0003230
G.F. 323
CONFIDENTIAL
Ref : UGC/GEN/30/67 V
UNIVERSITY GRANTS COMMITTEE OF HONG KONG
Hong Kong Polytechnic Library Requirements (Note by Secretary UGC of Hong Kong)
All teaching establishments need to keep some books
on the premises and to have facilities which give comparatively easy access to books for their students. The need for library facilities increases sharply at the post-secondary stage and particularly so for subjects which change rapidly either because they are new and still undergoing development (for example, a great deal of modern technology) or because they naturally change from year to year (for example, Law).
2.
A 1965 survey in the UK quoted in the Parry Report (UGC Report of the Committee on Libraries) seems to show that students in the applied sciences and technology buy on average about 7 books per year on a three-year course. They need however at least to consult, and in some cases to study more extensively, a much larger number of books. At Warwick University, for example, which sets out to be an industrially oriented University, students in "pure" sciences need seven or eight standard textbooks in their first year, about 25 in their second and rapid access for consultation to as many as 800 in their third year.
3.
The problem is exacerbated when special tasks are set as projects for final year students. The projects themselves may vary greatly and call for access to a very wide range of specialist books, but it is in addition difficult to avoid some overlapping for certain items. For example, a set of projects on industrial production having nothing in common in their strictly industrial technology may nevertheless require consultation of much the same group of textbooks on works and cost accounting. A requirement which can normally be met by one or two copies of a standard work can in this way suddenly only be satisfied by perhaps twenty copies.
4.
In Britain these additional requirements can often be met, at least partially, by libraries other than those in the teaching institution. In Hong Kong there are almost no local library facilities and no easily accessible libraries such as the London Library, the National Central Library, the network of Local Authority Libraries, or the National Lending Library for Science and Technology. This last is in fact used occasionally from Hong Kong, but entails a delay of seven to ten days depending on the post.
CONFIDENTIAL
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