It is not only the quality of service that matters to the academic and public library users, but the availability of library premises and their safety as well. By following the pattern from abroad, some Slovenian academic libraries have already prolonged their working hours to stay open until evening and night hours. Public libraries, on the other hand, do not employ such a tradition. The idea of public and general availability also implies a possibility of misuse and conflicts. In this master thesis, I have observed the way "a night" availability of academic library premises proceeds in practice. Besides academic libraries, a survey embraced public libraries as well. I have studied how users judged the availability of their public library premises and whether they felt safe in those library premises. The results demonstrated that the public library users were satisfied with the current working hours, although it is important to underline that more than a half of surveyed users expressed that they would like if libraries prolonged their working hours. Observations at the Central Technical Library at the University Ljubljana % CTK during evening hours showed that the library premises were every evening visited almost to their full capacity and that greater complications in terms of staff%s or users% safety were not recorded. It proved that the public library users found the premises of their library safe. Slightly different answers came from library employees, who on daily basis find themselves in the middle of various conflict situations triggered by problematic users who disrupt the employees% and other users% safety. It also proved that they are poorly prepared for addressing problematic users and that they react following their own feelings when those conflict situations arise. Therefore, there are new challenges for academic and public libraries: to produce financial means to arrange training in safety for librarians and to prolong working hours in both types of libraries.
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