The eagle-eyed amongst our readers may have noticed that there was no news blog at the end of January. This was because we decided that it would seem excessive to blog twice in a week – having announced the results of the Stapler competition a few days earlier (and besides which that was the most exciting thing which happened in January!).

February has been busy for us in terms of readers; it is always gratifying to see the library being well used! With this in mind, however, we do have a few little reminders for people.

Firstly, please remember that you are allowed bottles of water in the library but other drinks are NOT allowed as they could potentially damage the books if spilled. We will remove drinks if found on desks, and they can be claimed when you leave.

Secondly, as the library is busy and the turnover of books is quite high at the moment, the library staff are endeavouring to maintain a more regular shelving routine, including clearing desks in the mornings and doing a whizz round in the afternoons so that there is not too much accumulation. We hope that this will help to solve the perennial problem of readers not finding books on the shelves because they are on desks. Readers are reminded that you are permitted to keep books on a desk to be used the following day as long as you fill in one of the paper slips provided around the library for that purpose (if the area where you are working has run out, please inform the staff and we will print more). Books left with out-of-date slips (i.e. not the previous day’s date) will be reshelved.

Thirdly, please do not leave books from the BSF on desks at the end of the day. These books belong to the Bodleian and should be returned to the staff desk so that they can be put back on the reserve in the office. We receive a daily lapse-list of BSF books which should be sent back, and endeavour to keep on top of this, so keeping all the books in one place greatly facilitates this. If you wish to keep BSF books for longer than the initial week, you can renew them on SOLO. The main reason a renewal would not be allowed would be if someone else had requested the same book, either to OIL or to another of the Bodleian reading rooms. Please note that if you do not remember to renew, and the book is returned to the BSF, there may be a delay of at least a few days before it is re-ingested at the BSF and can be returned to the library. Unfortunately this is something over which we have no control, so it is essential that readers make sure that their books are promptly renewed (or let us know so we can do it for them in an emergency).

And fourthly, a further plea; if you have used a book and are not absolutely sure where it came from on the shelves, please do not panic and shove it into the most convenient space in roughly the right section! We find mis-shelved books on a daily basis and it does make everyone’s lives harder if the item they want is somewhere other than where it should be. A book can effectively vanish if it is shelved out of sequence, and although we do regular moves which do pick up these situations it helps us immensely if people don’t put things in the wrong place to start with. If you are not absolutely sure where you got a book from, please leave it either on one of the reshelving points between the desks on the right-hand (window) side, or on the trollies near the staff desk.

And finally, advance warning that the library will close for Easter on Thursday 2^nd April and re-open on Tuesday 7^th. Vacation loans will start next week, with books due back on the 28^th April.