Current staff member Allan Chen offers this explanation for the mysterious LED sign that hangs near the stairwell on the 2nd floor of Meyer.

I worked at the circulation desk when Meyer was still a lending library, Winter Quarter 1998. I mostly just checked stuff out - books, videos, reserve items, and even laserdiscs. If a patron wanted a reserve item that was already checked out, he/she could put his/her name down on the list to get it when it was available. When it came back in after the 2 hour loan period, we put the next user's name up on these LED displays. I never figured out how people actually realized their names were up there - we didn't announce anything orally. But that display is still hanging there.

Mystery solved!