We recently went on another site visit to the Radcliffe Science Library (RSL). The team from Morgan & Sindall have done great work and things are progressing well. Walls are going up and cables for data and electricity are going in.
The refurbishment has encountered many delays, since the RSL was closed in January 2020. Along with the Covid pandemic there has been significant amounts of asbestos found in the building. A whopping 660 tonnes has been removed so now the building is safe for occupation. That’s the same weight as 66 walrusses or 66 giraffes, if you use metric.
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- The old entrance needs a little bit of work.
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- But inside things are starting to come together.
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- The library team were very impressed with our visit.
Reading Rooms
The reading rooms upstairs look great. The shelves are up and they’re adding the lights. The big windows and lovly views are still here. The reading rooms will be filled with a mixture of the chairs selected by our readers.
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- You can see the new halo lights and the wall heaters.
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- The old shelves have been reinstalled but are protected while the last few touches are added.
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- The beautiful ceilings in the old reading room have been refreshed and are ready for the lights to be added.
Training Room
Work in the basement also continues. We’ll have a training room downstairs with a capacity for 30 people. The room will have a whiteboard and a screen. It can be filled with seats or tables can be added for smaller group work.
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- The training room doesn’t look like much now. Though it already has walls and wiring.
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- But the plans show how the room will be laid out.
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- We’ll have space for about 30 people with a screen and a whiteboard.
Wellbeing room
Our Wellbeing room will be next to the training room. You can see that it is going to be quite a large space. You can see our previous blog post for how we are going to fill the space.
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- Plenty of space in the Wellbeing room.
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- All the wires mean that there will be plenty of plugs in the room.
Group study rooms
Along with two group study rooms upstairs we’ll also have a Teams room in the basement. The upstairs rooms will look out onto South Parks Road and there will be a comfortable waiting area outside the rooms.This will have cameras, screens and microphones equipped so full hybrid meetings on Microsoft Teams can easily take place. There will be no charge to book our group study rooms.
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- The Microsoft Teams room in the basement will make hybrid meetings easy.
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- The large windows are ready but the group study room still needs a few finishing touches.
We’re working on creating a booking system that will work for all those who use the RSL. We’ll update you soon when the details have been finalised.