As a history student, I spend a lot of time in the library on campus. I heard this saying once and I’ve always remembered it: the library is our lab. As in, in the School of Humanities, you don’t have timetabled lab sessions, but you do need to spend time outside of class consolidating what you have learned and preparing for the next class. Therefore, if you get distracted easily elsewhere, you may end up spending most of your time doing these sorts of tasks in the library. So, for anyone who maybe isn’t the biggest fan of the library and needs some convincing to step inside, or for any fellow fans of the library who love to big it up, I thought I’d share some of my favourite things about our library.

1. The fantastic opening hours. I love that if you’re stuck studying at home or in a café at any time of day (other than the middle of the night) then you can pack up your things and head to the library, confident that it will be open and there will be resources there to help you.
2. The availability of books. I am constantly borrowing books from our library to read for my classes and reference in my essays, so it’s great that I can always count on there being a copy of a book I need in the library. If, for whatever reason, all the copies of a specific book have been taken out, there is the fantastic resource of more books through which you can request another copy of a book, either digitally or sourced from another university library. This is great for textbooks that a whole class of students might be needing at the same time.
3. The variety of spaces. If you need it to be silent to get work done, there’s plenty of space for you. If you prefer quiet study so there’s a little bit of background noise and you won’t get stared at for eating crisps, there’s definitely space for you. And if you want to work with your friends or have a chat, group study is the perfect space for you. As well as all this, you can book specific rooms in the library to work with your classmates on presentations or just be able to shut off everyone else and have your own space either on your own or with your friends for a few hours.
4. Its centrality on campus. Being a history student, it is in the perfect place right between Tower Building and Dalhousie, probably our two most used buildings for classes. So, if you get to campus early for your class, you can go to the library for the remaining time, or between classes it’s an easy place to head to so you don’t have to travel too far to get work done.
5. The café. It makes things so much easier when you’re in the library all day and you don’t want to have to leave the library to go get lunch or snacks! It can get really busy at lunch time which is the only negative but the variety of food and drinks you can get is impressive for the size of the café itself.

I hope you all find the same things super useful about the library and don’t forget to use it to your full advantage as it’s there to help you in your studies!