Result! What will the future bring?

Two repeated themes of comments, Library Survey 2017

I’m writing this as we have an idea of how the parties fared in yesterday’s General Election… however, I’m not really talking about that result, but the result of our library survey, and what you, our readers and borrowers at the Divinity Library have expressed! There are two were clear messages in our Library Survey 2017:

1. You do not want – as one of you wrote – ‘disembowel’ your bags at the entrance of the library, but would prefer to take your bags to your desk.
2. Some of you aren’t happy to have to shelve books when returning them.

Unlike some politicians who make promises, and then often don’t deliver, we will make changes over the summer which will mean that latest from 1 October 2017, you will

1. be able to take your bags into the library – whether you will stay here for longer periods of work, or want to return, or pick up a book quickly.
2. not need to reshelve books on your return; at least we will trial in Michaelmas Term 2017 whether the small team of librarians can manage to shelve all books. During term time the returns can average 80-100 books a day, and we do not feel that using the wheelchair user stair lift to the mezzanine level is a good means of getting books to the higher level, as it would block the stairs for all users whilst we “just” transport books; 80-100 books might not sound much, but on top of that we also might need to move 20-30 books from processing in the staff area to the right shelf, i.e. new books, or books which have been reclassified/relabelled.

Obviously, we are not “just” basing our actions/changes on the Library Survey responses,  but also on the reactions we get from first-time library users, or borrowers from other Faculties; some of them are genuinely puzzled about our requests to shelve the books on return, or having to leave their bags opposite the Issue Desk area.

Anyway, we will hope that you will all be pleased with the above changes and promises; at least we hope that those of you returning to Cambridge in October will be happy about the above.

Have a good summer!

CG