Making good use of the extended opening hours library

Around midnight on Saturday, October 12, about 77 people were still in the University library. Good use is being made of the library’s extended opening hours according to an interim evaluation. And the costs aren’t too bad.

“We’re positive about it. The figures clearly show that students are making use of it”, says Milou Tholen of student group SAM. Last year, her group suggested that the library stay open for longer in the evenings and at the weekends. A study among students showed that there was a demand for it. A pilot was launched.  During the week, the library is open for an extra hour, until 24:00 hours and in the weekends the extra opening hours are between 18.00 and 24.00 hours.

Exam periods
An interim evaluation of the first four months shows that an average of 93 students use the library during the extra weekday opening hours and 113 in the weekend. Most students visit in the exam periods. Around the holidays it’s quieter. On Sunday evening, the 22nd of December there were just two students in the library at twelve ‘o clock while at the same time on Sunday evening, the 12th of November, there were 86 students.

Satisfied
Ine Appels of LIS (Library and IT Services) is satisfied with the number of visitors. “It’s more or less what we had expected.” Although it hasn’t been looked into, it would seem that mainly foreign students use the library late at night.

Costs
The extra costs for among others more LIS staff, security and cleaners was budgeted at 3.624 a week, but it has turned out to be less. The actual costs are 2.814 Euros. The costs for cleaning, in particular, had been overestimated.

Quiet working environment
All in all, there is enough reason to continue the pilot and add the costs for the extended opening hours to the budget for 2015. “Many students obviously enjoy having a quiet working environment where they can study, without being bothered by roommates. The library offers them excellent facilities, programs they don’t have at home and literature within reach. For many students, it’s the perfect place to work together”, says Tholen.  “Besides, it’s common for other international University libraries to stay open until late. In China, some of them are open 24 hours a day. The University of Amsterdam also has long opening hours.”

The interim evaluation will be discussed in the U-council on February 14th.

_Advertentie.