A quick note to bring everyone up to speed on what's going on in the Natural Sciences Library (the unit which currently houses the collections for Atmospheric Sciences, Biology, Botany, Earth and Space Sciences, Environment, Forest Resources, General Science, History of Science, Psychology, Speech and Hearing, and Zoology) .
As all of you, hopefully, have been made aware, the Natural Sciences Library (NSL) is not going to exist as a separate unit after Summer Quarter. Our collections will be consolidated into the Suzzallo-Allen Libraries main collection. The space currently occupied by the Natural Sciences Library will become a Research Commons including a Science Information Desk. (Incidentally, we are seeking feedback on how this space will be configured and what services will be offered, so if you have thoughts on this, please contact your friendly library liaison.)
The subject librarians in Natural Sciences will maintain their liaison responsibilities so your librarian will still be your librarian, with one exception. Our librarian for Environmental Sciences, Lori Tschirhart, will be leaving us this summer to take advantage of a wonderful opportunity at the University of Michigan. We don't know yet who will be taking up her subject area responsibilities, nor do we know yet where our offices will be located. We will let you know when we do. We do know that we will not be staffing the Natural Sciences Library past August 21st.
Obviously, as these transitions take place, there are services that will change and in many cases, no longer be offered. Here's what we know right now:
- The Natural Sciences Reserves Collection no longer exists. All reserve materials are now handled by Odegaard Undergraduate Library Reserves.
- The NSL New Acquisitions Shelf (new books and periodicals) is no longer being maintained. All new materials are going straight onto the shelves in the collection.
- The NSL Periodical Display location on the first floor also no longer exists and all new materials previously shelved there are going straight into the regular collection, as well. When the NSL collection gets consolidated into the Suzzallo-Allen collection, all books and periodicals in the main collection will be shelved in one long call number run throughout the building.
- Over the summer, the materials kept in the Natural Sciences Storage location will be moved to off-site storage and we will no longer be able to do "on demand" storage retrieval. We don't yet have a timeline of when this will happen but we will let you know when we get some idea. Retrieval policies will be the same as they are for Suzzallo-Allen storage locations.
- The consolidation of the NSL collection with the Suzzallo-Allen collection has already begun and will continue through the summer. We will try to keep you updated as best we can. We've been told that NSL materials housed on the Ground Floor that begin with call numbers A-D will be moved any day now and certainly by next week.
We realize you may have a lot of questions that aren't answered here. We do ask for your patience as there are several questions to which we may not yet have answers, however, you should feel free to ask your library liaison any questions you may have and we will do our best to try to answer them. And again, we will do our best to keep you updated as we learn more.
