In general I love using the library, particularly as a place for quiet study, but there’s one incredibly frustrating aspect of this during finals. I really like the extended hours during final weeks, but workers in the study areas should respect students’ need for quiet. I was trying to work in the library last night and workers were talking loudly and then I heard a worker playing music too loundly. This sort of thing makes the extended hours kind of pointless, especially in the quiet zones. Is there any way this could be addressed?

We are glad to hear you appreciate our keeping the Paley Library open around the clock during finals week, and it’s great to hear you and other students are taking advantage of the extended hours. We are sorry to hear that your library experience is being greatly diminished by the noise being made by some workers. Our goal is for you and others to have the best possible library experience we can deliver – so clearly we need to improve this situation. We absolutely will address the problem you have described. Within hours of receiving your suggestion the appropriate supervisors and administrators were contacted in order to share your concerns. We have asked that all those who work in the Library are reminded about the need to maintain the quiet atmosphere – at all times but especially during extended hours.

If you continue to experience this problem in Paley Library please contact Steven Bell directly for further assistance. 

All the doors in Paley– particularly the ones in the stairwell and the elevator lobbies– need to have the handles changed to vertical ones on the side that say “Pull.” The standard is vertical for pull, horizontal for push. That way, you end endless minor embarrassment for people pushing on pull doors. It is a simple and considerate thing to do– not the cheap and lazy set-up you have now. You could use the current handles or invest a little in handles that visually command pulling.

We can’t argue with you on this one. What you point out is a basic design feature of most buildings (are you an architecture student?). In fact some design sites suggest that any door that requires a push should have no handle at all, but simply a plate where the hand is placed for the push. We don’t know what they were thinking when they installed the doors back in the sixties.

Now, what can we do about this? We will pass your observation on to our facilities manager to see what’s involved in a changeover of this sort. Chances are it will not be cheap or simple to do, and in that case we must ask ourselves if it is the best use of students’ tuition dollars. And we have to keep in mind that over the last 40 or so years, with thousands upon thousands of people going in and out of Paley, this particular problem has hardly ever been pointed out to us. 

I will point out that when you come to the first stairwell door opposite the Ask Here Desk – we got that one right!

I often work on the third floor of Paley and it’s really frustrating when I can’t find an outlet to plug in my laptop. Any chance you can add more outlets on the upper levels?

We agree that the study areas of Paley are woefully short of electric outlets.  Most library buildings built in the mid-1960s suffer from the same problem.  Back then no could have anticipated students with laptops, cellphones, iPods and loads of other devices needing constant power. Adding a lot of outlets is impossible in the current building since we are now at full electrical capacity and cannot add any more circuits to existing panels. 

Nonetheless within the last month we squeezed in a few added outlets at locations in the  2nd and 3rd floor study areas where we recently removed shelving and installed carpet and comfortable tablet arm chairs.  We also added three more outlets on the 3rd floor in an area of large study tables that has attracted laptops users.  Four outlets were also added in the reserved graduate/faculty carrel room, a location where there used to be one outlet for approximately 50 carrels.  Even these few outlets were very expensive given Temple’s labor costs.