Senators Press For Longer Library Hours
By Susan Hoang
Staff Writer

ASPC North Campus Representative Cory Forsyth '03 has begun a quest to extend the operating hours of Honnold Library.

Forsyth and Residence Halls and Food Commissioner Evan Sirc '03 have been working together to investigate the feasibility of extended hours at the library, including the financial implications. Their goal is to move the library's closing time from midnight to 2 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 8 p.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays.

"It should be a part of the mission of a college that prides itself on academics to facilitate research and study. I'd hesitate to go so far as to call increased access to the library a right of Pomona College (or Claremont Colleges) students, but I think it approaches that," said Forsyth.

Statistics from two weeks in October and November of last fall show that during the week, the average number of entries into the library in the last two hours of service is about forty people per night. These numbers do not include those who are already in the library.

A few years ago, students from Pomona requested increased hours at Seeley G. Mudd Library on Pomona's campus, funded exclusively by the College. This was granted and the library hours were extended to 1 a.m. Sunday-Thursday and to 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays until Spring 2001, when students staffing the building decided that this was not a good use of funds and complained that there was some difficulty finding students willing to staff those hours.

According to Director of the Claremont Colleges Libraries Bonnie Clemens, the total cost of one additional operating hour each day for the year is $32,000.

"We're going to be entering a period of gathering information for service quality assessment to survey the quality of the library, the desired level of service. We'll use data from that to consider making changes," said Clemens.

Other schools in the consortium have expressed little interest in increasing hours of operation.

Scripps College Dean of Students Debra Woods remarked, "No student has requested longer hours or indicated any problems with the current hours. I meet weekly with our College Council President and she has not raised this as a Scripps student concern either. The deans of students of the colleges recently met with the student body presidents over lunch to hear their concerns, and library hours were not raised in that forum."

Forsyth and Sirc continue to solicit support for extended hours. They have already conducted straw polls of students to gauge reactions, and about a third of those polled have been strongly in favor of increased hours. They are now trying to introduce the issue to the other Claremont Colleges by speaking to the schools' student body presidents, and ASPC President Phil Kopczynski '03 will soon introduce the matter to the 5-C Senate.