a) I really wouldn't want to have to go up to central London to visit the Imperial College library and b) their rules are the ones I'm most familiar with! I had trouble getting a borrower's pass even when I was writing up my thesis :/ Also, the central IC library is disgusting - it has chronic sick building syndrome, and the lights on levels 1-3 make me dizzy to the point where I can randomly fall over or crash into bookshelves. Levels 4 & 5 are much better because they were built new while I was at college. However, some of the books I'd want would be on one of the nasty levels, while all the rest would be in the lovely, clean, comfortable Chemistry Department Library, that I couldn't even get access to when I was a postgrad in Physics :/
Honestly, the Chemistry Department Library was so comfortable that my friends & I would choose to work there in the evenings, rather than go back to someone's student accommodation. There were silent parts and quiet-talking-allowed parts, meaning that people would only complain if students working on the same thing were talking about it too loudly or were talking about non-chemistry things. Also, it was considered perfectly fine to make a small pile of books or journals at your desk with a note on saying you wanted to use them again later, as long as the librarian or supervising postgrad knew which books you'd taken in case someone else wanted to use them while you weren't around. (And then, if you came in and found a book you wanted to use on someone else's pile, you'd simply write on their note that you'd taken the book so they knew to come and find you.) I suppose a lot of these rules only worked because the department was small enough for everyone to know everyone else at least by sight, but now, I get ridiculously nostalgic for it. I just... prefer rules based on courtesy and respect than rules which treat everyone like idiots who'll misbehave on purpose.
I'd quite like to get a British Library reading room pass again, but cuts in the funding means that those are getting like gold dust - you have to demonstrate a very serious need for access to get in. Far, far easier would be for me to rejoin the Royal Society of Chemistry and use their library. Though this is slightly scary. I'm hoping that because I used to be a member, I'll be able to just ring up and quote my old membership number to get reactivated; but I fear enough time might have gone by for me to need to find two members in good standing to countersign my application :/
no subject
Honestly, the Chemistry Department Library was so comfortable that my friends & I would choose to work there in the evenings, rather than go back to someone's student accommodation. There were silent parts and quiet-talking-allowed parts, meaning that people would only complain if students working on the same thing were talking about it too loudly or were talking about non-chemistry things. Also, it was considered perfectly fine to make a small pile of books or journals at your desk with a note on saying you wanted to use them again later, as long as the librarian or supervising postgrad knew which books you'd taken in case someone else wanted to use them while you weren't around. (And then, if you came in and found a book you wanted to use on someone else's pile, you'd simply write on their note that you'd taken the book so they knew to come and find you.) I suppose a lot of these rules only worked because the department was small enough for everyone to know everyone else at least by sight, but now, I get ridiculously nostalgic for it. I just... prefer rules based on courtesy and respect than rules which treat everyone like idiots who'll misbehave on purpose.
I'd quite like to get a British Library reading room pass again, but cuts in the funding means that those are getting like gold dust - you have to demonstrate a very serious need for access to get in. Far, far easier would be for me to rejoin the Royal Society of Chemistry and use their library. Though this is slightly scary. I'm hoping that because I used to be a member, I'll be able to just ring up and quote my old membership number to get reactivated; but I fear enough time might have gone by for me to need to find two members in good standing to countersign my application :/