Facility

On January 20^th, we will re-open half of the William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library and return to our normal hours of operation. Repairs to the north side of the library should be complete by that date. The south wing and our service desk are still being repaired. A barrier, therefore, will separate those areas from the north wing. We will use our staff office upstairs for circulation, reference, and reserves.

There will be some noise, so students may find it difficult to study in the library until repairs are completed.

Collection

We have returned our books to the shelves in our closed collection and the stacks downstairs. Most of the general collection, call numbers NB-Z, and most of the closed collection resources will be found in north wing. Our current journals will return to the mezzanine level, but painting may prevent our having them back up on the 20^th.

About half our print resources are still housed on the 4^th floor of the M.D. Anderson Library. For the most part, those books are from our general collection with call numbers A-NA.

We plan to set up a paging system, so that books and bound journals may be retrieved from the Anderson Library by our student workers.

Most of our oversized books are still in storage, but we’re hoping to have those back this week.

The rare book collection will remain unavailable until later in the semester. The Franzheim Rare Books Room is still undergoing reconstruction.

The online catalog has been updated, but will not direct patrons to the exact location of a book. With more than 110,000, there’s no way we can inventory the 4^th floor to determine which books went to which location while being evacuated post-Ike.

Equipment

All of our staff and public computers downstairs were under water after the hurricane. At the moment, we’ve no computers for patrons to use and no place for them. We do have six laptops we may loan to students, but they will not be able to print.

Reserves

All course reserves will be housed in the staff office on the mezzanine level.

Student Art Exhibit

We are helping to mount an exhibit of student art work at the M.D. Anderson Library this semester, as we did last year. If you are interested in entering your work, please follow the instructions here: http://info.lib.uh.edu/links/images/25/callforartists2.jpg

Communication

We are still having trouble establishing phone service. I have high hopes that phone access will return to normal by next week. For now it is best to visit the library in person or email archlib@mail.uh.edu.

And finally…

Thanks to everyone for your patience and flexibility during this challenging semester. You were the best group of students we could ever hope to serve.