Question:
lockers on the premises
Details:
It would be really great if the library had lockers on the premises that students could use for the day, week, semester, or academic year. My undergraduate campus library had this and it made accessing my textbooks possible!
Answer:
Thank you for the feedback—we try our best to take student input seriously and in a problem-solving manner. This is a suggestion that comes up occasionally from Anschutz students.
It gets a little more complex than we may think to provide lockers in a library like ours in an efficient manner. Over the years I’ve spoken to various libraries which provide lockers and there are mixed opinions and various pro/con experiences. There are factors of cost, functionality, policy, and security/risk issues along with noise issues. The library would have to provide some staff capacity around their maintenance and coordination even if the lockers were mostly self-serve. One of the challenging factors is location and where to put lockers in the library, whether to have them in multiple locations or a single spot, etc. The opening last fall in 2017 of the lounge outside the library's front doors is one likely candidate although not ideal in some ways. There may be a few spots in the library (presumably on first floor because 1st floor is already noisy) that we can consider.
Whether the lockers are accessible to the general public is another question; or would they be only for the academic community and if so how is that managed? When the second floor study zone went through concept design, lockers were considered but being that second floor in HSL has been embraced as the quiet floor by the student academic community that idea faded. There are some real pros and cons for library operations in having lockers for users. We had them at the old downtown campus library and there were some problems and issues, but they did serve a good purpose to some students at times.
We will look into this again, and my sense is to start with any guidelines and rules the University and campus may have in regards to providing lockers whether from a Facilities point of view or security point of view.
Thank you for your comment.
Douglas Stehle, Head of Access Services and Bldg. Administrator. douglas.stehle@ucdenver.edu