10 ms·

College Students Just Want Normal Libraries

207 points by minnca 7y ago

blackflame7000 7y ago
The biggest problem I always had with the library at my alma matter (ucla), was that thousands of square feet dedicated to books people rarely ever touched while simultaneously failing to have even proportional amount of space dedicated to desks. Furthermore, any furniture frequently doubled as people's bed away from home.
- korethr 7y ago
  > Furthermore, any furniture frequently doubled as people's bed away from home. Sounds to me like the library was failing to enforce some reasonable rules on the purpose of the furniture. I get it, it's easier to catch a quick nap in a library than other places because they are generally quieter spaces. But if a library's raison d'etre is to be a repository of reference material and a place of quitet study, then rules prioritizing use of the furniture for study over sleeping strikes me as quite fair.
  - wtallis 7y ago
    Enforcement wouldn't solve any problems here, it would just antagonize the students. The underlying problem that needs to be addressed is insufficient space to work or nap between classes.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - korethr 7y ago
      It might antagonize the students who are looking for a place to nap, but is that all of the students? I think other students might be happy to have their library available to them as a library again.
      - blackflame7000 7y ago
        I propose a hybrid solution: We add more space for study and naps, while simultaneously antagonizing the students.
- erwfdserwfds 7y ago
  The purpose of a library is not to have books people are sure to read, but to have references people might need. A (good) library is necessarily a long-tail institution. The rarely touched book is a treasure. The study space a concession to the modern student body that lacks any meaningful silent space. The student sleeping in said study area is a gross oversight by the librarian to ensure the sacrosanct space isn't violated (and, unfortunately for some of those sleeping at the library, another housing failure in S. California :S)
  - tomkinstinch 7y ago
    Indeed; a good library is a long-tail institution. The Harvard Library system has a large collection of books at the various on-campus libraries, but an immense catalog of infrequently accessed books at a "depository" warehouse off-site. Scholars can request items from the Depository and receive them within a day. This split-storage model may a sensible solution for other universities going forward: prime and expensive library buildings on-campus can be reserved for quiet study areas and a few commonly-used books, with the main collection of books retrievable from a nearby location where land is less expensive. It also has the advantage of allowing books to be stored in the ideal climate for their preservation. Fun fact about the Harvard Depository: books are organized not by topic, publication date, or anything resembling the Dewey decimal system, but rather by a metric that makes sense for high-density: physical size. Books are stored in barcoded boxes by height. Here is an artsy documentary, "Cold Storage," about the Depository: https://vimeo.com/116603551 https://vimeo.com/116603551 or in interactive form: http://librarybeyondthebook.org/cold_storage/ http://librarybeyondthebook.org/cold_storage/
    - asdff 7y ago
      Pretty much every library has an off campus facility for books. USC has a warehouse on grand avenue. Not sure where UCLA's book repository is, but it is definitely somewhere. However, I wouldn't want the stacks in the main library (doheny) at usc converted to study space. I think there are better rooms to gut for study space, namely the random faculty offices they've shoved in every library. You can build an office across the street from campus if you need the space. The ceiling in the stacks is maybe 6.5' tall, it's musty and the HVAC is deafening, and extends 6 stories down into the earth. I couldn't imagine a more disheartening study environment, but there are some tables and chairs and sad graduate students down there nonetheless.
xhkkffbf 7y ago
Yes, I love the space of regular libraries but too much of the space is devoted to old books. I like the romance and the smell, but if I can't find a place to sit what good is that?
- PostPost 7y ago
  Part of the reason libraries are quiet is you have fewer people and a lot of sound absorbing materials (that also happen to hold really important information for the right people). Removing books and replacing them with more seats will just make it an open office. A library is supposed to house knowledge and make it accessible, not primarily to give everyone a study spot. You can always check out a library book and take it somewhere with more seats.
- Merrill 7y ago
  Libraries have two problems - guessing what books their patrons need and should be acquired, and guessing what books they have that their patrons no longer need. The second process, "weeding the collection", at least can be informed by circulation data as to whether a book has been loaned in the last several years, as well as other criteria such as rarity, historical importance, being part of a special collection, availability from network libraries, and conditions under which it may have been gifted to the library.
cafard 7y ago
"A 2016 survey of students at Webster University in Washington, D.C., also illustrates limited use of digital resources, finding that just 18 percent of students accessed e-books “frequently” or “very frequently,” compared with 42 percent who never used them." I have lived in Washington, DC, for forty years, and until this had never heard of Webster University. Given the size of Webster (about 2400, it says), and the number of campuses, I wonder exactly how many students were surveyed.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  1085 students, 226 staff.
alexhutcheson 7y ago
In my experience, most college students really just want a good space to work and study, with a mix of quiet spaces and areas for group work. Undergraduates rarely needed to access the physical books, since they're told to buy almost all the books they need for each class anyway. In 4 years, I think the only books I ever checked out were novels I was reading for pleasure, and I could have easily gotten them from the city library instead. From an average undergrad's perspective, the ideal "library" is probably something more like a WeWork. Grad students and researchers have different needs, though.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  > Grad students and researchers have different needs, though. Yes, access to the more obscure literature like the Springer books for advanced math, or highly specialized history books (such as a history of Ottoman naval warfare) is pretty essential at the graduate or later level.
  - goerz 7y ago
    Actually, in my entire ~10 years of having been a grad student and then researcher in theoretical physics, I didn't take out books from a library even once! I have yet to come across any material that is not available in electronic form (well, one very specialized book, which I did buy, cut off the spine, and ran through a ScanSnap)
    - jasone 7y ago
      I attended grad school 2003-2009. The first few years I routinely pulled hardcopy at the library. By ~2007 I was able to get everything electronically. Not so long ago, dead trees mattered.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    For CS, no. I’ve never had the urge to go through a springer conference proceedings rather than just download the papers I needed directly. Checking out the old outdated books at the engineering library was nostalgic, however.
Akinato 7y ago
I feel like libraries should probably be compartmentalized more. A room for the main catalogue of books, a room filled with outlets and empty tables for studying and working, and a room with computers / empty desks with outlets for those who need them + the printers. I feel like libraries try to do too much all in the same space. The computer people bug the 'study-ers' with their typing, clicking, and audio. The printers are loud and disruptive. The desks are sprinkled throughout the aisles of books, wherever space could be found -- which makes it harder to navigate around to find the books you need. There's no need to be surrounded by books once you've gotten the one you need. They're forcing 3 entirely different sets of people into the same space. If people are visiting with 3 different goals just separate the space according to those goals. Have a dedicated and separate computer lab, a dedicated room to rows and rows of books, and a dedicated room for studying -- with side rooms for group studying.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  I hated how the workspaces were nestled in the stacks. at any time during finals about 95% percent of these would be occupied, and I'd have to hunt through the stacks to check each one. infuriatingly, I'd often discover that a table had turned over just after passing it. it would sometimes take twenty minutes just to find a place to sit down and start working.
  - Akinato 7y ago
    This was the biggest pet peeve for me. That and you couldn't even really enjoy or use those spaces, because if you spread out at all then you'd be in the way. You'd also have people circling like sharks, on top of the people pushing by to get to the books they need. It just seemed so sub-optimal to me.
- pyromine 7y ago
  Of all the college libraries I've been in what you're describing is the typical structure I've encountered.
  - Akinato 7y ago
sudosteph 7y ago
The college I attended has an interesting dynamic in this area. The way the university is laid out, there is a historical "main" campus with a very traditional library, and a much newer "engineering campus" with a very new and modern library. Both buildings are massive and used extensively, but I definitely preferred the modern one - even if some features of it were kinda cheesy (the massive basement with a book-fetching robot being one that was cool in theory - but not often used). The traditional library had about 10 stories of "book stacks" with quiet areas to study and lots of tables. Unfortunately, each floor only had one conference room and there was a lot of competition for room reservations. The downstairs common area was mostly workstations, and student services, some places to eat too. I liked this library for my first few years of studying, but I felt like it was really hard to collaborate here. The new library has a ridiculous number of conference rooms which is amazing. Lots of white boards that move around, more variety in seating options, some rooms equipped with specialized stuff (music studios, VR dev spaces, 3d printing), and the layout just feels more optimized (there is a dedicated quiet area upstairs that has beautiful views and tons of space too). The wifi and outlet situation is also better at the new one. The biggest downside is honestly that it's so "different" it becomes a tour destination for random people, which can be a distractions. All that said, the number one draw for me to both libraries: 24-hour access. Being able to work through the night without interruptions is what made libraries so important to my college experience. I actually really miss that, and I miss that one library in particular.
- vinay427 7y ago
  Michigan? This seems to exactly describe that.
  - sudosteph 7y ago
    North Carolina State actually - Hunt Library in particular (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Hunt_Jr._Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Hunt_Jr._Library)
BlameKaneda 7y ago
The library at my university had four floors and a basement. The higher the floor the quieter you were supposed to be, so you were welcome to talk on the ground floor but would get glares or carefully chosen words on the top floor. I loved this system. If I wanted to work but didn't mind the chit chat then I was fine on the ground floor, but if I needed to concentrate then I could move. I recall using a library book for research once. Other than that, I made use of the public computers to work on projects that were stored on Google Drive.
- Akinato 7y ago
  Oh wow this is brilliant! I love this concept.
- organsnyder 7y ago
  My school's library was similar. The fourth and fifth floors were excellent for when I needed to carve out some dedicated focus time.
- heedlessly2 7y ago
  Sounds like the ugli at umich
  - moosingin3space 7y ago
    Fellow UMich grad here. Shapiro library (formal name for UgLi) was always a great place to study because you had plenty of noise isolation from other people, especially the upper floors. On North Campus, CS majors had two major study spaces: the Beyster computer lab/atrium, and the Duderstadt Library. Course staff would provide office hours in Beyster, and if you wanted to study in a more collaborative environment, that was the place to be. Duderstadt had a mix of collaborative spaces (in closed rooms) and quiet workspaces (the benches near the stacks). I studied in both locations, depending on my needs at the time. Was a pretty effective setup.
JimmyRuska 7y ago
Some school libraries don't even have the required course textbooks. A community college I went to did have 1 or 2 copies of required course text books, you just couldn't check them out of the library. 4 year university did not even have them, making sure you paid for a personal copy of your course books from the university book store. It seemed really strange a library wouldn't have the books students needed most.
- minikites 7y ago
  Textbooks go out of date too quickly to meaningfully contribute to a collection. This is (of course) by the design of publishers to wring as much money out of students as possible.
  - meej 7y ago
    Also, it would require faculty members to actually tell the library what textbooks they're using each term. One might be surprised at how rarely and inconsistently this happens.
    - noodlesUK 7y ago
      At our university, you are required to submit a reading list when the course is ratified, and each year after that. Students complaining that the library didn’t have the books would come back to bite you as the lecturer did not telling the library which books to have.
  - vkou 7y ago
    Did some fundamental part of the Calculus I curriculum happen to change in the past 2 years? What about that course material makes it go 'Out of date too quickly', and requires a new edition? The homework problems? Who the hell gives grades for homework problems? The only person you're cheating by copying the solution is yourself, because you aren't going to learn the material well enough to pass a test on it.
  - downrightmike 7y ago
    It has to be at the hand of the publisher, otherwise how would the info in the books be up to date enough to grant a degree on top off? The work you did a as a freshmen, would be useless by sophomore year and no one would ever graduate because their knowledge wouldn't be applicable.
ineedasername 7y ago
I think the biggest benefit of physical libraries, often overlooked by students, are the professional reference librarians that staff them. I was a competent researcher in college, but if I had difficulties, if the catalog looked like it didn't hold anything I could use, I went to the reference desk, and never was disappointed. One particular project involved correlating & comparing prison funding & criminal recidivism with education spending in the state I was in. Books held nothing on this, and the government documents section massive, dense & daunting. The reference librarian saved me many hours of work by getting me directly to what I needed, and suggesting other resources as well. The internet has made casual research extraordinarily easy, but it's like an 80/20 split. The average person can get 80% of the way there, but these reference librarians are professionals in their field, with all the connotations that being a "professional" comes with.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- JJMcJ 7y ago
  Even ordinary city libraries can often help with reading lists.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    Absolutely! I didn't mean for my comment to be limited to college libraries, though that's probably how it came across. I first learned to appreciate them growing up in the days when the internet was in its early infancy & even if there'd been good online resources, I was too poor for a computer anyway. My town library was pretty decent, and even had remote access to some of the early content databases.
- journalctl 7y ago
  And I think chances are, these reference librarians will have masters degrees! They’re incredibly knowledgeable, and at least every librarian I’ve ever met has been not only good at what they do, but incredibly passionate too. And if anyone’s looking for ways technology and libraries intersect (besides information storage/retrieval), I recommend the Library Freedom Project [1] (I linked to Wikipedia because their main page seems to be blank.) It’s a program that works with libraries to teach librarians about things like digital privacy rights. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Freedom_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Freedom_Project
uwuhn 7y ago
I'm not a student anymore, and I would love to have access to a decent library where I could actually focus for hours at a time. Anyone have any recommendations in SF? I'm happy to pay. I've already checked out the private Mechanics' Institute library, and I didn't like it. The best thing I've found so far is just going to fancy hotel lobbies.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- meej 7y ago
  I would expect any public university library to be open to the public. Consider trying UCSF or SFSU. https://www.library.ucsf.edu/use/spaces/ https://www.library.ucsf.edu/use/spaces/ http://library.sfsu.edu/hours http://library.sfsu.edu/hours
  - uwuhn 7y ago
    Ahh one of those reservable group study rooms would be perfect. I wonder what's the least I'd need to spend to get UCSF student status for access. Probably not an option until I have an employer that has tuition reimbursement as a benefit. In the meantime, I'll check out the other UCSF/SFSU libraries. Do you have any recommendations?
    - ryanobjc 7y ago
      all SF residents can become a CCSF student for free, or with minimal fees!
    - meej 7y ago
      Libraries often limit use of group study rooms to groups, even with student status you may not be able to use them individually. The spaces that indicate they are open to the public and are categorized with the "considerate" noise level would probably be much quieter than the hotel lobbies you're currently using, and you can access them now, without student status.
- 7y ago
DC-3 7y ago
I'm a CS student in the UK and one of my favorite parts of my university is its library. I will sometimes go in there between lectures, just to browse the shelves aimlessly and enjoy the peace and quiet. In the past I have found myself perusing books of haiku and the like - things unrelated to my course which I would be unlikely to encounter online or anywhere else in any non-superficial way. I certainly don't want it to become a trendy makerspace or ideas lab or anything of that nature.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
the thing I love most about really big high quality university libraries is the ability to go find a place somewhere in the back of the stacks, and then to walk around finding a collection of a dozen books that sound interesting of themes you like but are not necessarily conversant with. then browse those books for the next 5+ hours. Really used to get the gears of the brain moving. Of course this was also before the internet and before having any money and after 5 hours I was lightheaded, starving, and not necessarily sure what I was going to eat - but in a good way for me.
- pretendscholar 7y ago
  Intermittent fasting before it was cool
jdsnape 7y ago
I used to go and work at our City's Cathedral library: access was free to students, it was in an awesome building about 700 years old and most importantly didn't have WiFi so there was no distraction :) It was also cold - I find most libraries to be warm and stuffy which makes me drowsy and unable to concentrate.
- mavhc 7y ago
  Originally libraries were cold because fire and books don't mix well, and they needed massive windows because fire was the only other way to light them.
rc_kas 7y ago
The first college to swear off all digital books will get first consideration on my kids college application process.
- jimbob45 7y ago
  Digital books are fine. It's the terrible way they've been monetized that's the problem. College textbooks simply aren't worth $150 anymore but the publishers are desparately trying to hold onto that valuation.
  - awat 7y ago
    100% and that’s before adding all the temporary access, unique codes, platform specific access, etc rackets.
    - applecrazy 7y ago
      Yeah, it's absolutely terrible. Sometimes it's 100 dollars for subpar online software that you need to do homework, particularly in subjects such as Biology and Chemistry. Absolutely frustrating
  - rc_kas 7y ago
    I'm not talking about cost of the book. I'm talking about studying. I feel strongly that you focus better and study better when reading a paper book. Digital products are too prone to offer distractions that take away from focus.
the_watcher 7y ago
Personally, I want a traditional library with physical books, as well as ample digital access. I did research in college involving attempting to find and summarize every mention of a particular topic by a Congressperson during the 1970s. This meant I grabbed the (massive) books of Congressional minutes, checked the indexes, and paged through them for weeks. I could have done this in days with a digital archive. At the same time, there was a lot that I preferred to read a physical copy of, and I saved a ton of money by only buying books that weren't on reserve at the library, meaning you could check them out, but only per visit. I also definitely would prefer they remain as a spacious, quiet spaces for study.
bitwize 7y ago
I used to love camping out in my college library. The old computer science books were some of the most fun to leaf through. It may seem comical to a methodologist of today, for whom Agile is the end of history and Object-Oriented Design the pinnacle of human achievement, to read about Jackson Structured Programming, but JSP was the cutting edge of enterprise development in the 1980s and really helped a lot of people deal with tricky data flows in a systematic abstract way. Of course some notions from back then are still silly. One book described a "software engineer of the 1990s" who sat in a lounge chair and described specs out loud to a HAL-like AI, which transmuted them into flawless code. Kinda like George Jetson and RUDI.
pkalinowski 7y ago
Not sure if I should brag or be ashamed, but during my studies I visited library once - to take paper confirming that I don’t owe them anything. I guess that’s the beauty of IT
- pnw_hazor 7y ago
  In the olden days as an undergrad I used the engineering library a little bit, mostly for the periodical indices and study nooks. The main ugrad library was for napping in between classes. Later in law school, the only time I did anything with the library was a onetime legal writing 'scavenger hunt' assignment that forced us to use different resources. I studied in other libraries because they were more convenient for me (less crowded)
werber 7y ago
If I was a college student I'd just want them to focus their technology spending on eliminating noise. The library for me was just an escape from the constant stimulus of being on campus
noodlesUK 7y ago
One of the essential features of a university library as far as I’m concerned is to actually have on hand a sufficient number of copies of the books required for each course. This was done very well at my university in the UK, but from what I’ve seen in the US, students are expected to buy (oftentimes many) books for each of their courses. I have a problem with that in the days of high tuition and bloated administration. Libraries should not be profit centres. A university library to me is a place which has access to academic material such as journals and various scholarly databases, a good selection of relevant books, a nice place to study, and very high speed internet. I didn’t extensively use the library during my studies as most of our CS course materials were available for free, but I did use the space a lot. Additionally, whenever I encountered a book that I might want, the library would process an interlibrary loan, or just buy the book. Purchase requests were easy and fast.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  Courses at university in the UK (or at least mine, and at least when I did it) don't really have textbooks. You are advised to read three or four books during the course, but there isn't one single book that you absolutely must have. Lectures had notes, and referred to those three or four books and you could find relevant material in each, in basically any edition. I think I bought maybe four text books during a four year degree, and those were the ones I really liked and wanted to keep after I graduated. The rest were just checked out of the library. How come this isn't possible in the US? Why do you need that one particular textbook and a specific edition and nothing else is suitable? There's no undergraduate subject I'm aware of so specific that there is only one book in existence on the topic - many are suitable. What's the blocker?
  - lnanek2 7y ago
    IME the US profs like to assign problems from the book and follow the chapters pretty closely. So editions often had reworked problems or fixed typos. On rare occasions a professor was kind enough to let people using older editions know the differences and let them use older ones, but it was definitely more work for the professor than just expecting everyone to have the same book and problems.
yoz-y 7y ago
Several people mention having to buy many books for the courses but do they need to be bought new all the time? As in, does the school change the books required for courses every year? Why not buy or pass them from senior students down? My school was maybe different because we didn't actually any books, we were given printed support for class or just had to take notes during lectures.
- alexhutcheson 7y ago
  Textbook publishers release new editions, at which point they stop selling the old editions (so university bookstores can't easily stock old editions). Instructors then pretty much have to assign new editions. Students looking to save money can buy old editions or international editions online, but then have to deal with page numbers, chapter order, and exercises being different than the book used by the rest of the class. Frustratingly, publishers do this even for topics like calculus, which has not changed a lot since the last edition of the textbook!
the_watcher 7y ago
> “Google can bring you back 100,000 answers,” as the writer Neil Gaiman once said. “A librarian can bring you back the right one.” I only did one year of law school, but taking this piece of advice (swap in Lexis/WestLaw/Bloomberg for Google) was a massive win. The librarians at the law library were so knowledgeable, and there was no rule against them using prior experience with the exact question to help the student out. They could also understand why you wanted a particular source. Example: "I'm looking for the most binding precedent for random set of issues, as well as the 10 most recent cases that discuss the issue at hand. Also, are there any other sources or cases you know of that would be particularly relevant to the issues I mentioned?" Lexis: Can probably find most binding precedent if you're good at navigating/filtering. Can definitely get you the 10 most recent cases, but you'll have to read them all to judge how useful they are . Can definitely get you other sources, but you'll have to do a general search and read through pretty much everything to filter. This will probably take at least a day just to collect everything and filter it to what's useful. Law librarian: Might know the right precedent off the top of their head. If not, is an expert in Lexis and can find it much faster than you. Same for recent relevant cases. For other sources, not going to be able to get you a comprehensive list, but likely immediately knows of 5-10 places that are highly likely to be relevant. This will probably take 2 hours, max.
- cjsawyer 7y ago
  This almost feels like cheating. If school staff is helping this deeply, are you actually learning how to research?
  - Kalium 7y ago
    Part of researching is learning to use the tools you have available. Experienced researchers familiar with the domain are wonderful tools.
    - the_watcher 7y ago
      Exactly. Also, while not their only function, a part of the librarian job description is to help people find the right resource as easily as possible.
LeanderK 7y ago
I don't agree. I have never used the university library as a library. But I always work there because I can concentrate in libraries way better than in my room. I can't see myself being this concentrated alone in my room, I get distracted very easily. In fact, nearly everything I did for my studies, I've done in the various libraries and nothing alone in my room. Acknowledging this and building stuy-centers with real coworking-spaces for group work/stuff, isolated rooms with whiteboards to discuss things and quite study spaces complemented with a café in the basement to take a break would be way better than all the new libraries being built by the universities. Something cozy to read also be great. We have a library that's open for 24 hours a day, every day. I've found this very, very useful and would like to the 24 hours aspect replicated elsewhere. I have also never bought a single "real" textbook in my studies. The need to buy these hugely overpriced books [1][2] has to disappear, which I think will start the real decline of libraries used by the usual students. [1] I don't mean books per se, just these massivly overpriced textbooks. The ability to get a small physical copy for a few bucks is great, i always try to get my stuff printed in the university printing-center or just buy the pre-printed script. But some studies force students to buy certain books. This needs to get adressed by the state, at least in germany. [2] I would like to see a law that forces every professor paid by public money to make their teaching material accessible for the public to read and to modify, including making the source accessible. I don't get why this is not the case right now.
dhruvkar 7y ago
As an undergrad & grad about 10 years ago, I absolutely loved our university library for working and studying solo (although rarely, if ever, did I need a physical book). But being surrounded by huge shelves of books, gave a sort of muffled/muted ambience that was perfect and hard to find outside of a library. Coffee shops are close, but they're either much noisier or empty therefore all too quiet. College libraries were the sweet spot for deep work/study for me.
idealstingray 7y ago
I'm at a school where most classes have all of their materials online for free. Usually a professor will post lecture notes and/or slides online and recommend an optional reference textbook. When I do need textbooks, I generally buy them instead of checking them out from the library, and most of the reason is that the library isn't open 24 hours a day. 90% of the time I can get by with only using books for class during the day, but if I end up having to pull an all-nighter to finish a paper or a pset, or if I've been procrastinating and need to do the readings for a class after midnight, I'm screwed. It's valuable to me to have the mental overhead free, instead of needing to plan when I'll be able to access the books I need. (As a bonus, it's a good start for building up a reference library, and I can mark up my personal copies however I want, but these are secondary reasons.) I still use the library for studying, finding materials that I only need once and don't want to buy, and checking out items like USB CD drives. (You can also check out soldering irons and small power tools from our campus libraries.) I also made frequent use of the piano in the music library when studying music theory. But I'd probably use the library a lot more if it were staffed between midnight and 6 am.
scottlocklin 7y ago
> a library that sometimes looks empty might be a tempting target for administrators trying to maximize the use of space on their campuses, College Administrators are responsible for much of what is wrong with modern college campuses. Virtually all the growth in expenses go to these dweebs, who sit around dreaming up new ways of feathering their beds while producing a generation of morons. I used to use the local college business library quite a bit; they sent literally all the books to storage and turned it into a glorified open office plan. One among many reasons they'll never get another nickel from me.
- dev_dull 7y ago
  I'd be happy to forgive all of the student loan debt provided we pry it all back from college administrators, who fattened themselves off the federal government loan programs.
- asdff 7y ago
  Last year the administrators decided we needed a new wireless projector interface across campus rather than the standard hdmi/dvi+box of dongles present in every room. No one is able to connect to it on the first try. Some laptops work via airplay, others not at all. I haven't seen a windows user successfully connect to the display (it involves connecting to a room specific wifi network, connecting to an IP address, and typing in a constantly changing password). Some laptops work in the morning when the prof tests the room and not in the afternoon when the prof holds the class. The previous connected users screen will remain frozen on the display and sometimes, when you connect your laptop, it will move into a split screen configuration with the frozen display of the last user taking up half the screen real estate. And best of all is that IT got rid of all the wired connections because some salesman told them that this was better than what has been working perfectly for the last 15 years. It is now October and the situation is not any better than during syllabus week and IT has absolutely no idea what to do.
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    Last time they tried to get a buck from me: they were bragging about building a "twitter like app" so students could ask lecturers questions without raising their hands.
vinay_ys 7y ago
It is true that as a comp.sci student, I did most of my reading online. But one of the best things about library for me was to get a tour of all the other discipline books. See what students from other branches were studying and look at their library books. This is definitely much richer experience than just going crawling on the web. It was also a quiet place to study and prepare for tests/exams. It was also the place where we got all our printing and photocopying done. I don't see these needs going away no matter how much we rely on our connected phones, tablets and laptops.
devxpy 7y ago
It took me some time to realize this, but now I wholeheartedly agree with the argument that physical paper is better for reading. Now I can only envision an ebook reader that's made up of a 1000 paper-thin eink panels bound into a book that's A4 size.
pattisapu 7y ago
It is possibly the fondest memory I have of college life. Years wandering through stacks, finding things I never would have seen otherwise, some of which I hold on to still.
- pattisapu 7y ago
  And one of the fondest memories of childhood. I grew up in a small Texas town where I could check out things in grade school itself. While I had some mishaps like checking out Jaws at 6 years old and having nightmares thereafter, on the whole I think libraries are an uncontroversial good. The size of the library matters less now. What has been an issue lately is that the budget cuts do not hit the number of staff or budget for books -- they just shorten the hours -- often, again, in smaller Texas towns and no doubt elsewhere, cutting the hours down to as few as 5 days a week, with hours as short as 9 am to 5 pm or even 4 pm, so that it is often nearly impossible to get there after work or school.
honkycat 7y ago
In college, IRC chat rooms with bots serving books from an FTP server were a life saver. I don't think I bought 5 books throughout my entire college career. Me and my buddies also built a textbook scanner that saved us a ton of money. ( webcam x2 + buttons + easy page turning mechanism ) I always thought the price of college textbooks were ridiculous and put unfair pressure on a broke college kid like me.
Invictus0 7y ago
This article does not jive with my experience whatsoever. I graduated from school this year, and I paid for exactly 2 textbooks in my entire college career. The rest were online pdfs. I also only checked out one book from the library in college, everything else I read online. That's just me, but I also don't observe a lot of my peers checking out books. Wish I could find the survey showing 92% prefer print to digital text: that seems preposterous to me.
kevindong 7y ago
My alma mater, Purdue, built a giant building that was simultaneously a library, a collection of very large lecture halls/classrooms, and a study space. Lining the exterior walls of the building were classrooms. And in between, the majority of the building is essentially an open floor plan study space with no separation between the floors (since the center of the building is an enormous unenclosed staircase and large unenclosed stairwells lined every wall). Consequently, the entire building (aside from the enclosed "library space" and classrooms) was useless for quiet studying. My school shut down 3-5 smaller libraries (all of which were super cozy and quiet, albeit dated) and to form this new library building. The new building is much more aesthetically pleasing, but it's a much worse study space in my opinion from the traditional, drab university library. Some photos: https://www.jconline.com/picture-gallery/news/college/2017/08/03/a-look-inside-the-wilmeth-active-learning-center/104268478/ https://www.jconline.com/picture-gallery/news/college/2017/0... https://www.bsalifestructures.com/project/wilmeth-active-learning-center https://www.bsalifestructures.com/project/wilmeth-active-lea... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhX8kV1SbDs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhX8kV1SbDs
chiefalchemist 7y ago
I'm going to guess that parents as well as alumni have a fondness for new fancy libraries; kinda like having a great football or basketball team, but different. Such libraries might also help with recruiting new profs. I'm not defending the added expense, only trying to explain it. Perhaps.
aaron695 7y ago
> College Students Just Want Normal Libraries No they don't. They want computers, power to desks, wireless and network internet. Quite spaces, loud spaces, meeting rooms. Kitchenettes are also popular. So are sleep cubicles (although hard to deliver enough of) They want a catalogue that has a really good search system. They don't care about dewey decimal. They don't want to search through physical journals to find the one they want. They don't want microfiche. They want it delivered to their computer in their bedroom. Nothing they want is a normal library.
sunstone 7y ago
Books, desks and a comfortable place to nap.
specialist 7y ago
We need more quiet spaces. Not everyone is an extrovert. And even us extroverts occasionally need some head's down time. When I become king, companies will also have library inspired quiet rooms, like the graduate school library Even rustling sounds get stern looks. Eye contact and other social interaction is frowned upon. When I become king, we'll also have cafes for students and other laptop campers. Food service and cashier towards the entrance. Library style big rooms with big tables in the back. No public music. No conversations during "dark" hours. No kids. No dogs.

207 points by minnca 7y ago

The biggest problem I always had with the library at my alma matter (ucla), was that thousands of square feet dedicated to books people rarely ever touched while simultaneously failing to have even proportional amount of space dedicated to desks. Furthermore, any furniture frequently doubled as people's bed away from home.

korethr 7y ago
> Furthermore, any furniture frequently doubled as people's bed away from home. Sounds to me like the library was failing to enforce some reasonable rules on the purpose of the furniture. I get it, it's easier to catch a quick nap in a library than other places because they are generally quieter spaces. But if a library's raison d'etre is to be a repository of reference material and a place of quitet study, then rules prioritizing use of the furniture for study over sleeping strikes me as quite fair.
- wtallis 7y ago
  Enforcement wouldn't solve any problems here, it would just antagonize the students. The underlying problem that needs to be addressed is insufficient space to work or nap between classes.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - korethr 7y ago
    It might antagonize the students who are looking for a place to nap, but is that all of the students? I think other students might be happy to have their library available to them as a library again.
    - blackflame7000 7y ago
      I propose a hybrid solution: We add more space for study and naps, while simultaneously antagonizing the students.
erwfdserwfds 7y ago
The purpose of a library is not to have books people are sure to read, but to have references people might need. A (good) library is necessarily a long-tail institution. The rarely touched book is a treasure. The study space a concession to the modern student body that lacks any meaningful silent space. The student sleeping in said study area is a gross oversight by the librarian to ensure the sacrosanct space isn't violated (and, unfortunately for some of those sleeping at the library, another housing failure in S. California :S)
- tomkinstinch 7y ago
  Indeed; a good library is a long-tail institution. The Harvard Library system has a large collection of books at the various on-campus libraries, but an immense catalog of infrequently accessed books at a "depository" warehouse off-site. Scholars can request items from the Depository and receive them within a day. This split-storage model may a sensible solution for other universities going forward: prime and expensive library buildings on-campus can be reserved for quiet study areas and a few commonly-used books, with the main collection of books retrievable from a nearby location where land is less expensive. It also has the advantage of allowing books to be stored in the ideal climate for their preservation. Fun fact about the Harvard Depository: books are organized not by topic, publication date, or anything resembling the Dewey decimal system, but rather by a metric that makes sense for high-density: physical size. Books are stored in barcoded boxes by height. Here is an artsy documentary, "Cold Storage," about the Depository: https://vimeo.com/116603551 https://vimeo.com/116603551 or in interactive form: http://librarybeyondthebook.org/cold_storage/ http://librarybeyondthebook.org/cold_storage/
  - asdff 7y ago
    Pretty much every library has an off campus facility for books. USC has a warehouse on grand avenue. Not sure where UCLA's book repository is, but it is definitely somewhere. However, I wouldn't want the stacks in the main library (doheny) at usc converted to study space. I think there are better rooms to gut for study space, namely the random faculty offices they've shoved in every library. You can build an office across the street from campus if you need the space. The ceiling in the stacks is maybe 6.5' tall, it's musty and the HVAC is deafening, and extends 6 stories down into the earth. I couldn't imagine a more disheartening study environment, but there are some tables and chairs and sad graduate students down there nonetheless.

xhkkffbf 7y ago

Yes, I love the space of regular libraries but too much of the space is devoted to old books. I like the romance and the smell, but if I can't find a place to sit what good is that?

PostPost 7y ago
Part of the reason libraries are quiet is you have fewer people and a lot of sound absorbing materials (that also happen to hold really important information for the right people). Removing books and replacing them with more seats will just make it an open office. A library is supposed to house knowledge and make it accessible, not primarily to give everyone a study spot. You can always check out a library book and take it somewhere with more seats.
Merrill 7y ago
Libraries have two problems - guessing what books their patrons need and should be acquired, and guessing what books they have that their patrons no longer need. The second process, "weeding the collection", at least can be informed by circulation data as to whether a book has been loaned in the last several years, as well as other criteria such as rarity, historical importance, being part of a special collection, availability from network libraries, and conditions under which it may have been gifted to the library.

cafard 7y ago

"A 2016 survey of students at Webster University in Washington, D.C., also illustrates limited use of digital resources, finding that just 18 percent of students accessed e-books “frequently” or “very frequently,” compared with 42 percent who never used them." I have lived in Washington, DC, for forty years, and until this had never heard of Webster University. Given the size of Webster (about 2400, it says), and the number of campuses, I wonder exactly how many students were surveyed.

boomboomsubban 7y ago
1085 students, 226 staff.

alexhutcheson 7y ago

In my experience, most college students really just want a good space to work and study, with a mix of quiet spaces and areas for group work. Undergraduates rarely needed to access the physical books, since they're told to buy almost all the books they need for each class anyway. In 4 years, I think the only books I ever checked out were novels I was reading for pleasure, and I could have easily gotten them from the city library instead. From an average undergrad's perspective, the ideal "library" is probably something more like a WeWork. Grad students and researchers have different needs, though.

jcranmer 7y ago
> Grad students and researchers have different needs, though. Yes, access to the more obscure literature like the Springer books for advanced math, or highly specialized history books (such as a history of Ottoman naval warfare) is pretty essential at the graduate or later level.
- goerz 7y ago
  Actually, in my entire ~10 years of having been a grad student and then researcher in theoretical physics, I didn't take out books from a library even once! I have yet to come across any material that is not available in electronic form (well, one very specialized book, which I did buy, cut off the spine, and ran through a ScanSnap)
  - jasone 7y ago
    I attended grad school 2003-2009. The first few years I routinely pulled hardcopy at the library. By ~2007 I was able to get everything electronically. Not so long ago, dead trees mattered.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  For CS, no. I’ve never had the urge to go through a springer conference proceedings rather than just download the papers I needed directly. Checking out the old outdated books at the engineering library was nostalgic, however.

Akinato 7y ago

I feel like libraries should probably be compartmentalized more. A room for the main catalogue of books, a room filled with outlets and empty tables for studying and working, and a room with computers / empty desks with outlets for those who need them + the printers. I feel like libraries try to do too much all in the same space. The computer people bug the 'study-ers' with their typing, clicking, and audio. The printers are loud and disruptive. The desks are sprinkled throughout the aisles of books, wherever space could be found -- which makes it harder to navigate around to find the books you need. There's no need to be surrounded by books once you've gotten the one you need. They're forcing 3 entirely different sets of people into the same space. If people are visiting with 3 different goals just separate the space according to those goals. Have a dedicated and separate computer lab, a dedicated room to rows and rows of books, and a dedicated room for studying -- with side rooms for group studying.

leetcrew 7y ago
I hated how the workspaces were nestled in the stacks. at any time during finals about 95% percent of these would be occupied, and I'd have to hunt through the stacks to check each one. infuriatingly, I'd often discover that a table had turned over just after passing it. it would sometimes take twenty minutes just to find a place to sit down and start working.
- Akinato 7y ago
  This was the biggest pet peeve for me. That and you couldn't even really enjoy or use those spaces, because if you spread out at all then you'd be in the way. You'd also have people circling like sharks, on top of the people pushing by to get to the books they need. It just seemed so sub-optimal to me.
pyromine 7y ago
Of all the college libraries I've been in what you're describing is the typical structure I've encountered.
- Akinato 7y ago

sudosteph 7y ago

The college I attended has an interesting dynamic in this area. The way the university is laid out, there is a historical "main" campus with a very traditional library, and a much newer "engineering campus" with a very new and modern library. Both buildings are massive and used extensively, but I definitely preferred the modern one - even if some features of it were kinda cheesy (the massive basement with a book-fetching robot being one that was cool in theory - but not often used). The traditional library had about 10 stories of "book stacks" with quiet areas to study and lots of tables. Unfortunately, each floor only had one conference room and there was a lot of competition for room reservations. The downstairs common area was mostly workstations, and student services, some places to eat too. I liked this library for my first few years of studying, but I felt like it was really hard to collaborate here. The new library has a ridiculous number of conference rooms which is amazing. Lots of white boards that move around, more variety in seating options, some rooms equipped with specialized stuff (music studios, VR dev spaces, 3d printing), and the layout just feels more optimized (there is a dedicated quiet area upstairs that has beautiful views and tons of space too). The wifi and outlet situation is also better at the new one. The biggest downside is honestly that it's so "different" it becomes a tour destination for random people, which can be a distractions. All that said, the number one draw for me to both libraries: 24-hour access. Being able to work through the night without interruptions is what made libraries so important to my college experience. I actually really miss that, and I miss that one library in particular.

vinay427 7y ago
Michigan? This seems to exactly describe that.
- sudosteph 7y ago
  North Carolina State actually - Hunt Library in particular (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Hunt_Jr._Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Hunt_Jr._Library)

BlameKaneda 7y ago

The library at my university had four floors and a basement. The higher the floor the quieter you were supposed to be, so you were welcome to talk on the ground floor but would get glares or carefully chosen words on the top floor. I loved this system. If I wanted to work but didn't mind the chit chat then I was fine on the ground floor, but if I needed to concentrate then I could move. I recall using a library book for research once. Other than that, I made use of the public computers to work on projects that were stored on Google Drive.

Akinato 7y ago
Oh wow this is brilliant! I love this concept.
organsnyder 7y ago
My school's library was similar. The fourth and fifth floors were excellent for when I needed to carve out some dedicated focus time.
heedlessly2 7y ago
Sounds like the ugli at umich
- moosingin3space 7y ago
  Fellow UMich grad here. Shapiro library (formal name for UgLi) was always a great place to study because you had plenty of noise isolation from other people, especially the upper floors. On North Campus, CS majors had two major study spaces: the Beyster computer lab/atrium, and the Duderstadt Library. Course staff would provide office hours in Beyster, and if you wanted to study in a more collaborative environment, that was the place to be. Duderstadt had a mix of collaborative spaces (in closed rooms) and quiet workspaces (the benches near the stacks). I studied in both locations, depending on my needs at the time. Was a pretty effective setup.

JimmyRuska 7y ago

Some school libraries don't even have the required course textbooks. A community college I went to did have 1 or 2 copies of required course text books, you just couldn't check them out of the library. 4 year university did not even have them, making sure you paid for a personal copy of your course books from the university book store. It seemed really strange a library wouldn't have the books students needed most.

minikites 7y ago
Textbooks go out of date too quickly to meaningfully contribute to a collection. This is (of course) by the design of publishers to wring as much money out of students as possible.
- meej 7y ago
  Also, it would require faculty members to actually tell the library what textbooks they're using each term. One might be surprised at how rarely and inconsistently this happens.
  - noodlesUK 7y ago
    At our university, you are required to submit a reading list when the course is ratified, and each year after that. Students complaining that the library didn’t have the books would come back to bite you as the lecturer did not telling the library which books to have.
- vkou 7y ago
  Did some fundamental part of the Calculus I curriculum happen to change in the past 2 years? What about that course material makes it go 'Out of date too quickly', and requires a new edition? The homework problems? Who the hell gives grades for homework problems? The only person you're cheating by copying the solution is yourself, because you aren't going to learn the material well enough to pass a test on it.
- downrightmike 7y ago
  It has to be at the hand of the publisher, otherwise how would the info in the books be up to date enough to grant a degree on top off? The work you did a as a freshmen, would be useless by sophomore year and no one would ever graduate because their knowledge wouldn't be applicable.

ineedasername 7y ago

I think the biggest benefit of physical libraries, often overlooked by students, are the professional reference librarians that staff them. I was a competent researcher in college, but if I had difficulties, if the catalog looked like it didn't hold anything I could use, I went to the reference desk, and never was disappointed. One particular project involved correlating & comparing prison funding & criminal recidivism with education spending in the state I was in. Books held nothing on this, and the government documents section massive, dense & daunting. The reference librarian saved me many hours of work by getting me directly to what I needed, and suggesting other resources as well. The internet has made casual research extraordinarily easy, but it's like an 80/20 split. The average person can get 80% of the way there, but these reference librarians are professionals in their field, with all the connotations that being a "professional" comes with.

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JJMcJ 7y ago
Even ordinary city libraries can often help with reading lists.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Absolutely! I didn't mean for my comment to be limited to college libraries, though that's probably how it came across. I first learned to appreciate them growing up in the days when the internet was in its early infancy & even if there'd been good online resources, I was too poor for a computer anyway. My town library was pretty decent, and even had remote access to some of the early content databases.
journalctl 7y ago
And I think chances are, these reference librarians will have masters degrees! They’re incredibly knowledgeable, and at least every librarian I’ve ever met has been not only good at what they do, but incredibly passionate too. And if anyone’s looking for ways technology and libraries intersect (besides information storage/retrieval), I recommend the Library Freedom Project [1] (I linked to Wikipedia because their main page seems to be blank.) It’s a program that works with libraries to teach librarians about things like digital privacy rights. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Freedom_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Freedom_Project

uwuhn 7y ago

I'm not a student anymore, and I would love to have access to a decent library where I could actually focus for hours at a time. Anyone have any recommendations in SF? I'm happy to pay. I've already checked out the private Mechanics' Institute library, and I didn't like it. The best thing I've found so far is just going to fancy hotel lobbies.

deleted 7y ago
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meej 7y ago
I would expect any public university library to be open to the public. Consider trying UCSF or SFSU. https://www.library.ucsf.edu/use/spaces/ https://www.library.ucsf.edu/use/spaces/ http://library.sfsu.edu/hours http://library.sfsu.edu/hours
- uwuhn 7y ago
  Ahh one of those reservable group study rooms would be perfect. I wonder what's the least I'd need to spend to get UCSF student status for access. Probably not an option until I have an employer that has tuition reimbursement as a benefit. In the meantime, I'll check out the other UCSF/SFSU libraries. Do you have any recommendations?
  - ryanobjc 7y ago
    all SF residents can become a CCSF student for free, or with minimal fees!
  - meej 7y ago
    Libraries often limit use of group study rooms to groups, even with student status you may not be able to use them individually. The spaces that indicate they are open to the public and are categorized with the "considerate" noise level would probably be much quieter than the hotel lobbies you're currently using, and you can access them now, without student status.
7y ago

DC-3 7y ago

I'm a CS student in the UK and one of my favorite parts of my university is its library. I will sometimes go in there between lectures, just to browse the shelves aimlessly and enjoy the peace and quiet. In the past I have found myself perusing books of haiku and the like - things unrelated to my course which I would be unlikely to encounter online or anywhere else in any non-superficial way. I certainly don't want it to become a trendy makerspace or ideas lab or anything of that nature.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

the thing I love most about really big high quality university libraries is the ability to go find a place somewhere in the back of the stacks, and then to walk around finding a collection of a dozen books that sound interesting of themes you like but are not necessarily conversant with. then browse those books for the next 5+ hours. Really used to get the gears of the brain moving. Of course this was also before the internet and before having any money and after 5 hours I was lightheaded, starving, and not necessarily sure what I was going to eat - but in a good way for me.

pretendscholar 7y ago
Intermittent fasting before it was cool

jdsnape 7y ago

I used to go and work at our City's Cathedral library: access was free to students, it was in an awesome building about 700 years old and most importantly didn't have WiFi so there was no distraction :) It was also cold - I find most libraries to be warm and stuffy which makes me drowsy and unable to concentrate.

mavhc 7y ago
Originally libraries were cold because fire and books don't mix well, and they needed massive windows because fire was the only other way to light them.

rc_kas 7y ago

The first college to swear off all digital books will get first consideration on my kids college application process.

jimbob45 7y ago
Digital books are fine. It's the terrible way they've been monetized that's the problem. College textbooks simply aren't worth $150 anymore but the publishers are desparately trying to hold onto that valuation.
- awat 7y ago
  100% and that’s before adding all the temporary access, unique codes, platform specific access, etc rackets.
  - applecrazy 7y ago
    Yeah, it's absolutely terrible. Sometimes it's 100 dollars for subpar online software that you need to do homework, particularly in subjects such as Biology and Chemistry. Absolutely frustrating
- rc_kas 7y ago
  I'm not talking about cost of the book. I'm talking about studying. I feel strongly that you focus better and study better when reading a paper book. Digital products are too prone to offer distractions that take away from focus.

the_watcher 7y ago

Personally, I want a traditional library with physical books, as well as ample digital access. I did research in college involving attempting to find and summarize every mention of a particular topic by a Congressperson during the 1970s. This meant I grabbed the (massive) books of Congressional minutes, checked the indexes, and paged through them for weeks. I could have done this in days with a digital archive. At the same time, there was a lot that I preferred to read a physical copy of, and I saved a ton of money by only buying books that weren't on reserve at the library, meaning you could check them out, but only per visit. I also definitely would prefer they remain as a spacious, quiet spaces for study.

bitwize 7y ago

I used to love camping out in my college library. The old computer science books were some of the most fun to leaf through. It may seem comical to a methodologist of today, for whom Agile is the end of history and Object-Oriented Design the pinnacle of human achievement, to read about Jackson Structured Programming, but JSP was the cutting edge of enterprise development in the 1980s and really helped a lot of people deal with tricky data flows in a systematic abstract way. Of course some notions from back then are still silly. One book described a "software engineer of the 1990s" who sat in a lounge chair and described specs out loud to a HAL-like AI, which transmuted them into flawless code. Kinda like George Jetson and RUDI.

pkalinowski 7y ago

Not sure if I should brag or be ashamed, but during my studies I visited library once - to take paper confirming that I don’t owe them anything. I guess that’s the beauty of IT

pnw_hazor 7y ago
In the olden days as an undergrad I used the engineering library a little bit, mostly for the periodical indices and study nooks. The main ugrad library was for napping in between classes. Later in law school, the only time I did anything with the library was a onetime legal writing 'scavenger hunt' assignment that forced us to use different resources. I studied in other libraries because they were more convenient for me (less crowded)

werber 7y ago

If I was a college student I'd just want them to focus their technology spending on eliminating noise. The library for me was just an escape from the constant stimulus of being on campus

noodlesUK 7y ago

One of the essential features of a university library as far as I’m concerned is to actually have on hand a sufficient number of copies of the books required for each course. This was done very well at my university in the UK, but from what I’ve seen in the US, students are expected to buy (oftentimes many) books for each of their courses. I have a problem with that in the days of high tuition and bloated administration. Libraries should not be profit centres. A university library to me is a place which has access to academic material such as journals and various scholarly databases, a good selection of relevant books, a nice place to study, and very high speed internet. I didn’t extensively use the library during my studies as most of our CS course materials were available for free, but I did use the space a lot. Additionally, whenever I encountered a book that I might want, the library would process an interlibrary loan, or just buy the book. Purchase requests were easy and fast.

chrisseaton 7y ago
Courses at university in the UK (or at least mine, and at least when I did it) don't really have textbooks. You are advised to read three or four books during the course, but there isn't one single book that you absolutely must have. Lectures had notes, and referred to those three or four books and you could find relevant material in each, in basically any edition. I think I bought maybe four text books during a four year degree, and those were the ones I really liked and wanted to keep after I graduated. The rest were just checked out of the library. How come this isn't possible in the US? Why do you need that one particular textbook and a specific edition and nothing else is suitable? There's no undergraduate subject I'm aware of so specific that there is only one book in existence on the topic - many are suitable. What's the blocker?
- lnanek2 7y ago
  IME the US profs like to assign problems from the book and follow the chapters pretty closely. So editions often had reworked problems or fixed typos. On rare occasions a professor was kind enough to let people using older editions know the differences and let them use older ones, but it was definitely more work for the professor than just expecting everyone to have the same book and problems.

yoz-y 7y ago

Several people mention having to buy many books for the courses but do they need to be bought new all the time? As in, does the school change the books required for courses every year? Why not buy or pass them from senior students down? My school was maybe different because we didn't actually any books, we were given printed support for class or just had to take notes during lectures.

alexhutcheson 7y ago
Textbook publishers release new editions, at which point they stop selling the old editions (so university bookstores can't easily stock old editions). Instructors then pretty much have to assign new editions. Students looking to save money can buy old editions or international editions online, but then have to deal with page numbers, chapter order, and exercises being different than the book used by the rest of the class. Frustratingly, publishers do this even for topics like calculus, which has not changed a lot since the last edition of the textbook!

the_watcher 7y ago

> “Google can bring you back 100,000 answers,” as the writer Neil Gaiman once said. “A librarian can bring you back the right one.” I only did one year of law school, but taking this piece of advice (swap in Lexis/WestLaw/Bloomberg for Google) was a massive win. The librarians at the law library were so knowledgeable, and there was no rule against them using prior experience with the exact question to help the student out. They could also understand why you wanted a particular source. Example: "I'm looking for the most binding precedent for random set of issues, as well as the 10 most recent cases that discuss the issue at hand. Also, are there any other sources or cases you know of that would be particularly relevant to the issues I mentioned?" Lexis: Can probably find most binding precedent if you're good at navigating/filtering. Can definitely get you the 10 most recent cases, but you'll have to read them all to judge how useful they are . Can definitely get you other sources, but you'll have to do a general search and read through pretty much everything to filter. This will probably take at least a day just to collect everything and filter it to what's useful. Law librarian: Might know the right precedent off the top of their head. If not, is an expert in Lexis and can find it much faster than you. Same for recent relevant cases. For other sources, not going to be able to get you a comprehensive list, but likely immediately knows of 5-10 places that are highly likely to be relevant. This will probably take 2 hours, max.

cjsawyer 7y ago
This almost feels like cheating. If school staff is helping this deeply, are you actually learning how to research?
- Kalium 7y ago
  Part of researching is learning to use the tools you have available. Experienced researchers familiar with the domain are wonderful tools.
  - the_watcher 7y ago
    Exactly. Also, while not their only function, a part of the librarian job description is to help people find the right resource as easily as possible.

LeanderK 7y ago

I don't agree. I have never used the university library as a library. But I always work there because I can concentrate in libraries way better than in my room. I can't see myself being this concentrated alone in my room, I get distracted very easily. In fact, nearly everything I did for my studies, I've done in the various libraries and nothing alone in my room. Acknowledging this and building stuy-centers with real coworking-spaces for group work/stuff, isolated rooms with whiteboards to discuss things and quite study spaces complemented with a café in the basement to take a break would be way better than all the new libraries being built by the universities. Something cozy to read also be great. We have a library that's open for 24 hours a day, every day. I've found this very, very useful and would like to the 24 hours aspect replicated elsewhere. I have also never bought a single "real" textbook in my studies. The need to buy these hugely overpriced books [1][2] has to disappear, which I think will start the real decline of libraries used by the usual students. [1] I don't mean books per se, just these massivly overpriced textbooks. The ability to get a small physical copy for a few bucks is great, i always try to get my stuff printed in the university printing-center or just buy the pre-printed script. But some studies force students to buy certain books. This needs to get adressed by the state, at least in germany. [2] I would like to see a law that forces every professor paid by public money to make their teaching material accessible for the public to read and to modify, including making the source accessible. I don't get why this is not the case right now.

dhruvkar 7y ago

As an undergrad & grad about 10 years ago, I absolutely loved our university library for working and studying solo (although rarely, if ever, did I need a physical book). But being surrounded by huge shelves of books, gave a sort of muffled/muted ambience that was perfect and hard to find outside of a library. Coffee shops are close, but they're either much noisier or empty therefore all too quiet. College libraries were the sweet spot for deep work/study for me.

idealstingray 7y ago

I'm at a school where most classes have all of their materials online for free. Usually a professor will post lecture notes and/or slides online and recommend an optional reference textbook. When I do need textbooks, I generally buy them instead of checking them out from the library, and most of the reason is that the library isn't open 24 hours a day. 90% of the time I can get by with only using books for class during the day, but if I end up having to pull an all-nighter to finish a paper or a pset, or if I've been procrastinating and need to do the readings for a class after midnight, I'm screwed. It's valuable to me to have the mental overhead free, instead of needing to plan when I'll be able to access the books I need. (As a bonus, it's a good start for building up a reference library, and I can mark up my personal copies however I want, but these are secondary reasons.) I still use the library for studying, finding materials that I only need once and don't want to buy, and checking out items like USB CD drives. (You can also check out soldering irons and small power tools from our campus libraries.) I also made frequent use of the piano in the music library when studying music theory. But I'd probably use the library a lot more if it were staffed between midnight and 6 am.

scottlocklin 7y ago

> a library that sometimes looks empty might be a tempting target for administrators trying to maximize the use of space on their campuses, College Administrators are responsible for much of what is wrong with modern college campuses. Virtually all the growth in expenses go to these dweebs, who sit around dreaming up new ways of feathering their beds while producing a generation of morons. I used to use the local college business library quite a bit; they sent literally all the books to storage and turned it into a glorified open office plan. One among many reasons they'll never get another nickel from me.

dev_dull 7y ago
I'd be happy to forgive all of the student loan debt provided we pry it all back from college administrators, who fattened themselves off the federal government loan programs.
asdff 7y ago
Last year the administrators decided we needed a new wireless projector interface across campus rather than the standard hdmi/dvi+box of dongles present in every room. No one is able to connect to it on the first try. Some laptops work via airplay, others not at all. I haven't seen a windows user successfully connect to the display (it involves connecting to a room specific wifi network, connecting to an IP address, and typing in a constantly changing password). Some laptops work in the morning when the prof tests the room and not in the afternoon when the prof holds the class. The previous connected users screen will remain frozen on the display and sometimes, when you connect your laptop, it will move into a split screen configuration with the frozen display of the last user taking up half the screen real estate. And best of all is that IT got rid of all the wired connections because some salesman told them that this was better than what has been working perfectly for the last 15 years. It is now October and the situation is not any better than during syllabus week and IT has absolutely no idea what to do.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  Last time they tried to get a buck from me: they were bragging about building a "twitter like app" so students could ask lecturers questions without raising their hands.

vinay_ys 7y ago

It is true that as a comp.sci student, I did most of my reading online. But one of the best things about library for me was to get a tour of all the other discipline books. See what students from other branches were studying and look at their library books. This is definitely much richer experience than just going crawling on the web. It was also a quiet place to study and prepare for tests/exams. It was also the place where we got all our printing and photocopying done. I don't see these needs going away no matter how much we rely on our connected phones, tablets and laptops.

devxpy 7y ago

It took me some time to realize this, but now I wholeheartedly agree with the argument that physical paper is better for reading. Now I can only envision an ebook reader that's made up of a 1000 paper-thin eink panels bound into a book that's A4 size.

pattisapu 7y ago

It is possibly the fondest memory I have of college life. Years wandering through stacks, finding things I never would have seen otherwise, some of which I hold on to still.

pattisapu 7y ago
And one of the fondest memories of childhood. I grew up in a small Texas town where I could check out things in grade school itself. While I had some mishaps like checking out Jaws at 6 years old and having nightmares thereafter, on the whole I think libraries are an uncontroversial good. The size of the library matters less now. What has been an issue lately is that the budget cuts do not hit the number of staff or budget for books -- they just shorten the hours -- often, again, in smaller Texas towns and no doubt elsewhere, cutting the hours down to as few as 5 days a week, with hours as short as 9 am to 5 pm or even 4 pm, so that it is often nearly impossible to get there after work or school.

honkycat 7y ago

In college, IRC chat rooms with bots serving books from an FTP server were a life saver. I don't think I bought 5 books throughout my entire college career. Me and my buddies also built a textbook scanner that saved us a ton of money. ( webcam x2 + buttons + easy page turning mechanism ) I always thought the price of college textbooks were ridiculous and put unfair pressure on a broke college kid like me.

Invictus0 7y ago

This article does not jive with my experience whatsoever. I graduated from school this year, and I paid for exactly 2 textbooks in my entire college career. The rest were online pdfs. I also only checked out one book from the library in college, everything else I read online. That's just me, but I also don't observe a lot of my peers checking out books. Wish I could find the survey showing 92% prefer print to digital text: that seems preposterous to me.

kevindong 7y ago

My alma mater, Purdue, built a giant building that was simultaneously a library, a collection of very large lecture halls/classrooms, and a study space. Lining the exterior walls of the building were classrooms. And in between, the majority of the building is essentially an open floor plan study space with no separation between the floors (since the center of the building is an enormous unenclosed staircase and large unenclosed stairwells lined every wall). Consequently, the entire building (aside from the enclosed "library space" and classrooms) was useless for quiet studying. My school shut down 3-5 smaller libraries (all of which were super cozy and quiet, albeit dated) and to form this new library building. The new building is much more aesthetically pleasing, but it's a much worse study space in my opinion from the traditional, drab university library. Some photos: https://www.jconline.com/picture-gallery/news/college/2017/08/03/a-look-inside-the-wilmeth-active-learning-center/104268478/ https://www.jconline.com/picture-gallery/news/college/2017/0... https://www.bsalifestructures.com/project/wilmeth-active-learning-center https://www.bsalifestructures.com/project/wilmeth-active-lea... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhX8kV1SbDs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhX8kV1SbDs

chiefalchemist 7y ago

I'm going to guess that parents as well as alumni have a fondness for new fancy libraries; kinda like having a great football or basketball team, but different. Such libraries might also help with recruiting new profs. I'm not defending the added expense, only trying to explain it. Perhaps.

aaron695 7y ago

> College Students Just Want Normal Libraries No they don't. They want computers, power to desks, wireless and network internet. Quite spaces, loud spaces, meeting rooms. Kitchenettes are also popular. So are sleep cubicles (although hard to deliver enough of) They want a catalogue that has a really good search system. They don't care about dewey decimal. They don't want to search through physical journals to find the one they want. They don't want microfiche. They want it delivered to their computer in their bedroom. Nothing they want is a normal library.

sunstone 7y ago

Books, desks and a comfortable place to nap.

specialist 7y ago

We need more quiet spaces. Not everyone is an extrovert. And even us extroverts occasionally need some head's down time. When I become king, companies will also have library inspired quiet rooms, like the graduate school library Even rustling sounds get stern looks. Eye contact and other social interaction is frowned upon. When I become king, we'll also have cafes for students and other laptop campers. Food service and cashier towards the entrance. Library style big rooms with big tables in the back. No public music. No conversations during "dark" hours. No kids. No dogs.