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Introduction
Background
For improving the quality and innovation ability of the whole nation, enrollment expansion of Chinese universities have increased rapidly at a rate of about 30% per year, according to the Ministry of Education Report (1998). As the number of students increases, library facilities cannot keep up with universities development. There is a huge gap between users and the limited library resources. For instance, Nanjing Agricultural University Library serves more than 17,000 full-time undergraduates and 8,500 graduates, 2,700 faculty and staff members, but has only 4,470 seats in the library. There are not enough for teachers and students to use. Because of too many students, limited seat, fully-occupied seats phenomenon is very serious, it is difficult in finding a seat or group discussion area in the library (Li, 2018). In addition, students are distracted from studying by people who are walking around looking for a seat in the library, especially during the exam period, when available resources in the library are even more limited.
A modern library has owned the digital management system of collection resources, self-help borrowing and returning books system, self-help inquiry system, self-help printing system, mobile library, reference consultation based on social media, etc. (Noa, 2013). But there are still many blanks in seat resources management, how to manage the seat resource reasonably, it is worth every librarian to think about.
With the rapid advancement of the social network, smart mobile phones technology and Internet information technology (including 4G–5G networks), almost everyone has one or more smart mobile phones on campus. At the same time, social media applications (e.g., WeChat) are also widely used in China, mobile phone library services based on WeChat is common in Chinese university libraries. Using existing technology to solve the problem of limited seat resources, a seat management system based on WeChat public platform was designed and developed so that teachers and students can check the usage of seats at any time and any place, reserve seats quickly and conveniently.
WeChat (Wikipedia, 2015, https://wx.qq.com/) is a kind of social media app that provides an instant chat service based on Internet. It was launched by Tencent company (https: //www.tencent.com/zh-cn) on January 21, 2011. It is currently the most popular mobile social networking app in China. WeChat can...