Could you put “Quiet Please” signs in the Historical Reading Room? I love to study there, but often find noisy students talking loudly and eating. Thank you!

Answer:

I have brought this attention to Micaela, our Historical Librarian, and she will be adding some signage to encourage silence. On a certain level, this sort of thing is inevitable, as our Historical Reading Room is one of our library’s most awesome places and attracts a lot of people. Our staff tries to enforce a measure of decorum, but this is hard to do in the evening when most of us are absent. So feel free to suggest that loud patrons relocate to one of our many well-appointed study rooms.

What happened to the large selection of magazines? I enjoyed the lighter reading as a study book. Can they return.

Answer:

Can they? Of course they can, and will. We are re-upping our subscriptions right now and all our subscriptions should be back in short order.

In the meantime, try to stay satisfied with the back issues. I, for one, never get around to reading all of a New Yorker.

Please remind media solutions that they are in possibly the most quiet section of the library & it would be great if they would close their door more often or at least be aware of the need for quiet in that area. Also informing their guests who forget that this is a library would be very appreciated.

Response:

Thanks for bringing this up. Printing and graphic design people have a reputation for being silent, introverted types but it sounds like the stereotype is wrong. The same stereotype is wrong for librarians too – we’re loud as hell.

I have talked with the supervisor of the media solutions and she said they’ll be more careful about controlling noise in the future; typically by closing the door. As these things seem to be isolated instances, it might be a good idea to let them know directly when noise is a problem; I am usually absent or busy when these things go down.

Free chai for Monday night studiers in the section right here! [Note - this was left in a suggestion box by the 3rd floor restrooms].

Response:

We always get these. Suggestions for foodstuffs, that is. It seems to be remarkable reversal – in the olden days, people were generally barred from bringing anything edible into the library; these days it is not only permitted, but it’s even suggested that we bring in more.

Not that I am complaining, of course. I thought the old restrictions were pretty silly. Anyway, as much as we’d like to give out free chai and other noshes to our hard-working customers, it doesn’t seem to be in the cards right now. With everything else we have to do, maintaining an adequate  chai-stream would be hard to do, especially at night. Plus we would be depriving the Daily Dose of the business, and we always want to swing some towards those nice people.

Please move the public phone to a room for privacy – it echoes and its very distracting for people trying to study. It has been a problem the last two times I have come to study. Someone has made a long phone call using a loud voice & I have had to listen to their whole life story.  Move the phone – it’s obnoxious & inappropriate for a library.

Answer:

Agreed. We recently had a discussion about this, and are taking action. We don’t want to remove the phone completely, as it was intended to allow physicians to return pages – it’s being used for that less lately, but we wish to retain some sort of phone for those docs without cell phones (who apparently still exist).

For now, we have added signage indicating that the phone is intended for returning pages and short calls. If this fails to solve the issue, we will take further steps, up to removing the phone altogether.

Your suggestion to move the phone to another room is a very good one, and one I will pursue. One speed-bump is finding a spare room with a phone-jack, but I still like the idea enough to see if it is doable.

The public computers on the third floor reboot without notice at about 9:10 each day. This can be quite annoying. If it is necessary that they automatically reboot each day, please schedule it for when the library is closed. Many thanks!

Answer:

Done. Or rather, it looks like those restarts aren’t happening anymore. They happened at 9:10 over the summer because other campus library hours were different, and Library Technology Group, which runs the computers, restarted them at all the same time.  It shouldn’t be an issue over the semester, and I will keep an eye on the machines during the breaks and check to see they are restarting at the proper times.

There seem to be rather unpleasant aromas wafting from the other patrons. Is there anything that can be done beside having to move to escape the odors?

Response:

Sadly, issues involving the sense of smell fall mostly outside the librarian’s purview. If the offensive smell came from a piece of equipment, moldy book or a library staff member, then something could be done. Likewise, if the complaint was noise-related (that is, involving the sense of hearing) then we are able to step in.

With this situation, it seems you will have to go with the approach you suggested – relocating to another part of the library.

Your library is tops! But I was surprised that you do not have the most current edition of the most widely used pediatrics resource: The Pediatric Red Book of 2009 this is the volume that should be kept up to date.

Response:

It’s located here:

http://aapredbook.aappublications.org.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/

The current version we have is actually an e-book; if you can’t remember the complicated url (for which I don’t blame you), then you can also locate it by looking at our website under “Top E-Books”.

Most of the desk lights at the 2-people desks upstairs are not working. I think it would be nice to check them out on a regular basis. Thank you!

Response:

Thank you for bringing this to our attention – I have checked some of the desk lamps upstairs and a few of them are not working. We have not given these too much attention since we moved in to this facility; with all the glass around, there is so much sun streaming in during the day that all artificial sources tend to wash out. Because that’s what we have here, lots and lots of glass…

Anyway, I will look into replacing those bulbs. On your end, double check to see if the lamps are plugged in. They’re supposed to be, but sometimes they get unhooked so people can plug in laptops.

As a business PhD student, I’ve been using the library for almost 2 years, and am loving it!

I just wanted to say thank you for providing us an amazing study environment like this!

Best.

Response:

Thanks for the kind words – it’s nice to hear from people when we are doing something right for a change.

And don’t be afraid to spread the news about Ebling; we like it when people come here.