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> I have noticed a couple of Australian stores undergo this renovation.
> In Sydney(AUS), Parramatta, Chatswood and Moore Park have gone from library
> mode to carousel format. The LEGO section was moved from up against a back
> wall to a much more visible sector of the central core of the store.
> A TRU I saw in Melbourne was already in this format.
I dunno how much time you spend in modern libraries, but from the sound of it,
I think TRUs are just catching up with the modern library. The modern library
consists of lots of curvy-shaped tables with PCs everywhere with a few
carousels of books dotted here and there, some bean bags, and a big rug for
story-telling time. That's the way it is at most community libraries.
[start ranting]
Here at the university (with all the heavy-duty thinking that supposedly goes
on), we have several large multi-storey libraries, but even so, you have to
travel to the upper reaches of the ionosphere to actually encounter the
traditional book stacks. Most books are being carted off to warehouses where
they can be retrieved at enormous inconvenience should some luddite library
user actually want one. The modern library user apparently prefers to use the
WWW or the CD-ROM databases in preference to books. We have groups of comfy
chairs, and some of them are curvy too, because our libraries must be hip and
funky if we expect undergraduates to visit them. It's clearly successful as
our libraries are awash with undergraduates surfing the WWW. I never realised
how many of them needed to study movies, motorcycles etc as part of their
degree, but I guess our degrees are probably more funky these days too
(Bachelor of Commerce with double major in Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance). As
far as I know, we have yet to install any story-telling rugs, but with the
constant dumbing-down of undergraduate degrees, I guess it's just a matter of
time. "Now, today, children, we are going to read a story about Cissy the C
Programmer and how she found Peter Program's memory leak."
Indeed, if you inspect our library WWW site http://www.library.uq.edu.au/ you
will see that we don't call it a library anymore; we call it a "cybrary"
instead and if you look in the FAQ, you will see "book" mentioned only once
but lots of mentions of computers, email, and Internet access.
[end ranting]
Personally, I like having Lego in high shelves, as small children can only
reach the lower levels thus ensuring that some stock survives the slobber
factor. And besides, speaking as one of the elderly of LUGnet, the knees are
the first joint to go, and so reaching those bottom shelves is more of a
challenge :-) Ironically, most toy stores (like TRU here) that use high
shelves tend to put the Duplo and Primo at the top and the UCS and technics
sets at the bottom. This strikes me as being dumb as toast. Far better, I
would have thought to put the little-kid Lego at the bottom and the robotics
etc at the top, reflecting the height of the intended user. If all the toy
stores go kiddy-low, I can see myself having to hail the sales assistant to
ask "Young man, can you get that set on the *bottom* shelf for me please?". I
guess I will just have to shop on-line more as I get older :-)
Actually one thing that TRU gets right is their trolleys, they are some of the
biggest and can hold a lot more Lego than the stores with smaller trolleys or
none at all. Given that any retail study finds that people's purchases are
limited by their ability to carry them, I am often perplexed by the toy stores
that offer me a carry basket which won't fit anything bigger than an impulse
set. How do they expect us to buy a Silver Champion with a mere basket?
Kerry
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Libraries (was Re: Bad news for TRU)
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| Gosh. From the rant below, you must be almost as old as me. You didn't mention one other feature of the "cybrary" model -- that there are seldom enough computers or terminals to accomodate the same number of researchers as the old books. When the (...) (22 years ago, 29-Jan-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
| | | Re: Bad news for TRU
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| (...) As a heavy user, the modern library is where it is at. I can now usually download obscure journal papers in seconds rather than waiting a couple of weeks for hard copies to appear (usually it would be a "dud", or I had moved on since then.) I (...) (22 years ago, 29-Jan-02, to lugnet.market.shopping, lugnet.loc.au)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Bad news for TRU
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| (...) I have noticed a couple of Australian stores undergo this renovation. In Sydney(AUS), Parramatta, Chatswood and Moore Park have gone from library mode to carousel format. The LEGO section was moved from up against a back wall to a much more (...) (22 years ago, 29-Jan-02, to lugnet.market.shopping, lugnet.loc.au)
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