University Library will makes changes regarding reading rooms and the reservation service starting this fall semester.
The reading rooms in the basement of the library will have new openings hours from 5 a.m. to midnight on days when there are not many users. Meanwhile, the lounge and Laptop Computer Room on the first floor, PC Room in the basement, and the school cafeteria will continue to remain open for 24 hours. This change was made based on statistics of previous library users to create a more efficient system.
The change will go through a trial period for the fall semester and will become permanent starting the first semester of 2016 after some adjustments.
A change in the reservation system will also occur. First of all, penalties for canceling reserved materials will be reduced. According to the previous policy, library users who did not check out the books they had reserved three times could not use this service for a month. If they did not check out only once or twice, that number was recorded in the library for the rest of the school years. However, with the new policy this penalty will be erased from the library record at the end of each year.
Moreover, students are unable to cancel reserved books after they receive notice that the materials are available. This will cause less unnecessary waiting time for other students using the service. This policy went into effect on Sept. 1 and the number of not checking out reserved books for students in the library record was reset to zero prior to the start of the policy.
With regard to the new policy, the overall opinions of most students are positive.
“It seems appropriate to shorten the opening hours of the library when there are not many people. This will help to conserve electricity,” said Gu Ji-Yun, a freshman in the College of Social Sciences. “If there are only few or no people, it would be a waste of resources. However, I just worry that the standard of ‘not many’ people might be ambiguous. It would be confusing for students if parts of the library operates for 24 hours on one day and suddenly shortens the opening hours on another.”
The library has not yet decided on what exact number of users will justify reducing the opening hours but has promised to release more details regarding this policy in the near future.
“I would disagree if the library is closing all the areas, but if it is possible to study in the lounge it would be fine,” said Han Ye-eun, a junior in the Department of Food Science.
Jang Min-jeong
minjeongjang@ewhain.net