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Comment by erwfdserwfds | Hacker News Reader

The purpose of a library is not to have books people are sure to read, but to have references people might need. A (good) library is necessarily a long-tail institution.

The rarely touched book is a treasure. The study space a concession to the modern student body that lacks any meaningful silent space.

The student sleeping in said study area is a gross oversight by the librarian to ensure the sacrosanct space isn't violated (and, unfortunately for some of those sleeping at the library, another housing failure in S. California :S)

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Indeed; a good library is a long-tail institution. The Harvard Library system has a large collection of books at the various on-campus libraries, but an immense catalog of infrequently accessed books at a "depository" warehouse off-site. Scholars can request items from the Depository and receive them within a day.

This split-storage model may a sensible solution for other universities going forward: prime and expensive library buildings on-campus can be reserved for quiet study areas and a few commonly-used books, with the main collection of books retrievable from a nearby location where land is less expensive. It also has the advantage of allowing books to be stored in the ideal climate for their preservation.

Fun fact about the Harvard Depository: books are organized not by topic, publication date, or anything resembling the Dewey decimal system, but rather by a metric that makes sense for high-density: physical size. Books are stored in barcoded boxes by height. Here is an artsy documentary, "Cold Storage," about the Depository:

https://vimeo.com/116603551

or in interactive form:

http://librarybeyondthebook.org/cold_storage/

Pretty much every library has an off campus facility for books. USC has a warehouse on grand avenue. Not sure where UCLA's book repository is, but it is definitely somewhere.

However, I wouldn't want the stacks in the main library (doheny) at usc converted to study space. I think there are better rooms to gut for study space, namely the random faculty offices they've shoved in every library. You can build an office across the street from campus if you need the space. The ceiling in the stacks is maybe 6.5' tall, it's musty and the HVAC is deafening, and extends 6 stories down into the earth. I couldn't imagine a more disheartening study environment, but there are some tables and chairs and sad graduate students down there nonetheless.

Stacks is exactly the place that came to mind when I was writing my comment.

> The student sleeping in said study area is a gross oversight by the librarian

No, it's not, thank you very much.

Not everyone has parents who can cut a check and send them to college. Some students work their asses off to pay for it.

Those students often schedule their classes such that they all land on Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday. Often they leave home at 6AM and finish up on campus around 9/10PM (or later if they have "group" projects that need to be worked on). There are sometimes big slack spaces in the schedule for the classes they need. Most of them do homework in those times as their time is precious.

However, if they've actually gotten everything done, the most productive thing they can generally do is sleep as it is the thing they are always short on.

If you want to argue for nap rooms, I'm all in. Let's cut the "increase our stadium" tax on tuition to fund it.

But people sleep at the library because there's no other place that will tolerate a person sleeping. Not the coffee shop, not the park, not the student center. Nor, in our very loud society, is there anywhere quiet to lay your head.

But the role of the library isn't to provide the disadvantaged (or more often than not, a person fatigued from excessive entertainment) a place to sleep. It's to provide a sanctuary for study. If you're not studying, you're occupying a (valuable) spot for others.

Note, I'm not referring to 15 min. power naps and the like.

Yea I get that, but is it the purpose of the main library in the center of campus? In fact UCLA has an entire library (Southern Regional Library) that is dedicated to rare and old books. It's completely empty and is where I would go to study lol

Yes! That's exactly the point of the main library [1]! To do other student activities is the point of the student center!

I don't understand "student centers". You'd imagine its a place to do studenting - study! Things like group projects, discussion, debates, ect.

Instead, you're quite likely to see an arcade with the latest VR consoles at the student center.

Video gaming, and the like, are activities that non-students also enjoy. Therefore, there is no reason for the university to provide them. Presumably there are arcades else where in the city.

But, call me old fashioned I guess :S

[1] The point of the library warehouse isn't to put the near long-tail a day away. It's to put the far part of long-tail a day away. The Main Library should contain most every long tail search any researcher should ever need. The warehouse, therefore, has stuff that is more likely to rot before it is cracked (great carbon sink, to boot)

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