Put this on the books | The Triangle

Put this on the books

Drexel.edu
Drexel.edu

Study space at the the Hagerty Library is hard to come by. After the third floor was absorbed by the law school in 2008, us common-folk students were left with two floors and a basement. During midterms and finals weeks, there’s hardly a minute when every available seat isn’t full. It’s not uncommon to see students studying between bookshelves or hunkered down with their laptops hunched against the wall.

When the W.W. Hagerty Library opened in 1983, it fit Drexel’s needs as an academic institution. The entire library was available to the university’s 15,000 students and it provided a place where they could cram for exams with a respectable amount of elbow room. Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore. We need more room. We’ve outgrown the Hagerty. Our total student enrollment (including graduate students) is now around 26,000. Granted, Drexel’s Queen Lane and Hahnemann campuses have their own libraries, and Drexel has expanded its study space on main campus to include the Library Learning Terrace over at Race– but this doesn’t cushion the fact that the Hagerty is still burdened with more students than our library was ever meant to accommodate.

The vast majority of students enrolled today will not see a new library during their time at Drexel. We think it is within the means of the university to provide us with more space to study while the Hagerty remains our primary library. Drexel has seen a substantial increase in population, but academic resources have failed to grow proportionally. While we believe there’s a new library in the works, we students haven’t been told anything about when the library will be rebuilt to meet our student body’s needs.