By Tasnim Oyshi
Staff Writer
On Sept. 26, @tcnjlibrary, the Instagram account for R. Barbara Gitenstein Library, posted an image of the third-floor study rooms with the caption, “Fun fact: Gitenstein Library has more group study rooms than any other public college library in NJ. Get your group work done today. No reservation needed. Study rooms are first-come, first-serve.”
The first part of that statement is great news for students at the College. After all, so many study rooms should mean that there would be plenty of quiet places to choose from when you want to have a study session with your friends or have a group project. However, this hope crumbles when you actually step into the library with the intention of finding a room to get your work done in. The truth is: finding an empty study room at the library is rare.
The typical experience of an average library frequenter at this institution is to scour each floor in anticipation of stumbling upon just one empty study room only to be met with every single one being in use. Sometimes, there’re multiple people in there. Other more frustrating times, it’s just one person. But the worst scenario of all is to come across a room occupied by a backpack, an open laptop and a water bottle, the owner nowhere in sight.
This is not the only struggle of attempting to obtain a group study room. There is also the battle you have to be prepared for if you do happen to see an empty room at the same time another group of people do. You better hope they’re not closer to the room than you are and make fast work of your legs. It’s an awkward and desperate race as you both zero in on inconspicuously trying to speedwalk quicker than each other in the quiet of other students studying.
I, along with many other students, I’m sure, have faced disappointment with the library’s lack of empty rooms. There have been more times than I can count where I’ve entered the library with friends or a group from class and had to settle down at the usually crowded Library Café so as not to disturb students in the quieter areas. Unfortunately, I’ve learned my lesson and study rooms are no longer the first places I search when I go to the library with other people, instead, setting my backpack down somewhere on the first floor or opting to go someplace else altogether.
Of course, the College does have certain policies in place regarding the use of study rooms. These are pasted on the glass walls of each group study room as well as listed on a page on the school’s website in more detail. Although, it has been about 11 years since the rules on the website have been last revised. They essentially boil down to this: group study rooms are for collaborative work and if you’re in one by yourself, you might be asked to move.
With the amount of singular people that are constantly in the study rooms, however, it is clear that no one takes these policies that seriously. In addition, asking someone to leave a room they found first can be an uncomfortable experience. Even if you ask a member of the library’s staff to do it for you, there still might be some guilt involved.
An easy solution to this problem is to implement a system with which students can reserve group study rooms. Institutions like Rutgers University, Montclair State University and many others give this option to their students. In fact, there are already QR codes on the doors of our study rooms that promise the ability to do that and check the availability of when each study room is open. When you scan it, however, you are led to a page with the words, “Item not found.”
This can be incredibly disheartening, on top of being misleading. The College should either rectify this system or create a new one where students actually can look at and reserve rooms. It would allow them to be much more productive as the first moments of their visit to the library won’t be spent on looking for empty rooms and it would weed out those who go into the rooms by themselves. There should at least be a two person minimum rule to utilize the rooms and the system should allow students to book rooms for certain amounts of time so more people are able to use them.
Having so many group study rooms at our college is a luxury. On the very few chances I’ve had to use them in the past, I’ve had quite efficient study sessions. This is an opportunity that everyone at the school should be allowed. When we have the most study rooms of all public colleges in New Jersey, the College should make it a priority to give every student a fair shot at using them.
