The Kennedy Library has new hours of operation that will open the 3rd, 4th and 5th levels until 2 a.m. According to Dean of Library Services Tod Colegrove, the changes will give students more time and more room to work.
The library announced these new hours through an Instagram post:
Monday-Friday
- Levels 1 & 2: Open 24 hours
- Levels 3-5: 8 a.m. to 2 a.m.
Saturday
- Levels 1 & 2: Open 24 hours
- Levels 3-5: Closed
Sunday
- Levels 1 & 2: Open 24 hours
- All Levels: Open noon to 2 a.m.
Tod Colegrove wrote in an email to Mustang News that the changes were in response to both occupancy data that show how late the library is used and requests from students.
“It was one of the first requests I heard, even before I started as dean. During my interviews, students asked whether more floors of the library could stay open later,” Colegrove wrote.
In March, students expressed concern that the library will fail to provide enough study spaces to keep up with Cal Poly’s plans to enroll 25,000 students by 2030. Colegrove estimated that about 7,000 students visit the library each day, and wrote that the new schedule “lets the library serve students the way they have asked.”
Giovanna Fonseca, a business administration junior, also thinks the additional library access will help students like her who study late into the night.
“Myself and some students, they pull all nighters,” said Fonseca. “Finding a place just to have quiet time for you to study, it’s very hard to find sometimes.”
Providing more quiet spaces for students later in the night was another reason for opening up more floors of the library later. According to Colegrove, students were frustrated that the lower floors became louder when the upper floors closed for the night.
“The first floor is the most active and the loudest, the floors get quieter as you go up, and the fifth floor is a designated quiet floor,” Colegrove wrote. “When the top three floors closed for the night, students and faculty who needed quiet had no space left in the building that offered it.”
Additional security guards will be funded by Cal Poly to cover the later hours and the book collections on the upper floors will still be available to students, according to Colegrove.
“With more levels open, students who want an active space have one — and so do those who need quiet,” Colegrove wrote.