We’ve decided to step away from X and focus our efforts on Bluesky and other platforms where we can better engage with our readers. We will not be posting on X for the foreseeable future. You’ll still find us sharing the latest resources, news, and insights across our other channels, including here on the blog.
Thank you for your support, and see you on Bluesky!
Some new questions and answers arrived on our graffiti wall. Are you avoiding the crowds in the Lower Reading Room this week? Visit our Facebook page to read the answers. We hope that your analytics exam went well.
The Library Team
While Chris has promptly answered all the comments on our Graffiti Wall, the pace of contributions made it difficult to keep pace, so the blog remained quiet. Please accept our apologies for the silence.
If you are interested in the conversations of the past few weeks, please visit our Facebook gallery, where we will post all questions and responses from today on.
I have just reported this to our cleaning manager – I suspect it is to do with the cleaning fluid being used, and have asked that this be looked at. I will report back as soon as I hear, and thank-you for alerting us as this is not good from a number of angles, including the comfort one.
Cheers
It would be really helpful to have more information regarding this one so we can work out the source of the problem – so which terminal? And is it Bloomberg or Windows? For example.
Cheers
You are correct to observe that there are indeed times when the Sainsbury Library is not heavily used – but on each day that this is the case, we can clearly see the usage level rise during the day, due to the SBS students coming in “en masse” when released from lectures being held in the School or other events that have had kept them out of the library.
And while I appreciate that, for various reasons, many non-SBS students wish to work here, the fact that SBS students cannot realistically go to another library to work (and nor should they), means that my main responsibility has to be to ensure that the SBS students have access to the library as and when they need it.
So, until such time as someone can come up with some way that would guarantee that the total number of “guests” wishing to study here on any day did not exceed our capacity to accommodate them without detriment to the SBS students – who absolutely must take precedence over those who can use another library but prefer this one – then regrettably the policy as it is must stand.
A toilet…. …..maybe adjacent to a café, a lounge and a train station??
Sorry, maybe you are being serious, and here I am, giving my funny bone a bit of a stretch there.
But I have to be honest – no matter how hard which way I look at this one, I just can’t elicit a sane and sober response. But please, make a serious case on why you can’t walk to the nearest loo down the corridor or downstairs and why you would sacrifice high real-estate worth of study space to another loo (or two, depending on whether we can be non-gender specific), and why you would want to hear the many cacophonous and other sounds that emanate from such a facility, along with other emanations not unknown of such facilities while working in the library, and why you would want to tolerate the to-ing and froing through the library that would generally ensue, and I will respond – seriously, I promise.
Cheers
This is the one that makes me want to weep: 7 years here and I am defeated by this one [can it be that architects repeatedly and universally design bad, unworkable libraries because they hate librarians?].
So here is a potted history on the problem: we have had complaints about this every year, without fail – you are a little late in surfacing it, may I add? We have signs at both stairwells that say “Noise carries – please don’t talk near the stairs” which few observe, and I keep my eye out for people talking at those locations when I am walking around.
We have had suggested:
1) sound buffers attached to the stair walls;
2) sound absorbers on the upper floor ceilings;
3) doors at top of stairs (turned down on H&S grounds);
4) doors at bottom of stairs (turned down on H&S grounds); and our own;
5) creating glass partitions near both stairwells on lower floor.
We have not heard further about the latest suggestion (number 5 above) so, in desperation:
I will find a £30 Blackwell gift voucher to anyone who can come up with a practical solution that is H&S proof, and doesn’t involve moats, drawbridges, banishment of students from the lower floor, or massive architectural adjustments.
Re: Tissue Box – done!
(See the front counter).
Oh dear: busted chairs – I can see we are in need of some TLC, furniture wise: I have referred this to our very kind maintenance people, although they will probably wish to test and fix after the exam period so some forbearance may be necessary at this stage of the year.
As to the temperature this also has now been reported but it would be very helpful if temperature problems that occur after hours could be reported to the Downstairs reception staff as they are charged with getting this looked at after hours, and will have someone come out and fix this when it occurs, but thank-you for letting us know that this problem has resurfaced…