A number of improvements are being made to the Sydney Jones Library, thanks to a £1M bequest from former student, Janet Gnosspelius.
The ground floor of the Library will be remodelled to improve facilities and services for students and staff, with work starting on Monday 9 July.
Additional exit turnstiles will be installed in the Abercromby Wing, which will help ease queues at busy times, and a new help desk will provide a first point of contact for library users. The changes mean the Library can augment the roving support service and allow staff to spend more time providing help.
The area overlooking Abercromby Square will be opened up to provide additional social study space and a new ‘self service’ area will be created, incorporating an automated book sorter which will improve sorting and ‘return to shelf’ times.
On the ground floor of the Grove Wing, the area behind Special Collections & Archives will be transformed into a new, access controlled, staff and research postgraduate reading room. The room will be equipped with high quality furnishings and wi-fi and there will be a number of fixed PCs and laptop plug-in points, as well as traditional study spaces with task lighting. A small number of lockers will also be provided.
A temporary entrance will be created in the Grove Wing, as there will be no access to the Ground Floor of the Abercromby Wing whilst the work is underway.
The SJL will be closed on Saturday mornings for the duration of the project, with the exception of the re-sit period. Library services will be maintained as usual throughout.
University Librarian, Phil Sykes, said: “Thankfully, the Library is pretty highly regarded by users. We tend to appear towards the top of the Russell Group in satisfaction surveys. But we’re always looking for further improvements; and this will allow us to make the Library even better.”
Further information will be posted on the Library website.