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Hong Kong Baptist University Library’s MyLibrary Calendar won second place honours in the 2008 Be Innovative! Awards for the Most Innovative Patron Services category. The recognition this year brings special honours and encouragement to HKBU Library as this is the second time in seven years that the Library has won a Be Innovative! Award.

The Awards programme is held annually by Innovative Interfaces, Inc. to recognize the creative and outstanding uses of Innovative products. Over 4,500 libraries in about 40 countries use the integrated library automation systems, services and support provided by the company. This year, Innovative Interfaces, Inc. presented the Awards at the Innovative Users Group (IUG) Sixteenth Annual Conference held in Washington, DC, United States on 28 April.

The award winning MyLibrary Calendar is a joint effort of Mr. Yiu On Li (Systems Section), Ms. Loletta Chan (Circulation & Interlibrary Loan Section) and Ms. Irene Wong (Special Collections & Archives) of the HKBU Library to: Facilitate library patrons to use their own personal calendar applications as a single, one-stop-shop personal platform to collect and manage library calendar events and records; Strengthen the publicity of HKBU Library’s services, facilities and outreach activities; and Streamline communication between the Library and its patrons, especially in the distribution of circulation records, library email and notices, and records of library facilities reservation in an efficient and centralized channel.

There are two calendars available in MyLibrary Calendar: Library Event Calendar is designed for all library users to receive the latest news of the Library's services, facilities, opening hours and outreach activities; Personal Library Calendar is for Library borrower card holders to collect or manage data of their group study/viewing room bookings, library circulation and ILL records.

Innovative Millennium Patron API and iCalendar are the keys to Personal Library Calendar. Two computer programs were developed in-house. The iCalendar Data Conversion Program extracts and converts data files to iCalendar format and assigns an unique URL for each patron. The Innovative Millennium Patron API Form (API) was developed to authenticate patrons before getting their own unique URLs for their Personal Library Calendar.

On the other hand, all subscribers to Library Event Calendar use the same open web calendar address to access the iCalendar files converted and saved by a freeware.

Subscribers to MyLibrary Calendar are free to choose any iCalendar compatible calendar applications as their receiving platform, without giving any additional personal data/notification to the Library. No add-on, plug-in program or special training and instruction is required. It is user-friendly, can support simultaneous subscriptions on multiple platforms; and allows patrons to activate Google Calendar SMS notification option too. With MyLibrary Calendar, patrons’ “Library life” events are integrated into and become an integral part of their personal calendars for efficient time-management. More here.