24 HOURS READING ROOM (MB204): Thank you for your following suggestion. Please note that the 24-hour Reading Room (MB204) is managed by the Comptroller’s Office and is now closed for renovation. The University will provide a new 24-hour computing and studying facility on 4/F of the Main Building from the start of the new academic year in September.
If there is anything that we can assist you further, please let us know.
SUGGESTION OF OVERDUE FINES FOR AV MATERIALS (DAILY TYPE): The Library had a discussion on your suggestion yesterday.
According to our record, those 3 titles mentioned in your suggestion were returned on 16 May and checked out again same day. We regard that the overdue situation is within control. At this moment, the Library will continue to keep the current overdue fines for AV materials (daily type) to $2 per item per day. We will monitor the situation and review the penalty if the situation changes in future.
If we can assist you further, please feel free to let me know.
REQUESTING FOR MORE NOTEBOOKS: Thank you for your suggestion to the Library. Some notebook PCs are now being put in the training lab MB204 for the Library and ITSC information literacy programmes. We shall discuss with ITSC and make them available for student loan out after the IL programmes finished in mid-March. Each year we make request for additional equipment from the University and other sources. We are happy to inform that 20 new notebook PCs have been approved. We hope that the high demand of notebook PCs for loan can be met soon.
If we can assist you further, please feel free to let us know.
COMPLAINT ABOUT THE POOR READING ENVIRONMENT OF THE LIBRARY: Thank you for your concern on the noise and food problems in the Library. Since students are spending more hours working in the Library, a cafe had been set up a few years ago to enable them to get relaxed, have something to drink, use mobile phones, etc. when need. When noticing students talking to a mobile phone and have food in the Information Commons and study areas, library staff will remind them the rules and regulations. Records will be taken on repeated offences. We shall remind our staff the necessary actions in this regard. Because the Library has 3 floors, we cannot patrol the whole area all time throughout the day, especially in the evening when manpower is concentrated at the counters. Students need to exercise their self-discipline in enabling the space conducive to learning. However, if you identify any problem when using the Library and require help, please do not hesitate to contact staff for assistance.
Nowadays, libraries are assuming more activities in addition to providing a quiet reading environment to users. Some activities, e.g. using PC and printers, seminars and lectures, etc., will bring noise. For providing service to those users who require a very quiet study space, the Library has also assigned some individual study rooms. Self-servicing booking is available on the Digital Library [http://libapp.ln.edu.hk:8888/tsroom/]. You may consider such an alternative. If we can assist you further, please feel free to let us know.
SUGGESTION OF PHOTOCOPYING: The Library is always in supportive of environmental friendly activities. For example, only part of the computers will be turned on during weekends and term breaks to save energy. We had tested turning on the double-sided copying function of the photocopiers before. But the machines had more problems of paper jam and failure. As a result, photocopying service would be disrupted and become unavailable. Since we assign a higher priority to service reliability in this regard, we do not offer the double-sided copying function for library photocopiers.
24 HOURS READING ROOM (MB204): Posters have been put up to remind students to keep quiet in the reading room. However, we do not consider there is a need to ask students to put their student ID cards on desk as proof of identity. Furthermore, too frequent checking of ID cards will cause disturbance to students. The Library, with the campus management units, will keep monitoring the situation and make necessary responses.
LIBRARY TEMPERATURE : Thank you for your comment to the Library. The low library temperature has been a long-time concern. As said in our reply to user suggestion on 4 May 2007, we planned to conduct improvement works on air-conditioning this summer. After necessary engineering works, the Library should have control on the temperature setting. However, due to unforeseeable circumstances, we must postpone the original schedule to a later date. In the meantime, please bring some warm clothes with you for long time studying in the Library. If we can assist you further, please do not hesitate to let us know.
LIBRARY RE-CLASSIFICATION PROJECT : Thank you for your following comment on the library re-classification project. We fully understand the annoyance you experienced by the split of locations of groups of materials.
However, we need your further forbearance in our 3-year project to migrate the entire collection of 500,000 items from the old call number systems to the Library of Congress Classification numbers. It is a labourious project but for long-term benefits. The outcome of the project will enable the English and Chinese materials of the same subjects to be shelved together. Users need not go to 2 places for materials of the same subject matter. In this way, a better access to library materials can be achieved. On the other hand, by changing our classification system, we are going to adopt to the same classification system used by other university libraries in Hong Kong. As a result, books can be catalogued and processed in a quicker way in the future by sharing the same records. We thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. If we can assist you further, please let us know.
REFWORKS: Thank you for your following comment and suggestion to the Library. The RefWorks has its own icon in the Databases page which should be easily recognized. To facilitate users to link to the RefWorks service, it will be shown on the Alphabetical List of the Databases page. Furthermore, we will review if all electronic databases, including RefWorks, should be catalogued and searchable from the online catalogue. If so, all databases can be found by using keyword search on the Digital Library.
ROOM USE IN LIBRARY: At present we do not have any requirement for students to take the key on time. They are free to come and use the room any time within the time period when a reservation is made. Concerning your suggestion of allowing other students to take up the room if the original requester does not show up after a certain period of time, the Library will gather more feedback from students before making any decision. In addition, we need to work with the software supplier to enhance the booking system if other students support the change.