Spiral Staircase

The refurbished Level 3 annexe at the Library has a wealth of photography opportunities, and I’ve been spending a substantial amount of time there recently, so here’s one more. This is the spiral staircase next to the new glass wall in the annexe, leading from the (now open) café on Level 3 to the annexe above (which was refurbished a year ago).

With a lot of essays due in the next month, it might be time for another Library Week soon, methinks.

4 days left to vote in this month’s poll (on the right hand side of the page there) on deciding which is the nicest building around the University of Glasgow campus, so you have until Saturday night to cast your vote if you haven’t already! Oh, and Halloween is coming, hope you have your costume figured out already.

[Poll #5: What is the Nicest Building at Glasgow University?]
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© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

New Library Cafe Area

Here we go, the newly refurbished Level 3 Annexe of the Glasgow University Library, being put to use as of Day 1. (Well, Day 2 as it opened a day late). The area is pretty nice and modern, and comfortable (from what I could ascertain from the 15 minutes I spent on a computer there.) I took the above shot from the seating ara of the new cafe, which, unfortunately, is not yet open. There are still construction men walking about the place, and the two places still cordoned off are the immediate cafe bit and the newspaper shelves at the other end of the room.

The Library’s Flickr page has a set of more pictures from within the new area, check them out here.

[Poll #5: What is the Nicest Building at Glasgow University?]
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© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

Library Level 3 Annexe Now (Not) Open

The Level 3 Annexe of the Glasgow University Library has been closed for most of the summer and autumn, until today. I didn’t have the time to pop by inside the library annexe today so I’ll make sure I’ll get around to that tomorrow.

The newly-refurbished annexe contains “…study pods, group study areas, café facilities with comfortable seating, journals and newspapers.” The University of Glasgow Library’s blog post on the subject provides a little more information, as well as interior photos.

You’ll notice that the outside garden area isn’t completely finished yet and there appears to still be some construction gear within, but regardless of these minor blemishes I kinda like the way the back of the library looks now. My question is, why didn’t they give the rest of the annexe part of the Library the same kind of cosmetic treatment?

**UPDATE** The refurbished annexe wing DID NOT open on Monday October 5th, hence the change of title. It opened the following day, although the cafe itself is still closed. For a picture of the inside, go here.

[Poll #5: What is the Nicest Building at Glasgow University?]
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© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

Politics Section [Library Week]

This little corner on the 6th floor of the Library Annexe is where I spend a significant amount of time whilst at the Library. As a Politics student, naturally much of my books and materials can be found right here, on the 6th floor annexe of the University Library, as well as at the Adam Smith Library in the Adam Smith Building (makes sense, doesn’t it?). Now, even with that, what you see in the picture is roughly about half the Politics materials, with the rest being in the Adam Smith Library and in the Short Loan section on the 2nd floor of the main library building. The wall at the very end of the picture is the Anthropology section. If you turn left at the Anthropology section, you get the Soviet/Slavonic Studies section, which is, well, HUGE! Take a look at the floor plan of this particular floor of the Library Annexe (.gif file here, in new window) and you’ll see what I mean with HUGE.

Now, why would a University in Glasgow, Scotland have an excessive Soviet Studies section? I’ll try to answer that question tomorrow.

This post is a part of Library Week (June 22nd – 28th)
Don’t forget to visit the Library website, their Flickr account, and their blog.

[Poll #2: What is your connection to Glasgow University?]
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© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

Library Annexe [Library Week]

The above shot is from the Library Annexe, the extra little bit on the northern side of the Library which was built in the 1980s. Why have I shown you the inside and not the outside? Well, it’s not that pretty from the outside, I’ll tell you that much. I will one day post a good picture of the northern facade of the Library, when I get a good shot of it. (I have tried. It has to either be an early morning shot (6am, when the sun is rising), or a carefully framed and timed night shot. This particular shot is from the Level 5 Annexe, where the Life Sciences materials are based. If you look carefully, I made the amateur mistake of being caught in the reflection in the window.

It’s Day 3 of Library Week, the very first Theme Week, and today we’ll be blurting out facts and figures. Statistics, really. (Don’t worry, there’s no math involved here, especially not calculus.) I’m going to describe the University in terms of mainly figures, in (severely abbreviated) bullet-point form:

• The first explicit mention of a library at the University is from November 1475.
• From 1871 situated in the Main Building on Gilmorehill.
• Moved to new purpose-built building in 1968.
• Roughly 20,000 volumes by 1791
• Around 126,000 volumes by 1891
• Currently holds over 2.5 million books and journals.
• Access to over 30,000 electronic journals.
• The Special Collections contains more than 300,000 manuscript items and around 200,000 printed works.
• Around 800 Computers for student use, with wi-fi throughout the building.
• Study space for over 2,500 students.
• 1,429,494 visits were made to the Library in 2006-2007 (Source: PDF)
• Library homepage visits: 1,266,623 visits. (Source: PDF)
• Over 200 daytime, night and weekend members of staff.

This post is a part of Library Week (June 22nd – 28th)
Don’t forget to visit the Library website, their Flickr account, and their blog.

[Poll #2: What is your connection to Glasgow University?]
Click on the photo above for a larger version.
© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com