A busy student’s library table
Cassidey Kavathas/ The Bona Venture
kavathcj20@bonaventure.edu
BY: HADLEY THOMPSON, NEWS EDITOR
“It was a lot of different reasons,” Ann Tenglund, the director of Friedsam Library at St. Bonaventure University said.
The library has shortened its hours to opening on Sundays at 1 p.m. instead of 10 a.m., and closing at midnight instead of 1 a.m. On Fridays and Saturdays, the library closes at 8 p.m. instead of 10 p.m.
Tenglund said that these hours allow for fewer staff members to come in, instead of more coming to work and having nothing to do.
“People are in here to study but they’re not using our resources, they’re not asking reference questions and that type of thing,” Tenglund said. “We realize that the draw is our space.”
Tenglund hopes that the new schedule makes students aware that there is more to the library than just a place to sit down.
“We looked at how we were using our staff and realized we can make much better use of our staff by shortening hours a little bit,” Tenglund said.
Tenglund said that before shortening hours, the library team made sure that there were other quality spaces that people could go to on campus. She recommends Francis Hall, Swan Business Center and the McGinley-Carney Center for Franciscan Ministry.
“People can even call security to have classrooms or breakout rooms to have those opened,” Tenglund said.
In addition to the library team’s research of available study spaces, Tenglund said they looked into the hours of other libraries with similar student demographics.
“We looked at other libraries and saw we’re not even cutting, we could cut even further and still be in the middle of the pack,” Tenglund said. “The libraries we chose to look at, because I’m always cautioned, don’t pick and choose the peer group you compare to.”
Tenglund said the library is not looking for institutions that prove the new hours reasonable, but for schools to help better understand what students need. In her research, Tenglund found 50 schools that were similar, and inspirational to Bonaventure.
“I found a range of things…I’ve got the data and I want to make it into an infographic to share with student government,” Tenglund said.
Connor Raine, president of the student government association, said that the Student Affairs Committee has also been conducting research, like Tenglund.
“Students feel the resource is the library itself and their ability to use it to study,” Raine said. The Student Affairs Committee has been working on comparing our current hours to other schools around us similar in size; from there, we will take that data and go through and analyze the other schools.”
Katie O’Brien, the vice president of Student Affairs, said that the library hours have been on the student government agenda since the beginning of the year.
“They don’t want to come up with a solution or propose a solution if they don’t really understand the problem,” O’Brien said.
Raine said that the topic of library hours had been brought up by a student, then several other students expressed their concerns.
“We, as SGA, will continue to work hard to come up with a solution to this issue with the student’s perspective in mind, making sure that the result of this situation will be in the best interest of our students,” Raine said.
Teglund said that she certainly wants students to keep coming to the library.
“We also want people to just enjoy coming here as an academic co-working space,” Tenglund said.
Amidst different hours, Tenglund said that there is always the Ask Us 24/7 live reference chat available online to students. The library still plans to do 24/7 hours during finals week.
thompshp20@bonaventure.edu
