Library hours extended to accommodate students

Carlson Library will be open for extended hours during Oct. 19-23, and again from Oct. 26-30.

The first floor of Carlson Library will be open from midnight to 7 a.m on those days.

SG President Clayton Notestine explained SG’s objective in resuming this policy:

“It is Student Government’s objective and intent to try and use these two weeks which are not finals weeks and they’re not really midterm weeks for a lot of people, to give the library and us a chance to gauge how much the students might use the library on a regular day of the week.”

Student Government made the announcement via Twitter Oct. 15 about the temporary policy.

Notestine said his long-term goal is to reinstate the library’s 24-hour policy either for next semester or, at the latest, next year.

Vice Provost and Interim Director of University Libraries Marcia King-Blandford said students will be counted in the same way they were before when the 24-hour policy was permanently in effect.

“We looked at how many students were actually swiping into the library from 12 to 7,” she said. “We were looking at patterns of student use …We go through the entire building and we headcount how many students are actually physically sitting in the library.”

With respect to the results of the count, Senior Vice Provost of Academic Affairs Margaret Traband, said there is no set target for the number of students using the library during the late hours.

“I think that the numbers will be used during the spring term in the budget development process,” she said.

According to King-Blandford, these hours were revoked last year in part due to limited resources. She explained that resources — such as library personnel — had to be divided between Carlson Library, the Canaday Center and the Mulford Health Science Library.

“There’s only a finite number of resources to spread around,” she said.

Notestine emphasized that the library staff workers’ union will weigh in on the policy.

“A big thing we have to go and take into account working at the library is that we have very professional, dedicated staff that also have a union,” he said. “So whatever changes we make to their work schedules have to be approved.”

According to Traband, the 24-hour library policy also gives rise to safety concerns.

“To staff the place we can’t put one person in charge because it’s large,” she said.

King-Blandford and Traband said there are three areas they are looking at for student success: library and library staff, computer and printing access and a quiet study space.

Notestine said he disagreed with using other buildings to replace the functions of the Carlson Library.

“Those resources are designed to be secondary already as it is,” he said. “If we start to go and put the stress that the Carlson Library is currently taking on, and start putting it onto other resources, we risk breaking infrastructure for those places.”

He said other buildings, libraries and labs cannot fulfill the job of the Carlson Library.

Notestine said SG is willing to extend hours if the 24-hour policy is not supported.

“If the numbers don’t support it being open 24 hours, we’re not going to push it anyways just for the sake of having it because that would be a cost to the students at the very end of the day,” he said. “We’re not going to go and push for any changes that we think are going to be too expensive for students.”

Despite the challenges, Traband and King-Blandford said they are happy to work with SG.

“I saw it as an opportunity to work with Student Government for student success,” King-Blandford said.