Photo by Elizabeth Lucy ‘15
On most campuses, the library is where students go to study in peaceful solitude. At Lafayette, Skillman library might be the loudest place on campus, and recently students have been complaining about excessive noise in the campus’s main library.
“It’s sometimes hard to actually focus on something [in the library] because there’s a lot of stuff going on around me, like a lot of noise,” Drew Losito ‘17 said. “It makes it tough to study.”
“I definitely think it’s very noisy and can be very distracting,” Shira Bernstein ‘17 said. “You have to find that spot where you can work and it’s kind of quiet, which is very difficult considering there aren’t very many rooms. But if you can get a room, it’s very useful.”
According to Katherine Furlong, Director for Access and Technical Services at Skillman Library, the Simon and the Rothkopf Reading Rooms, along with other study rooms, are supposed to be designated quiet studying areas.
“The rest of the building was designed as a lively space,” Furlong said. “The front of the building is much more lively and we hope that as you move to the back the study carols along the back walls upstairs and downstairs, the new study spaces that we’ve created outside of the ITS office suites, we assume would be used in a quieter manner.”
She continued to say that the library is what the students want it to be and if they have further noise complaints, they should not hesitate to bring it to her attention.
Some students agree with Furlong that the parts of the library have a social atmosphere.
“The first floor is definitely more of a social place, [and] even kind of the second floor,” Brain Fogler ‘16, said. “If you really want to study, you go to Acopian or something like that.”
Much like Acopian, the library in Kirby Hall of Civil Rights is also known as a quiet place to study on campus.
“Usually when I have more serious work, to buckle down, usually a paper, I’ll come [to Kirby] just because you can focus a lot better when it’s silent, at least for me,” Eftelpe Xistris ‘17 said.
