Library West
Library West, UF's humanities library, reopened the other day after 2.5 years of renovations. John and I went over today to pick up a few books and I have to say, whoever had the job of deciding where the books would go has obviously never worked in a library, looked at a library, or used a library. It was terrible! The call numbers are organized in the most chaotic, bass-ackwards way possible. Case in point: the H's. Some of the H's are on the far right side of the basement, and some are on the far left. It is easier to get from HA to L than it is to get from HA to HB. Oh, and the moveable stacks aren't organized in call number order from left to right, the way our brains have been programmed to work. They're organized from right to left. So if you wanted to get from DA to to DT, you would have to proceed to your left, in a completely counter-intuitive way. What should have taken just ten minutes or so to find took at least half an hour, while John and I wandered around this new beautiful building (complete with bean bags, for shit's sake!). They've got chairs with cupholders built into them, but they can't be bothered to organize the library in a way that makes it easy to-- you know-- find books.
Oh, and the HQ's are completely inaccessible until Spring while they-- wait for it-- build the Starbucks that's going in on the ground floor. So if you want 30 books in the HQ's (as I do), you have to toddle home and fill out an online request form... thirty times.