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August Headlines

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Hello!

Although we are always very quiet in August in terms of our readers, those who have been around will no doubt have noticed that we have been very busy in other ways.

Staff staring stupefied at spreadsheets, piles of labels on desks, random running in and out with laptop bags… all may have contributed to an air of mystery, but the truth is simply that we – like almost everyone else in the Bodleian Libraries – have been caught up in the work to prepare for the move of Special Collections back into the Weston Library.

Our particular task has been to reclassify the collections which are going into the Charles Wendell David Reading Room, which will house the Oriental, Rhodes House, and Indian Institute collections. We have opted to use Library of Congress Classification, but have retained a prefix similar to those used at OIL to maintain the divisions between books as they currently are on the shelves, thus: [Arab.] will denote Arabic books, [Cat.] will indicate catalogues and so on.  It has been a long, complex and occasionally fraught task, but we have done our best and hope to get as much as possible re-labelled and re-organised before the SCRR closes on the 19th September.

We are proud to have been involved in this project, and also very pleased to have been able to maintain our own library services without a break during a period when at least one person at any given time has been in the Radcliffe Science Library under a pile of labels!

We would like to thank other contributors, in particular Joshua Seufert, who took time out from the opening of the new China Centre to print a mammoth lot of labels at the start of the project, and who gave Kate and Lidio a very interesting tour of the new Chinese Library when they visited to pick them up, and the staff in Systems who have been patiently sending us reports to enhance the original list of books so that we have been able to do a lot of preparatory work without being in the reading room.

 

September reminders

 

As usual the Library will close over the weekend of St Giles’ Fair – this coming weekend, 6-9 September. Other than that, we are open as normal and looking forward to gearing up for the start of Term!

As I mentioned before, the Special Collections Reading Room closes on the 19th September and the first of the new Weston Library reading rooms opens on the 22nd. Please see the Bodleian’s webpage for details of closures and collection moves over the next few months.

 

June News and Summer Announcements

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First and foremost, a fond farewell to the last of our departing finalists – and a last ditch plea to those of you who have outstanding fines to please pay them off before you go. While the University is not able to prevent you from graduating because of outstanding library fines, there is still the possibility of repeat offenders being referred to the Proctors, and nobody really wants that.

June has been busy for us for various reasons; as well as the general library busyness of the last few weeks of Exams, we have been refurbishing the staff areas. Dawn and Dinah’s office was redecorated at the end of May and all the staff offices now have nice new desks and other furniture which makes for a far more efficient office environment than the previous ad-hoc arrangement of long planks and filing cabinets.

The upgrade of the door entry system was also an ongoing situation during June, but it appears that most people’s cards are now working on the front and Library doors. We will continue to add orange card-holders to the system manually, as we used to on the old one, but blue cards should work automatically. Anyone experiencing problems may need to get an updated card if theirs is too old for the proximity technology, but do ask us and we will endeavour to help.

Vacation Loans have been in force since the middle of the month, so anything borrowed by members with a normal (i.e. non-staff) membership will be checked out until 14th October (Tuesday of First Week, Michaelmas Term). This will only not apply in the event that a readers’ card expires before this point, in which case the due date will be the card expiry date.

Summer Announcements

There are various changes afoot in the Oriental Libraries this summer. While OIL remains constant – our opening hours are the same as for Term: 0915-1900 during the week and 10-4pm on Saturdays – a great deal of change is taking place elsewhere. The Chinese Studies Library will be moving out of the Clarendon Institute in Walton Street to new accommodations in the Dickson Poon Building in the grounds of St Hugh’s College of Canterbury Road from July; and the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies will be moving into the Clarendon Institute in September, from their current base at Yarnton Manor. The website is here: http://www.ochjs.ac.uk/about/announcement/

The Chinese move in particular does concern OIL, inasmuch as we will be the place for people to return any borrowed CSL books during their period of closure, which begins at the end of Friday 5th July. We do not have a definite opening date for the new  Bodleian K B Chen China Centre Library at present due to the logistical complications of the move, but there should be regular updates on the CSL pages of the website: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csl/chinese-studies-library-move.

Meanwhile staff at OIL will be assisting Weston Library colleagues in preparations for the movement of the Oriental materials from the current SCRR at the RSL to the new reading rooms; we will update when we know more details, but this should not affect the general running of the Library during this time.

Otherwise we anticipate a fairly quiet summer – bar the inevitable moving round of the Library of Congress collection into the space vacated by the reclassified items!

 

 

March Headlines and Announcements for April

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From a Library point of view March has been quite a busy month, despite the end of Term and the subsequent emptying-out as many of our readers leave for the vacation.

The week of the 10th-14th was a SCONUL week, when we collect statistics of library attendance and the nature of our enquiries; if any of you were wondering why we were wandering the library counting you at particular times of day, that was why!

We had to contend with the visit from the men who were putting in new windows for two weeks at the end of the month, both in the Library itself and also in the back offices, along with a nice new fire door at the end of the building facing towards Blackfriars’. I hope that the plastic sheeting, banging around and persistent odour of glue were not too much of a distraction for too many people. Sadly they gave us minimal notice before the work began, we knew they were coming, but their schedule was somewhat of a mystery until they said “we’re coming next week”. We were just glad that they were so quick, and also that they managed to at least arrive now while it is vacation and not during exams, and we are sure that the additional easily-opened windows will help with the stuffiness which we sometimes suffer in the summer months. Sadly your humble blogger did not manage to get any action photos of the windows being done; we apologise for this oversight.

There is also an ongoing scheme to upgrade all the University computers still using the Windows XP operating system to Windows 7, which has seen several members of staff already upgraded. This is essential work as there will be no support from Microsoft for XP after the end of April. The programme of works will also affect the Library computers for readers, but we have yet to receive confirmation of the dates when this will happen. We will endeavour to give as much notice as possible of any times when the reader PCs will be out of action. Please keep checking the Facebook Page for further information.

Announcements for April:

The Easter closure of the Library will begin on Thursday 17th April and run through to Tuesday April 22nd, when the Library will open as usual at 0915. We will post signs nearer the time to remind people.

Vacation Loans are currently in operation, with all books borrowed due back on the 29th April (Tuesday of 1st Week).

Finally, the reclassification has once again necessitated a bookmove to make up the space once occupied by the BP section. This will be taking place over the next few weeks and will result in some noise, although we will try to keep this to a minimum. If items you are used to finding in a particular place have moved, do come and ask us where they are!

 

 

August headlines and reminders for September

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Hello!

As usual, this time of year has not been one where news has been particularly forthcoming, given that the Library is very quiet  with only a small number of readers, largely postgraduate students and visiting scholars.

Accordingly, a look back on the Facebook page shows most of the activity around the announcement of the birth of Lidio’s daughter Rosa at the beginning of the month! Other than that, our Facebook content has mostly consisted of alerts that SOLO – which has been undergoing some work this summer – has been up, or down, or up again, but at least one regular reader has told us that this is actually really useful, so we will continue to use the Facebook page to keep everyone informed if there are any further problems.

Kate has been valiantly reclassifying the BP section, as mentioned in last month’s post, and is happy to announce that she has reclassified 427 books – representing 379 shelfmarks – since counting began at the beginning of July.

For the next couple of weeks there will be a small book-move taking place, with the space made by the last few months of reclassification re-distributed, so we apologise for any banging around which might happen . We’ll try to keep it down, but sometimes books fall over without warning and the resounding “BONG!!” from the metal shelves is rather loud.

A quick reminder about some closures coming up:  we are closed next Saturday, Monday and Tuesday (September 7th – 10th) for St Giles Fair. Reminders will be posted on Facebook nearer the time.

November Headlines and Christmas Matters

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A bit late with this post, sorry! This is what happens when the month starts at a weekend…

November at OIL was its usual hectic self, bringing the rest of Michaelmas Term and the accompanying hive of activity, not to mention a run on the photocopiers towards the end of the month when people started gathering things to do over the Christmas Vacation.

In the Library we have been busy too, the KSL material for Korean Studies has been moved to the basement after re-labelling and a new consignment of books is being catalogued ready to be added to that as part of our Window on Korea project. These will be arriving gradually over the next few months; keep an eye on the shelves, or on SOLO! The Korea Room in the basement has also been in use (apologies to the group of students I barged in on last week!), which is excellent.

Our bit of reorganisation, moving the PLs and other small collections so that new metal shelving could be put in place has now been accomplished, and the new shelves look as if they have always been there, which is really the whole point of the exercise.

One of our regular book-moves to fill up gaps created by Kate’s reclassification project has been going on over the last few days. Do ask if anything has moved and you can’t find it! In most cases things have just shuffled along a bit, or possibly round a corner. Shelf labels will be updated when we have finished moving things.

Meanwhile, the Graduate Research Skills Toolkit session last week at IT services was well attended, and colleagues said that people were pleased to be given the chance to learn more about the various tools which are available for Orientalists.

Further afield, there have been a few problems with book deliveries due to large parts of Oxford being submerged last week, but the Porters soldiered through as best they could and the delays were minimal. Fingers crossed that we don’t get too much snow, or this may become a problem again.

Christmas Matters:

Vacation Lending is now in effect, and books borrowed at the moment are due back on the 14th January.

The Library closes for the Christmas break at 5pm on Thursday 20th December. Unfortunately, due to staff leave, we will not be open the preceding Saturday, 15th December, or on Saturday January 5th. Otherwise, we will reopen on Wednesday 2nd January and weekday opening hours will be as normal, 0915-1900.

Season’s Greetings from all at OIL!

Easter Closing

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Our pretty new windows are now installed, although we don’t yet have handles to open them – apparently they’re coming after Easter!

We’re closing for Easter tonight at 7pm (Wednesday 4th April 2012), and re-opening on Tuesday 10th April at 9:15am.

Hope you all have a good long weekend.

Happy New Year!

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Happy New Year! We hope you’ve all had a good break, and haven’t missed us too much… OIL has now re-opened after our winter break, and we’ll be open 9:15am to 7pm every weekday from now onwards (and 10am to 4pm on Saturdays).

Vacation loans are due back on Monday 1st Week, 16th January 2012.

Christmas closing

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Just a quick reminder that we’re closing this Wednesday (21st December 2011) at 5pm. We’ll re-open on Tuesday 3rd January 2012 at 9:15am. I hope you all have a great break, and see you in the New Year!

Books borrowed as vacation loans are due back on Monday 16th January 2012, Monday 1st Week.

Christmas Closed Dates

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This winter the Bodleian Oriental Institute Library will be closed on the same days as the Oriental Institute faculty, from Thursday 22nd December to Monday 2nd January (inclusive). We will close at 5pm on Wednesday 21st December, and re-open at 9:15am on Tuesday 3rd January.

For all the rest of the vacation we will be open our normal hours, from 9:15am to 7pm each weekday and from 10am to 4pm on Saturdays.

Michaelmas Term 2011 & New Library Catalogue

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Michaelmas Term 2011 is starting next week – hello to all our new students, welcome back to all our continuing ones!

Library books that were borrowed over the vacation are due back on Monday 1st Week, don’t forget…

There have been some quite large changes over the summer – the old OLIS library catalogue has gone, all book finding is now done through SOLO – http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

If a book says its location is “Bodleian Library” and its Status is “Remote Store”, this means it’s in storage and needs to be ordered to a library if you want to read it. You can do this by logging into SOLO up in the top right-hand corner – click “Oxford SSO” and put in your Single Sign On details (the same username and password that you use to get your emails). To request a book that has it’s location as Remote Store, click on the blue word “Hold”. You can request books to the Oriental Institute Library or to lots of other different libraries.

When you’re logged into SOLO you can also see all the books you’ve got out from Oxford libraries, and renew them yourself. Just click on “My Account” inthe top right-hand corner of the page.

If you need any help with this, just ask at any library desk. We’ll be happy to help!