About this time last year, I personally wrote a piece criticizing how our library books were not being well-managed. Now a year later, some changes were made and some were not. In addition to the update, The Postech Times prepared suggestions for the library’s improvement.

Books Management

The library’s classification system of Library of Congress Classification (LCC) offers a highly well-organized and solid system. If there is a problem of the book setting, it is the person’s problem. The writing I mentioned also handled the issue of manmade disaster of books management.

One of the points I made in last year’s writing was on how The Day of Empire by Amy Chua was missing. At that time, though it was changed immediately, was marked as JC539 .C58 2008. I later found out that the book was to be labeled as JC359 under LCC. It was another problem found; regardless, the book is still missing. It might be sleeping somewhere in the wrong place.

The book loss cases are not rare. Speaking of one more case, a female student complained that a book named Opening Skinner’s Box was missing even though the records showed the book was present. After checking to confirm, it was in fact missing.

Also, the books declared lost are not recovered soon enough - or maybe ever. Snowball, a biography of Warren Buffet, lost since March 2010, is still marked as a lost book.

Ventilation

Our library has its standard of temperature to store the books in best condition. To sustain the temperature, the library blocked all the air paths of the library. This is actually what should be done and recommended. Most of the repliers understood this issue though they complained about the condition of the air not being ventilated very well. To resolve the issue, how is buying some air freshener for ventilation?

Library Store

The users of the library begin to visit the library in the afternoon, hitting the peak busy hours at late night due to the lectures in daytime. Many of the respondents answered that it would be more convenient if the store works later than its current hours. Though the library store belongs to the Welfare Facilities, not the library, the suggestions is to shift the whole working hours a little later. Not many people have access to the library in the morning anyway. Then, the total utility will increase along with the revenue.