Among the strangest aspects of my transition to college was adapting to working in a public space.
While the desk in my West Hall double offered me a private, personal place to do homework, there were several buildings nearby where I could attempt—and occasionally succeed—at finishing all of my assigned reading. Hawthorne-Longfellow Library (H-L) was one such spot, and has remained a favorite for the past three and a half years.
In comparison to other spaces I've written about this semester, it seems that the library as an institution is simultaneously one of the simplest and most challenging spaces to define.
Generally speaking, however, a library is a communal space that safeguards and shares knowledge in its most concrete form—the form of books. It also organizes the information it contains in such a way to allow visitors easy access to light and lore.
We thus seek out libraries for both instruction and edification.
The secondary function of any given library is to allow its visitors a space for studious, focused work. For any given college library, this objective frequently supercedes the housing such spaces provide for books. As a result, undergraduates rarely look forward to visiting these spaces.
H-L is no stranger to this aim.
In fact, I'd guess that for a majority of the student body, simply thinking about having to spend a day at our library doing schoolwork brings on an almost physical sense of dread.
Therefore, we might argue that it is the goal of any campus library to lessen these anxieties.
Thanks to several important design decisions, H-L does succeed in fulfilling such a purpose—to an extent.
Before we can begin to understand the function of the largest library on campus, it is important to review the reasons why it was built and how it fares in comparison to the other smaller ones.
Built to house the College's growing collection of books—one that failed to fit in either Hubbard Hall or in an extension beneath the Chapel—H-L Library was completed in 1965.
Today, our books are spread across campus, residing in Hubbard, Gibson Hall, Pierce Art Library, and Hatch Science Library. All the same, H-L remains the largest repository of books on campus and, in some parts of the library, this shows.
Especially on the third floor and in parts of the basement, it can feel like more space has been granted to shelving books than allowing students to move around.
The most unfortunate feature of the library is clearly the layout of its upper floors. With so many bookshelves occupying a relatively small amount of space, the third and second levels of H-L feel caged in. Sometimes I wonder if the only reason why I've written papers successfully at carrels on the top floor is because my sight is so limited that there's nothing to distract me.
As paradoxical as it may sound, I often benefit from a little distraction.
In its less claustrophobic spaces, H-L allows for both freedom of movement and freedom of mind; its best locales can make the burden of homework feel much less daunting.
I used to dislike the structure of the building's large, arched windows; they seemed like a bizarre contrast with the rest of the architecture.
But having spent years working inside H-L, I now understand that these windows lend an airiness to a building that would otherwise feel unmanageably heavy.
The windows offering a view into the first floor of H-L reveal one large room unburdened by towering book stacks that allow students to work and move around easily.
The fact that one sees more students seated together than alone also makes the library appear more welcoming.
I have sometimes overlooked the Alexander Calder mobile that comes down through a square opening in the second floor to overhang a circular seating area on the first. The second floor certainly benefits from this square opening and the couch area next to it.
As for the front room of the second floor—with floor-to-ceiling windows and a huge glass wall that separates it from the rest of the floor—this is perhaps my favorite place to work in H-L, given the large amount of light coming in from either side of the space.
One of the more amazing configurations in the building is the pathway to the stacks. Even underground, the space opens up in a surprising way; the area beyond the computer lab is big enough for longer tables, and a circular collection of carrels sits directly under a glass pyramid skylight.
I find the pyramid to have a sculptural purpose that is equal to (if not greater than) its purpose as a skylight.
Whether any of these spaces go so far as to completely relieve us of the oppressive feelings we associate with doing schoolwork is an entirely different question. I have a hard time believing that doing work on a beach or in my backyard could actually make schoolwork pleasurable.
Yet relatively speaking, the library makes the onus of work tolerable. Its open spaces and transparent surfaces have a lightness about them that counterbalances the weighty feeling of some of the building's other features.