The library will remain open until midnight on weekdays during examination weeks this term, extending its usual 9 p.m. close by three hours as part of a one-term pilot.
The change follows a petition signed by more than 400 students last term and a semester of negotiation between the student council and library staff over supervision and cost. Two staffed study floors and the group-study rooms will stay open; the lending desk will continue to close at 9 p.m.
“The question was never whether students wanted it — it was who locks up and who pays for the extra hours,” said head librarian Margaret Osei. “The pilot lets us test whether the demand we see in a petition shows up in the building at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday.”
What the pilot will measure
Library staff will count occupancy each hour after 9 p.m. and survey users during the final examination week. If average late-evening occupancy stays above 60 students, Osei said, the library will ask to make the extended hours permanent for every examination period.
I do my best work between ten and midnight, and until now that meant working in a hallway. This is the single most useful thing the council has gotten done this year.
Tariq Mansour, junior
The council’s academic affairs officer, Grace Tan, cautioned students to treat the pilot as a test they can fail. “If the floors are empty, the hours go back,” she said. “Show up.”
Extended hours begin on the first day of the examination timetable and run Monday to Friday. Quiet-floor rules apply for the entire evening.
How the deal was reached
The sticking point in negotiations was never demand but staffing: keeping two floors open requires at least three staff members on site, and the library’s budget had no room for the additional hours. The compromise, proposed by the council, splits the cost — the library funds one position from its events budget, the council covers the other two from the student activities fund, and trained student volunteers from the library society assist without replacing staff.
Osei confirmed that the cafeteria will keep its coffee machine accessible in the library foyer for the extended hours, a detail that reportedly required its own separate negotiation and which several petition signatories described as the true victory.
