Newsfeed
Printer-Friendly ModeSVSU library needs longer hours for sake of equality
February 18, 2008 —
To say I'm a night owl would be an understatement. In fact, right now it is about 12:15 a.m. and I am just starting this article I should have written yesterday, or the day before that. I just function better when I do stuff late at night and sleep in the next day. Even studying is easiest for me in the early hours of the morning. Some of that may be due to the procrastination but the other part is that it is just part of my natural clock. I think many college students feel the same way, but our campus is not night owl-friendly.
More specifically our library is not night owl-friendly.
It would do many students a favor if the library would extend its hours. A drastic change would be nice but even a small one would do. Studying in the library on the weekends is almost impossible with the hours on Friday and Saturday being only until 4:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. and the weekdays aren't much better with an 11 p.m. shut down Monday through Thursday.
While some may say a solution is to just study earlier in the day, for some students this may not be an option. Many classes go until 9 or 10 p.m. which leaves little room for studying or homework time after class is out. In addition, there are students who work during the day on days they don't have classes and they should be able to come and use the library after work.
And then there are those who would come up with the genius idea of simply taking your studying elsewhere. For those students who have incredibly loud roommates or simply find it hard to concentrate studying in the library is more of a necessity than a simple wish. Very few other places on campus, if any, provide the quiet atmosphere the library does.
Besides this, the resources at the library can be hard to find elsewhere. Many professors require scholarly sources for projects and papers and while online databases can be a great resource, many times appropriate sources are hard to come by. Many journal articles online must be paid for in order to view and some information is best obtained from books.
It is nice that the library remains open for extended hours around exams but studying during the term is almost as important - if not more important - than studying for finals. In many classes final exams are worth the same amount of points as previous ones and the majority of points are decided through exams and papers due way before the final. Students should have the same amount of time and resources to complete these assignments as the ones due during finals week.
Extending library hours would not only be convenient and helpful for individual students but would provide benefits for the University as a whole.
The first of these benefits would be to encourage a sense of community that the University tries so hard to uphold. Right now the library hours best suit those students who live on campus and have class earlier in the day.
When the library closes so early those students who have later classes or who work during the day and study only at night do not have the same opportunities. In essence, the library provides more opportunities to traditional students than non-traditional students. From my experiences at SVSU it has seemed many efforts were taken to help non-traditional students and library hours should reflect this.
Another benefit from extending hours would be for SVSU to continue to compete with the bigger universities in the state. It is true that students would probably not pick a school based strictly on library hours. However, by having our library open Monday through Thursday until 2 a.m. like U of M's graduate library or 24 hours like MSU's main library it would, in a small but still important way, give SVSU students an opportunity similar to those who attend a larger university.
I know I for one would be a much happier night owl if I could make the library my permanent homework perch.