Library response: When I responded to a very similar comment on the 6th of February, I said the following: "An entrance to the Health Sciences Library on the first floor of the building is not a possibility both for security reasons and for practical reasons. Entrances are also exits and they have to be staffed so as to make it possible for library users to take material out of the library when they leave. We can afford to staff only one entrance/exit to the Health Sciences Library, and that is on the upper floor of the library, where it has been since the library opened about 40 years ago. Switching the main entrance to the lower floor would make little sense to most of the people in the Health Sciences Centre (who are our primary user group) since the second floor is the main floor in this building and they would then have to descend one floor further to enter the library."I am sorry you find the staircases a problem; do you know that we have an elevator inside the library that you can use to travel between the two floors? The long and the short of it is that we can have only one entrance/exit in the Health Sciences Library, and the current entrance on the second floor is designed to be convenient for the people who work in the Health Sciences Centre since the second floor is the main floor of the building. (Mar 31/08)
Answered by: Tom Flemming (Head of Public Services, McMaster University Health Sciences Library)

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