WUST News (By Chen Zichuan) March 8th marks the reopening of the Qingshan Campus Library. Ni Hongwei, the president of WUST, and vice president Liu Jing, came in person to congratulate all staff of the library for their efforts contributed to the new look.
On behalf of the university, Ni Hongwei extended his gratitude to all the people from different units having a part in engineering and construction. He said, being supported by financial assistance from the national and provincial governments, the Qingshan Campus Library started reconstruction as scheduled. Despite difficulties from design to construction and later services, various functional units of WUST joined efforts and finished construction to a high standard in less than two years. The new library was indeed a hard-won piece of work.
Ni Hongwei pointed that Qingshan Campus Library was originally built in 1990 to provide a good learning environment for generations of WUST students. As the time went by, problems such as aging equipment and narrow space appeared. The University therefore decided to close the library for rebuilding. Although this made it difficult for teachers and students to borrow books or study by themselves in the short term, the rebuilding was worthwhile from the current perspective. What's old is new again. With no change in land coverage, the updated design concept and service awareness created additional space for teachers and students, serving as a good foundation for the university to further improve the quality of education.
Ni Hongwei required relevant functional units including the Library, the Logistics Group, the Logistics Management Office, and the Security Office to be committed to educating students with the help of the environment, management and services, and to continue to improve service awareness and management, striving for higher satisfaction.
Liu Jing said that the reopening of the Qingshan Campus Library was a great event for the university this year. She hoped that all the library staff would take the opportunity to further study, enhance their abilities, and serve the whole university with hearts. She believed that the library would soon become another good place for the students to study, discuss, carry out activities, and improve innovation and practices.
Before the meeting, Ni Hongwei together with others visited and viewed all floors and functional areas of the library, and personally experienced various new equipment and new functions.
It is reported that the reconstruction was planned at the end of 2018. By reference to the engineering of a number of libraries of other universities and public libraries, the infrastructure office applied the concept of a third-generation library and defined the Qingshan Campus Library as a new-generation self-service, networked and digitized library.
To this end, with the basic built-up area unchanged, relevant units have expanded the library's service space available to the teachers and students by adjusting the structural layout, reducing office space, and knocking through the reading section and the book section and open space, to the extent to maximize the use of resources in limited space. With seats increased from 1490 to nearly 2000 now, the library is basically enough to meet the requirement of the teachers and students at the Qingshan campus.
Meanwhile, floor 1 is operated on open service management. The entrance hall is expanded to include new equipment including self-service book borrowing & returning machine, sorting machine, and waterfall wall. Floors 1&2 are provided with different functional partitions including mezzanine reading space, a coffee bar, a lounge, a multi-functional roadshow hall, an audio-visual room, and maker space, so as to meet the varying needs of students.
A poor environment and old equipment of old library used to be criticized by the students. For the convenience of studies, after this reconstruction, the library is further provided with dual-purpose ACs; the originally leaking lavatories have been replaced with new equipment; a self-service borrowing & returning machine is added outside the library for 24 hours; all floors are equipped with a boiling water room and tables and chairs for gatherings; an extra row of seats is by the windows of each floor, under which there is a socket for the students to study with electronic equipment...
Heads and staff of relevant departments including the Library, the Infrastructure Management Office, the Logistics Management Office, the Security Office, and the Logistics Group attended the discussion.