First, the university e-mail system has been messed with to the point where it’s been rendered completely useless. And now the library system is down for “maintenance” until Monday.
What is this, a university for people who don’t work on weekends and in summers?
Well if the customers aren’t around, why should anyone else care??
THIS IS SARCASM.
And we are having very similar problems. Apparently summer is a good time of year to demolish and refit research laboratories even though it is the only time of year when academics can work solidly in them during normal working hours, or work alongside their graduate students for more than a snatched hour here or there…
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Oh, yes. We are also seeing a huge construction project that doesn’t allow one approach the campus without driving around for 40 minutes.
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“We are also seeing a huge construction project”
How does this jibe with being shut down (or is it for new bureaucrats and it’s just the teaching and students that are being phased out?) That honestly would not surprise me.
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GOOD question. I’m not sure you would like the answer, though. 🙂 Ideas have been floated about renting out the facilities eventually. Who’d come all the way here to the middle of nothing, honestly, is not being addressed. So yes, I’m guessing it’s just the bureaucrats.
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I understand why the library is doing that. It’s nearly impossible to secure a longer maintenance window for a website when there is a large body of students who need 24/7 access to that website. If anything, I’d say it’s a positive sign that they’re doing this over the weekend and not during the week–it shows they have at least some regard for the people using the system for summer work.
I never understood why some universities close entirely for the summer. I’ve gotten lucky in requesting ILL materials over the summer in the past, but I’ve heard horror stories of people not being able to get their requested materials for weeks because no one’s on the other end to fill requests.
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That would be really horrible. Are there universities that offer no summer classes? I’ve been making the ILL work extra hard this summer but they are doing great so far.
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Yup, we offer no summer classes to students on regular programmes, just a few specialist nursing type classes and ‘academic English and culture’ classes for new international students with poor test scores who are willing/able to pay fees for an extra semester of catching up before they start, which are run mostly by the language department. So it’s quite quiet… for a few weeks… until Clearing…
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So are there likely to be many people at Oxford in the second week of July when I’m there, you think?
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At Oxford the terms are different. Trinity Tern(this term) ends on the 20th June. So in terms of undergraduate attendance you should be fine. DPhil syudents will still be around though.
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At Oxford the terms are different, only 8 weeks. Trinity Term(this term) ends on the 20th June. So in terms of undergraduate attendance you should be fine. DPhil students will still be around though.
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Thank you, that’s great to know. I could only get a dorm room with a shared bathroom, and I wasn’t into sharing it all that intensely.
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I think it’s less that they don’t have summer classes and more that they put a pause on incoming ILL requests. Maybe whoever handles it usually has off? Which is still really weird. I just know it happens. 
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