Worth a Return Visit

This is the first in a series of articles highlighting places you might have seen (and some you might have not seen) during the typical student-led college tour, that are all worthy of a second visit.

The Library.

A Shangra-Li for all things written, recorded, or documented, the typical prospective student should not discount the quality of a particular school’s library when deciding upon where to spend the next four years. Most tour guides will take their groups through the library’s entrance, guide them through one of the study lounge’s and then lead the group of out the library to ensure that there is time for the remaining sights on tour.

What most prospective students do not realize is that they will be spending many weekday, and weekend evenings, and early morning hours in the library working through chemistry problem sets, writing final papers for the Philosophy 101, or simply rehearsing group presentations. So as a prospective student, it makes sense to head back and explore one of the places you will probably spend more time in relatively to your own room. When evaluating libraries (or multiple libraries, as there are colleges who feature more than one library on campus grounds) here are few points to consider:

• Library Hours: During my first two years at Oxy, the library was only open until midnight Sunday through Thursday, and until 10 PM on Friday and Saturday. For the few times that I planned on working through the night to complete a paper, it was an inconvenience to pack up my stuff, and find another place besides my dorm to continue the night’s work. Fortunately, at the beginning of my Junior year, Occidental College instituted 24 hour library service Sunday through Thursday. At many larger universities, it is standard for the library to be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

• Study Space: Most libraries offer a wide range of spaces to complete your work. From long tables shared with other studious peers, to individual desks located in the quiet, isolated, corners where there is no cell phone reception or WIFI, you are bound to find a location that best resembles your current studying set-up.

• Size: Not all libraries are the same—ex: The University of California at Berkeley’s main library (which happens to be one of several libraries on campus), with its museum-esque reading room, and Occidental College’s one and only Mary Norton Clapp library. It should be intuitively obvious that larger schools would offer students multiple libraries, or as Berkeley calls them, Affiliate Libraries, where as smaller schools might provide students with one, main library, with a few major-based libraries  about the size of a standard class room, housing related journals and magazines.

What makes your college’s library stand out from the rest? As always, feel free to share your two cents below.