As those of you who are still around will no doubt be aware, there are works afoot in the Oriental Institute Library basement at the moment.
As stated last week on our Facebook page, the works started on Monday, 16th July, and are expected to last for about four weeks.
The older books from the “S” collection – the ones we used to have to fetch up from the locked stack — have been sent to the BSF, with some being sent for boxing beforehand. They have a status of “Temporarily withdrawn” at the moment, but will be available for ordering in the same way as the other BSF books in the near future.
Meanwhile we are also moving out the Arabic Fiction collection formerly housed in the Middle East Centre Library. This is to make room for an exciting project, of which I am not at liberty to disclose details as yet. The books from the MEC will still be borrowable, despite being housed at the BSF, although this will not happen right away. At some point before the beginning of Michaelmas Term there should be a switch thrown somewhere by one of the people who make Circulation work, and thereafter books ordered up from this collection will be allowed to be taken out of the library for the usual loan periods, depending on whether it is Term or Vacation. We will post more details of when the MEC books become available for borrowing nearer the time.
In the mean time, we hope that those few of you who are still hanging on are not too disrupted by the noise or the sight of librarians wheeling dollies of boxes around the library! Do inform us if you have any problems and we will endeavour to assist.