I am sorry you are feeling the cold. I have left a query with our buildings people as – as far as we are aware – the heating remains on until midnight each day. There was recently a problem with the near-window heat strip not working, but this should now be fixed. But will report back as soon as I hear further. Best,
The question of extended hours is one that comes up regularly but is in fact not a library issue but rather a buildings issue. I am conveying therefore the response from Roger Essex Head of Property and Maintenance at SBS:
We have in the past been asked to consider remaining open 24/7, and have considered this. In order to establish demand we have periodically tried extending the hours beyond midnight (although not to a full 24 hours) and have found that post-midnight very few people have remained, and the library has typically been empty before 1am. The exception to this has been the period immediately before exams. We have found that the right compromise seems to be to open until 1 or 2am on the 2 weeks immediately prior to exams.
To add to Roger’s point above –with our duty-of-care hat on, I think there is much to be said for not-encouraging students to neglect their overall well-being by adopting crazy study hours, but Roger is prepared to monitor uptake when we extend during the 2 weeks to see if further extension is a good idea.
Food and Noise… Noise and food…………
These are our 2 continuous problems and to be honest, we can grapple with the food issue (mostly) but the noise problem is of a different order entirely.
In the case of noise, the difficulty is that our students need to engage in group work, and group work inevitably leads to noise, over which – on a good day – the impact of our “shushing” and cajoling lasts all of 2 minutes, after which the noise levels return, soufflé-like, back to their cacophonous levels.
And you are absolutely correct about the intrusion of social chit-chat: alas, we have found ourselves singularly unsuccessful in pointing out to our students the fine and subtle difference between social chit-chat and work chat: hence the trialling of new signs which will be going up soon.
The other major problem we have is an architectural design fault – a “quiet” upper level to which two sets of stairs beautifully and effectively transport both foot and noise movement.
But your point has been heard and any suggestions (from anyone) on remedies, solutions, alternatives to study space arrangements, behaviour modification ideas, would all be very welcome.
Hi there – yes, as John has indicated there are most definitely issues with the current printing functions of which we are aware. The ones we are focused on are those that have emerged because of the non-compatibility between the software that runs PCAS (the printing system) and Windows 7, which emerged when we upgraded the PCs (which we had to do because the previous version of Windows was no longer supported by Microsoft).
And again as John has said, we are hoping the Bodleian wide solution will be delivered soon.
But something that may also be of interest: we are looking to have an alternate local back-up printing service for those occasions when library staff are not here to help out – something our IT friends here at SBS are looking at and will let you know about that as soon as we have the details.
Another question has arrived on our library wall: 
The PCAS printing system is provided by the Bodleian Libraries, so the Library and the School don’t get to choose the software and printers that are provided.
However, this is really useful feedback, we are hoping that PCAS will improve a lot when the software is upgraded later this year. This should resolve the issues that we currently have with intermittent connectivity and PDF printing.
Also if you are having other specific issues with PCAS, please do ask the Library staff – we may be able to help!
Good question, (and the first one, so thank you):
3 reasons:
1. Technically, we are a Bodleian library, which strictly speaking, rules out coffee and coke etc., so we are already on our own in breaching the rules here (Bodleian is currently debating water being allowed in the Bodleian libraries).
2. Food = Mess + Noise – which is a disaster for pest control and minimizing the complaints I already receive (already had one about greasy keyboards on the library computers – student caught eating potato crisps, you know who you are!!).
3. A LOT of your fellow students get really resentful of people eating round them while they are trying to study, especially when the eating is noisy and people eat “smelly” food, so given that we are the library and not the cafeteria (and there’s no other library), I get their point, and their needs trump those of the would-be munchers.
(Despite all the above, we once allowed “dry non-messy” food in on a trial basis, and it was a disaster – people interpreted this as including cutlery requiring meals and the complaints and results were horrific – if it’s any consolation, I don’t let the library staff eat in the library offices because you can’t eat in the library, and they hate it)
We have recently started a new initiative in our library, encouraging you all to share your thoughts and opinions about the service, and more importantly, to ask questions.
For this purpose we have turned our advertisement board (next to the Bloomberg terminals) into our graffiti wall – check it out!
We aim to answer every single comment as soon as possible, so please make a good use of the paper and pens available. Our plan is to share your comments/questions on Twitter too (#sbslibwall) and to post replies from staff on this blog as well.
Help us improve the service for you and share your views today 🙂
PS Andy Priestner – thank you for inspiration 🙂