While most Husky collegiettes were away from campus over the summer, Snell Library (more commonly referred to as Club Snell) went through drastic changes based on responses from a widely administered survey.
“Last spring, SGA partnered with the library to make a library survey,” said Kristina Lopez, vice president of academic affairs in Student Government Association. “Snell went through those answers and just wanted to make sure that everything they found out, they addressed in the renovations.”
The survey responses reflected Northeastern students’ concerns, which focused on outlets and seating spaces. The entire library received some kind of change over the summer, whether it was the simple installation of more outlets or a complete makeover like the second floor. The outlets on the second floor, now called the Digital Media Center or DMC, emerge from the table after a single tap on a black box.
The DMC is properly named as students could tell firsthand after it opened on September 10th. Aimed towards group projects and presentations, the DMC has smaller tables, movable furniture, dual monitors and presentation rooms, all resulting from what administrators learned from the survey administered in Spring 2012.
All the computers also have different programs ranging from CAD to GIS, giving students who need to use them access at any hour of the day and night.
“They don’t have to be like, ‘Oh my God! It’s 2 o’clock in the morning and I can’t do this project because I can’t get into the lab!’ Now, they have access to those programs in the library, which is awesome, so everyone has to get their homework assignments in on time. No excuses!” said Lopez.
In addition to the visible changes, the third and fourth floors have been rebranded. Previously, the two highest floors were just the quiet floors. Due to complaints about the noise, the third floor remains a quiet floor, but the fourth floor is now the silent floor. Lopez explained how whispered conversations, coughing, and noisy page flipping is tolerated on the third floor, but not on the fourth.
With this school year, collegiettes and colle-gents will be held to a policy that Lopez would like to believe people just didn’t know about in previous years. Phone calls cannot be taken in the stairwell because of the echoes to the third and fourth floors. Instead, they must be taken on the second or first floors. The library also provides laptop locks for those studying alone so students don’t have to worry about leaving their possessions to take a phone call or go to the bathroom.
Even with all of the new technology, whiteboards and access to programs, Lopez believes the most important part of the renovations to Snell is the increased seat count. A primary concern of all students was overcrowding. With a raised overall count of 1,700 seats and more than 800 tables, Lopez feels they are slowly starting to address these problems.
“It’s important to understand how the space works,” Lopez, a third year criminal justice major and history minor, said. “It’s awesome that we have the space, but the whole purpose of the space is not just for any one student. It’s a space that the whole student body can use.”
Read Lopez’s contributions as a guest blogger for Club Snell here.
—
Photo Credit: Kristina Lopez