How to manage reservations for "hot" library titles

I remember the days when I was in working in a public library and there would be long invisible queues for seasonal hot titles like new releases in the Harry Potter series or books which have been made into Hollywood blockbusters like The Lord of the Rings.

Back then (and even today) the reservation system was on a first-come-first-served basis and each patron in the queue pays the same flat fee. While this works fine in most cases, there are occasions whereby over a hundred people were actually queueing up for just a few copies of popular titles.

Assuming that:
(1) each patron holds on to his copy for the 3 weeks loan period
(2) each copy is borrowed immediately after being returned
(3) zero lag time for circulation, each copy of a hot title

, each copy can only satisfy 17.3 customers in a year (52 weeks divided by 3 weeks loan period).

If we remove assumption 3, the number of customers able to get their hands on a copy of a popular title may drop to 15 or less. And let's not forget that there will always be lag time for books to be returned, retrieved, and held on shelf with grace periods before being picked up by a customer. Besides, who will wait for months to read a hot title?

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Recently, I saw this silly video clip which showed a team of firemen running back and forth between 2 windows with a rescue trampoline as they were unsure which of the 2 fire victims to rescue first. Why? The chief fireman was 'auctioning' this public service and the 2 trapped victims were shouting their bids, with the fire blazing ever nearer behind them. And just when the victim who won the bid started jumping out of the window, the other victim made a higher counter-offer. *SPLAT*

I then searched for 'reservations by auction' on Google and found this article in which the author plays with the idea of auctioning seat reservations in a popular restaurant to the highest bidders.

I then started off with the idea of having a bidding system for library book reservations so that the highest bidder gets the book first, and so on, but that would lead to operational issues like how to decide on the clearing price, how to rank customers in the circulation system and fit them into a queue, how to collect payment, etc. And if the clearing price gets too high, won't those who bidded successfully jump out of the queue and hit the bookstores for a fresh new copy (like what people do for HDB flats)?

I then scoped down the auction idea into something more plausible and which has an existing business model: priority bookings for charity premieres of new movies. And here's what I submitted as a suggestion today:


Since our Library had launched various forms of 'premium' fee-based services in the last few years (as have other government agencies), it could consider offering a priority booking service which allows customers who are willing to pay a little bit more to get their desired titles more quickly. And to circumvent obstacles such as 'queue jumping' (i.e. having to insert a priority booking ahead of other patrons in the reservation queue), the priority bookings should only be allowed in advance, like Charity Movie Premieres for movies. Once the advanced priority booking period ends, regular reservations can be done in an orderly fashion.

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So, what do you think of this idea? Any alternative models to share?

:-)