It’s now the Summer Vacation, and contrary to the perceived assumptions of some of our readers, we don’t all just spend the summer lying down reading books (oh, if only…)! There is going to be rather a lot going on over the next few weeks:

Bookmoves

The move of some items from downstairs and the rearrangement of the rest of the collection was mentioned in the previous (short) blog post. We have now almost completed the bookmove, and are in the process of finishing off downstairs and finalising the shelf-labels and other details so that the books are locatable by readers.

Meanwhile we are also now home to a number of periodical titles from the Taylorian which are going to be temporarily kept in our rolling stack and in the area where the Korean Studies Library books were (round the corner from the Reader PC). We will do our best to accommodate readers from the Taylorian who need to access these journals, which will eventually be barcoded and sent to the BSF.

The last of the Japanese books in the Library – the Reference collection on the ground floor – have now been sent on to the Bodleian Japanese Library, so we no longer hold any Japanese material.

Building Works

Anyone who has been in over the last few days will not have been able to ignore the noises from the builders, who are currently scaffolding the building ahead of the replacement of various parts of the roof, including the Library skylights.

We do not have an exact timetable as yet for when the parts of the library directly under the skylights are going to be affected and are currently awaiting confirmation from the builders, but it is looking like the end of July – beginning of August. There will be periods when the books directly under the skylights will not be accessible to readers, but we have been assured that Staff will still be able to access them, and we will be able to bring readers books from the closed-off areas.

A larger issue for staff is that there may be a requirement to build a scaffolding tower *inside* the Library Office, which may result in staff being displaced if it requires us to dismantle the desks. We will endeavour to ensure that there is always a member of staff on the Front Desk (unaffected by the works) and there will be cover to ensure that we can stay open for our usual hours during the disruption.

Note, however, that if for some reason we do need to close, we will try to give everyone as much notice as possible to avoid inconveniencing people too badly.

New Photocopiers!

We will be receiving new photocopiers at some point over the later part of the summer in accordance with a plan to improve aspects of the PCAS system. Documentation will be distributed when the details have been finalised and we hope that there will not be too long a period when photocopying is not available to readers.

Opening Times

Subject to the above caveat, the Library will be open as usual throughout the summer from 9am – 7pm on weekdays and 11am – 5pm on Saturdays. The normal exceptions to this are the August Bank Holiday weekend, when we are closed on the Saturday 27^th and Monday 29^th August inclusive, and St Giles’ Fair, on the 5^th and 6^th September.

Outside the Oriental Institute, may we remind readers that the Middle East Centre library will be closed from 4.30pm, Friday 8^th July until Friday 30^th September.

Any alterations to the opening times or other matters will be posted on the Facebook Page, with longer explanations appearing as blog posts as and when we need them.