25
support. The Faculties were not, apparently, used as a forum for the wider appraisal of curricula beyond the sponsoring departments, except in the cirucmstances where it was intended that a particular syllabus would be offered to students from more than one department; in any case it semed that the meetings had been too infrequent for the Faculty Boards to become deeply involved in overall appraisal of the courses offered. Taking a different line in seeking information about the discharge of responsibilities by the Faculty Boards, CNAA made reference to the imbalance which it had detected in the staff in some departments which might be partly corrected by staff development. It became clear that the Faculty Boards did not currently concern themselves with such matters, nor did they see themselves as charged with enhancing teaching methods through, for example, the fostering of learning resources; likewise, team teaching and similar matters had never been of more than marginal concern to the Faculty Boards. The representatives of the Faculties whom CNAA members met were by no means apathetic members of staff, but they had become dulled in enhancing their role at Faculty level by lack of expectation from the top, this seeming to stem from a fear that greater involvement of Faculty Boards in decision making would lead to a variety of resource pressures which might not then be contained.
7.
7.1
7.2
LIBRARY
of
The adequacy of the library for the teaching of the various subjects under consideration is covered by the relevant subject reports and the discussions in this "institutional" part of the visit were concerned with staffing and with library policy. CNAA felt that support to students would be strengthened if the library staffing was arranged to provide librarians aligned to main subject areas. At present, the library staff of 14, whom 5 were professionally qualified, was not sufficiently large for such a policy, and these qualified librarians were allocated to acquisition, cataloguing etc. While the library seemed to CNAA members to be crowded even in the vacation, it was leamed that 500 library seats and 400 ancillary seats were available for a student population of 3,000; the pattern of the library use by students was very different from that in the United Kingdom, the library being used extensively as a quiet area for study in the light of the poor home environment of nearly all students.
The new library, planned to have 14,000 ft2 in Stage 1, would raise the library seating accommodation to 1,000. CNAA appreciated that the library opening hours were as generous as could be managed within current resources, but the crowded home conditions for most Hong Kong