I generally agree that hours have unnecessary complexities, I would also
say that some of that is because libraries (at least, large, research
academic libraries) are fairly complex organisms with *lots* of disparate
services.

I think it's more analogous to a shopping mall: the stores generally follow
the same pattern, but the movie theater has different hours, as does the
food court (and then the Chick-Fil-A diverges from that).  Then there are
office hours and the Sears tire department is different from other
schedules or when Lens Crafters' optometrist is open, etc.

Not to mention holiday hours (and Santa times, etc.).

So this is hardly unique to libraries, or even an edge case, but it is
unusual that we feel the need to consolidate it into a single interface.

But, yes, it would help if we didn't have a million inconsistencies in
similar service areas (again, the stores in the mall are all supposed to
keep the same hours) to make it easier to deal with the outliers.

-Ross.
On Nov 28, 2013 5:54 AM, "BWS Johnson" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Salvete!
>
>       I second the policy suggestions about hours that were stated
> earlier. The simpler hours are kept, the better.
>
>       I found myself in the position of having a Library with crazy hours
> due to budgetary and scheduling constraints. My low tech solution to that
> was to add the hours right on the back of the cards so folks would have
> that data handy. :D
>
> Cheers,
> Brooke
>