About

Managing access to equipment is a large part of public access. Using Drupal for managing video workflow, classes and equipment checkout allows integration that saves staff time while ensuring users and abusing the access to equipment.

Because nothing existed that did everything the initial Open Media Project partners wanted well, a new module was developed from scratch borrowing the best ideas from Facil, Manhattan Neighbor Network's Drupal 4.7 solution, phpLabMan, and ORS. While every solution we looked at other than Facil was already open source, they didn't leverage the latest features of Drupal.  That module was named MERCI which stands for Manage Equipment Reservations, Checkout and Inventory.

MERCI relies heavily on Content Construction Kit (CCK) and Date API allowing every location to customize their workflow and generate reports leveraging standard Drupal interfaces that are already well documented. MERCI also relies on several submodules to add functionality. This not only makes it easier to get started without being overwhelmed with options, but makes it easier for developers to contribute.  While MERCI was developed with the public access workflow in mind, it was designed to be usable outside the Open Media System so that groups with similar checkout needs (Univerisities, Computer Technology Centers, etc) might contribute to developing new features.  MERCI is also designed to support commercial rentals.  A great source of revenue for stations struggling to pay staff, but sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment.