Magdalen’s temporary library, which will serve the library needs of Magdalen students while the permanent library undergoes renovation, is proving disruptive as the new term begins.
The temporary library is set to serve as the college library until the permanent new library re-opens in 2016. As it is not yet ready for use, however, students have been struggling to secure library space.
An email sent to Magdalen students by Christine Ferdinand, a Fellow Librarian at the college, said, “You may want to find somewhere else to work Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning and possibly until next week when the St Swithun’s Library opens.
“If you are working in the New Library on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday please be prepared to remove your things from your oak desk, while the Maintenance team remove it and replace it with a trestle table. They will work as quickly as they can. Our goal is to get the St Swithun’s Library open as soon as possible and the Maintenance team are helping us do that.”
However, she also stressed that Magdalen was working as hard as possible to ensure the problems with the library would be resolved as quickly as possible.
A further document sent to all Magdalen undergraduates advised students to,
“1. Plan to move into the temporary library.2. Plan to work in the current New Library building until the last minute. 3. Plan to work elsewhere, such as in another library or in your room. 4. A combination of the first options.”
Students have expressed disappointment at the college’s handling of the situation. “Normally it’s hard to find and share books on the reading list of a module that the whole university do, and without access to the Magdalen Library, this will make it even harder this weekend,” said one Historian.
A Magdalen second year, who wished to remain anonymous, said, “ I appreciate them giving us a substitute, but I feel they could have done better than the undersized and understocked plaster-cast wedding marquee.”
A second year medical student, with exams early this term that count towards her final qualification, said, “All the reference books are gone, many of which we don’t have borrow-able copies of.
“The St. Swithun’s library looks like someone tried (and failed) to get the Great British Bake Off going in Oxford – not quite fitting with the beautiful 15th century architecture, I’d say. And surely that marquee isn’t going to be big enough? Think of the damage it’s doing to the grass…
“Overall though, if the new library is built according to plan and isn’t delayed again, the end result should be quite spectacular — probably one of the best designed and most aesthetically pleasing college libraries in Oxford.”
When contacted by Cherwell, Ms Ferdinand detailed the flaws of the existing building and explained the renovations, commenting, “The current library’s roof leaks every time it rains; the builders of the St Swithuns library guarantee that will not happen. We cannot control the heat in the current library — the boiler is either off or on, and when it’s on it can be stifling hot; we actually have thermostat controlled heating in the temporary library. Lighting is very poor in the current library; it is up to standard in the St Swithun’s Library. Additionally, there are few ethernet points in the current library; there are plenty in the St Swithuns Library.”
Another student told Cherwell, “They’ve been very open about how the temporary arrangements will work, and have welcomed suggestions at every turn for how to make it all work better.
“Sure, it’d be nice not to have to put up with the two or more years of inconvenience that these arrangements will necessarily cause, but the College desperately needs more space for people to work and for books, and it’s not immediately clear to me how to guarantee that with less disruption than what we’re going through now, failing the sudden appearance of a massive multi-million-pound donation to fund the parallel construction of an entirely new library.”
Magdalen’s library renovations are set to enlarge the current library, providing more work spaces for the college’s expanding student population. The plans include a “library outside the library”, an outdoor seating space with wi-fi in the college’s Longwall Quad, and twice as many reading spaces as in the current library.
For the next two years, students will use the temporary library, which has only 45 reading spaces and 3000 books. The majority of the college’s books will be kept in the university’s main Book Storage Facility in Swindon.
The librarian stressed that the college were doing their best to minimise disruption, telling Cherwell, “I have liaised with other college librarians in our vicinity about allowing our students easier access to their collections during this transitional time.”
