Tag Archives: 24/7

A Safe Library

Now that the tower has wireless access, there is a lot more opportunity for students to work up there.  The prospect of more people working in the tower, plus the 24 hour library during the month leading up to finals, has led to some people wondering about the ways that the library is trying to keep people safe.

So I asked around, and learned several useful things from our security chief.
First, security patrols the entire building every hour, but not necessarily at the same time each hour, because they don’t want to establish a pattern.  When it’s after dark, and they find people by themselves in the tower, they usually add one round on that floor to the usual sweep, to check on that person.  Sometimes, they let the person know that they are alone on that floor, in case they want to move.
There is an emergency button near the elevators on floors 5-8, that can be pressed if there is a need for police/security.  Even if a person does not talk, it’s registered that the button has been pushed, and security has to tell the police not to come, if they find out it’s a false alarm.   Otherwise, the campus police come automatically. 
There are emergency buttons in each elevator, as well.  They look like this:

Our security chief said, too, that this is a very safe library—since the 24 hours experiment has started, there have been no incidents.
Is this your experience of the library?  Did you know about the emergency buttons?  
If your experience is different, please let us know.  Problems unidentified are problems that don’t get fixed.

24/5, so it begins!

Well this is what many of you begged and pleaded for. It’s happening– a 24 hour library. It will be 5 days/week up until reading day, and then 24/7 for the rest of Finals.

So, what are you doing in the 24 hour library?
Group study?
Paper writing?

What are the advantages to you?
What problems are you encountering?
Etc.

Please, do tell.

What do you mean by 24/7?

I’ll start by talking to myself.

If you saw any of the easels in the 1st floor of Atkins in the last little while, you surely noticed (perhaps you even wrote) endless repetitions of “27/7!”

So, OK, we’re working on that. We know you want it.

But I’d like to know more. Why are you in the library at 2AM? What kind of work are you doing in the middle of the night? What about the library makes it a good space for that?

Please do not think these are judgemental questions–just because I personally am incapable of pulling an all-nighter doesn’t mean that people don’t have good, solid reasons for doing so. I know people work all night long.

We need to know, why the library? What does it have (or not have) that other places don’t (or do)? Where do you work when you can’t go to the library? What does that feel like/look like? Does it depend on the kind of work? Are you coming alone? In groups? Is it only during finals week? All semester?

You see, how just reading words on an easel can only get us so far? Please enlighten me, in the comments.