your reservation will end under the End Date section
Click Send Request
- You will see a message in green like below indicating your reservation has been fulfilled.
  - The system doesn't send out anto-confirmation emails. So you won't receive any reservation confirmation emails.
  - However, under your library account, go to My Requests, you can view all your equipment reservations and cancel any reservations.
- You will see a message in red like below indicating if your reservation has failed.
  - Your reservation will not go through if the length of the reservation exceeds 7 days or if there is a conflict of availability with another request on that item.

Select check availability on the calendar
If the item is unavailable, there will be red boxes highlighting when the equipment has already been reserved
If the item is unavailable for the whole day, there will simply be a box at the top labeled Unavailable 00:00-23:59
Note: You can not select a reservation date and time on this Check Availability calendar. The calendar allows you to view the equipment status. It does not let you choose a date or time for reservation.

If the Request Item Calendar doesn't display all the three fields of Date, Hour, and Minute, make the web browser window bigger, or scroll the horizontal bar at the bottom of the calendar to see all the three fields.
If you receive the following error message "Please fill in the following mandatory fields to proceed:", please make sure the Date, Hour, and Minute, all the three fields have been filled out.

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Subjects: Digital Media Commons

Complete List of DMC Equipment