The Library

The end of a term at Dartmouth is often a bit of a crunch if you are taking paper-based classes. These next few weeks are when those final papers and research projects are all due. I find research papers a little stressful but always very rewarding. I usually learn more writing them than studying for any type of final. This term I’m taking an economic geography class and I just started researching for my final project due next week. (Oops.)

I’m researching the new geography of automobile production in Central and Eastern Europe; mainly, I’m trying to figure out if foreign investment in this industry flows more readily to undeveloped sites or into the remains of remaining and former Socialist-era manufacturers. I’m doing this at the national level because there were relatively few automobile manufacturers in the Eastern Bloc.

To come to a conclusion I’m going have to gather a lot of data on production from today and the Soviet era. Cold-war era Polish automotive industry data isn’t always easy to come by, but luckily, I have the library on my side. Not surprisingly, the Dartmouth library is enormous. And today, with book-sharing practices in place with other colleges nationwide, there really isn’t a publication you can’t get a hold of here. This I sort of expected. What I have loved, and what has surprised me, so far about the Dartmouth library is its convenience.

Three things stand out in my mind about the library here. First, the library’s online resources make nearly every academic journal and database available to us in PDF format at our convenience. I can access these resources from anywhere. And there is a neat feature called Search 360 that works like a typical online search engine, but for all the scholarly databases. I can’t overstate the convenience of this feature.

Second, the library is just a great space. It is completely open until 2:00 am (and computerized self-check out means you can check out a book throughout this time). Two parts, Novack café and the 1902 room, are open 24 hours and it isn’t uncommon to notice that someone has set up shop there for the weekend. Novack is open late, and there are well-stocked vending machines for when it closes.

The library is full of great places to study where no one will ever bother you and you can eat just about anywhere. People are very respectful of the space so no one ever leaves a mess. And it’s great to be able to leave your computer anywhere while you go to lunch, the gym, or even bed! Nobody ever steals computers or other personal belongings, and so you don't have to pack up all your stuff every time you need to take a study break.

Finally, there are the librarians who really are research experts. The librarians are great at answering any research questions. There are librarians specialized in every field who know the school’s collection extremely well.