dgharriss@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dermot G. Harriss) (10/02/89)
As a grad student I appreciated having access to the documents in the MFCF library, such as the USENIX proceedings & system manuals, that are not readily available through library or bookstore, or are impractical to purchase. It's reasonable that the MFCF serve as a central repository and source for such material & make it available to the research community that it supports. However. Some of the material (e.g., K&R) was purchased for the use of MFCF staff - to help us do our jobs more effectively (& to make it unnecessary for us all to purchase individual copies). When these items are on `term loan', as some apparently are now, they are not available for our use. That they can be recalled is beside the point, since when you need to refer to a manual to solve a problem, you want it in a hurry. And more than likely, it's 2:00am Saturday morning that you discover you need somthing that has been borrowed. There's no valid reason for a student to need to borrow our copy of something like K&R for months; if such a book is required for a student's research, and the student doesn't wish to (i.e. can't afford to) purchase a personal copy, then it is appropriate that the student's supervisor acquire a copy for his or her use. I suggest that our (rather unimpressive) reference library be divided into volumes that may be borrowed for a few days (e.g., the USENIX proceedings), and those that may not be removed from the mail room (or wherever) except by staff (e.g., language references and system manuals which aren't on-line & of which we have only a single copy). Should the latter items be kept in the mail room or somewhere more secure? the staff lounge? (too far?) Comments?