Eastern Electronic Library for Health and Social Care: the blog

Temporary reduction in opening hours at Basildon

Due to staff shortages at Basildon Healthcare Library, there will be a temporary reduction in the staffed opening hours during February. The Library will still remain open for reference purposes until 21:45 Monday to Friday.

Monday 08:30 - 18:30
Tuesday 08:30 - 17:00
Wednesday 08:30 - 17:00
Thursday 08:30 - 18:30
Friday 08:30 - 18:30
Saturday CLOSED

Printing at Colchester

Here at Colchester we've been running a two tier system of charges. All copying has to be paid for. Some printing (search results or papers) is free, the rest (CVs, job applications, essays) incurs charges. We've decided to change that.

The current system causes some unfairness - if the journal is in the library it costs to copy it - if it's online its free to print. Some unfairness will continue - there is no mechanism to charge printing to departments as there is with copying. We hope eventually to have a combined copier/printer with one charging system to iron these anomalies out.

The other reason for charging for printing is to encourage you to use the copier which is cheaper to run. And the final reason is that, sadly, some people have been attempting to buck the system and to find ways of avoiding paying what they owe.

So as of Monday 5th February all black and white printing and all copying will be charged at 5p per side. It's not perfect, but hopefully it's a little fairer than the current system.

Change of hours at Colchester

- Sadly, due to a permanent change in the number of staff in the library team, we will no longer be offering a service on Monday evenings.

The new opening hours are as follows:

• Monday 09.00 - 17.00
• Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 09.00 - 19.00
• Friday 09.00 - 16.30

Closure at Colchester

As winter is here and the North wind blows...the windows are being replaced in the library at Colchester. Unfortunately as well as exposure to the weather this also entails boxing up most of the book stock so that the bookcases can be moved away from the windows.

We have therefore decided to close the library while the work is on. The library will close at 7pm on Thursday 25th January and reopen at 9am Monday 5th February.

Apologies for the inevitable inconvenience this will cause.