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Students Pleased with New Library Hours
By Caroline Sapp '09
STAFF WRITER

It is 12:15 am and I am meeting Natalie Pye ’07 for an interview to talk about the new extended library hours. As of the week following Spring Break, the library is now open until 3am Monday thru Thursday. However, Natalie is not there. But as she said earlier the previous afternoon: “just go the library sometime late tonight—I will most probably be there.” Like many Sweet Briar students, for her the library is not just a place to casually meet up, it’s a second living space.

Meanwhile, while I am waiting, I spot Shaheen Moosa ‘07, the new Presidential Medalist. Figuring that someone of her academic stature must spend a decent amount of time in the library, I ask her why she prefers it there. She responds, “I am not as productive in my dorm, and at night, a dark computer lab sketches me out.” She uses the extended hours, she says, stating that she usually leaves around 2:30

Even I, the self-proclaimed “hopeless academic,” do not spend that much quality time in the library. But Shaheen is not the only die-hard student employing the library’s newly extended ungodly hours. I count at least 10 students in the main reference room.

Around 12:30 my inside source arrives, carrying with her a bag of red bull. We greet each other and she suggests we move into a side-room so as to not disturb the other studying students.

Natalie, along with another senior, Rachel Reynolds ‘07, suggested to John Jaffe that the library offer extended hours about a month ago. This was in order to help those who prefer the library as a study space but dislike interrupting a mental stride at 1 am to pack up everything and move elsewhere. Within a couple weeks an email was sent out to enquire as to whether others would use the extended hours and if anyone would be willing to work the graveyard shift.

For Natalie though, the extended hours are something she has felt the Cochrane Library has needed for a long time. Nostalgically, Natalie relates to me a memory from her first year at Sweet Briar: “my first week ever at SBC someone asked me what I would most like to improve about the school and I admitted I would like the library to be open longer.”

A couple days later I spent a few minutes with John Jaffe, the library’s director. Mr. Jaffe was adamant about the libraries dedication to student and staff needs. “Every three years or so we try the extended hours, so that has been about 10 times, since I have been here about 30 years,” said Mr. Jaffe jokingly. The library staff, according to Mr. Jaffe, wants the library to be open to people so that they may use the resources.

“When I first arrived here the library was hardly open on the weekends, maybe until 5pm,” the library director remembered.” Even with the 24hr access to online resources, students are still using the library, which surprised the librarians at first.

These extended hours begin to bring SBC’s library more on par with the services that larger Universities offer their students. The main UVA library, the Alderman, is only open until 12 midnight. However, they have a smaller reference library, Clemson, open 24 hours during the week. According to Mr. Jaffe, Sweet Briar’s library offers more hours than any other library in the state, as it remains open over breaks as well as during the summer.

Like Shaheen, Natalie admits that she is in the library “pretty much till they turn the lights out on me.” I asked whether there are ever any other people in the library to the end of hours. “Usually there are about 5-6 around” then as the lights go out more and more people appear migrating towards the exit.

The library’s extended hours are just another example of the school working almost at an individual level to meet student needs. Within a week, new students, mainly those who proposed the change, were hired and trained to work the late shift, despite the late timing of the semester. Like the aesthetic improvements being made to the library, the extended hours demonstrate the libraries staff’s “constant consultation of the student body.”

According to Natalie, the library’s extended hours just add to what she thinks will be her final thoughts about SBC. “I think one of my lingering sentiments about Sweet Briar will be that if you want or need anything, if you ask you will usually get it.”