LSE Library

The LSE library is a brilliant piece of architecture, designed as it was by Norman Foster (of Reichstag and Hong Kong airport fame); it houses over four million items, 95% are accessible on shelves which - placed end to end - would stretch 55km...1,600 study places are on offer plus 490 networked PCs.

There are only two problems with this utopia of learning....1) nothing works, 2) its full of tossers !

Taking each in turn...a typical visit to the library will start with the security barriers - if you haven't got your card on one of LSE's frequent 'unofficial bank holidays' forget it...if you have remembered your ID card a mere half a dozen swipes and you're in. You will then want to print off an article to read - you trot off happily to the computers. After extensive searching (often on several floors), you find one that works and that isn't occupied. You find the article eventually and send it to print. This is where the fun starts...

You then wander off in the direction of the printers...Official LSE guidelines dictate that 75% of printers must be out of order at any one time. Assuming you find one working, you then go to top up your account - simple ! Putting your details into the machine you nonchalantly put several pound coins into the machine - what happens then. Nothing ! You then go upstairs to the copyshop to put the credit on - naturally this is closed !

Oh well, you think, I'll get a book instead. Find the book you want in the course collection - are you having a giraffe ! Even if you can its more than likely to end up costing you thanks to LSE's innovative fines system working much like a nightmare game of monopoly with your bratty Richard Branson wannabe cousin...

Assuming you find something to read and sit down, be wary of making the slightest noise...the upper floors of the library are home to a curious tribe of primates who live there 23 hours a day, drink nothing except Starbucks coffee and tend to become accountants. At the slightest noise they will give you a look that will actually make you physically sick. At the other end of the scale is the 'GC', a gang of rich largely (but not exclusively) American students whose specialty habit is to talk very loudly on their mobile phones about their recent weekend in Florence or 'road trip' to Cornwall (another thing why does everyone feel the need to visit Cornwall ?).

At this point you think - bugger this for a game of soldiers, I'm going down the pub...