Self check machine has been behaving badly despite Donna’s best attentions. Customer comment ‘absolutely terrible’. 3M have been asked to send a technician to re-calibrate it ‘sometime next week’. The trial is postponed until after the technician’s visit.

The Loft will be closed this weekend for maintenance work from 5pm Friday 10th August to 6am Monday 13th August.

If borrowers require books from PQ7797 to PR1941 during the painting trial, please direct them to the Lending desk. We have set up some temporary printed request cards to get the borrowers details and the item details.
The painters advise us that library staff can make retrievals from this area after 5 pm every day. The Extended Hours team will do this for us, so requests will be placed on the Hold shelf for collection next day.

Special topics in calamity physics

I enjoyed this so much I went back to the beginning and started it all over again …

Read the review atNy times

The Omnivores dilemma

Read the review of this one at

NYtimes review. You will never feel the same way about food again……….

This is the section to the right of the one where the ceiling has already been painted. It is in the classification area PQ 7797 to PR 1941, and includes ceiling, metal doors to the balcony, wood panelling, walls, and a substantial amount of graffiti on the concrete.
A system for retrieving items from this area will be put into place – details soon.

Students doing PHIL 139 (Ethics, Politics & Justice) may ask for assistance with a library exercise, which as for COMS 101 has been made compulsory. It is similarly designed to familiarise them with finding library resources beyond the course reading list. It shouldn’t be a problem helping anyone with it, but I don’t mind being called on if my help is needed…

Within the next two weeks some COMS 101 students may ask for help with a compulsory library exercise. There are 240 enrolled. The exercise was prepared by me, and I tried to make it clear enough for them to follow unaided, but some will probably need help anyway. It is designed to familiarise them with finding library resources beyond the course reading list, using the COMS portal, the catalogue, and on the level 4 and reference collection shelves. They have to find and cite a chapter in an edited book and a journal article, following the Harvard author-date style as linked on the COMS portal under Citation Guides.

Rels 104 students may ask for lecture tapes on Restricted Loan. Their lecturer has been reminded that the library no longer provides this service and that they need to be put on Blackboard. Currently there is no Blackboard course for Rels 104.

Today I have been asked where the “Erskine Building” is. According to Security it is the Maths & Computer Science building.

The password for journal surf, an index to the NZ School journal, is now in the password box at the Help Desk.
Username: ucel
Password: jsurf