It’s Sunday, and obviously with nothing to do (let me pretend I have to finish reading The Odyssey in 2 more days) I decided to do something cool, in the most nerdy definition of the word. I decided to go visit all the libraries on campus, and here is my review of them. Not quite all of them, since it was a Sunday and not all were open, but I figured these were the important ones since they were open all week.
Cabot library
:
This is purely a dull study place with barely any books and I would hazard to even call a library. It was a lot more modern, with the glass windows and cocoons of mugging spaces that will embrace you and warp the sense of time once you step into them. The only personality injected here is through sad attempts at colourful couches and communal study spaces, which I am skeptical would even be used at all.
Silence rating: you can hear the air pressure, or the figurative pressure from the guy sitting opposite you, but the peace here almost guarantees productivity.
Law school library
:
Spacious grand and very light academia. I love this library (it might be my favourite). There are all stacks of books of all kinds here, and they are very aligned, like perfect teeth never missing a gap. People surprisingly pop up behind wooden study cells because it really is not that populated.
Silence rating: well ventilated and filled with the sounds of people shuffling around, moving their notes, and generally being human. The kind of silence that awes you a bit with the grandeur of the scale of the place.
Gutman library
:
Stuffy and smells of old books, with low ceilings and lower traffic. Lights are motion sensor and it was dark when I first entered, the first visitor of the day. By virtue of it being so far out, you are guaranteed an entire level to yourself.
Silence rating: the outside world streams in through the wide windows so subtly you might only subconsciously realise there is a different quality to the silence.
Kennedy school
:
Small and cramped and bare skeletal shelves that gap between the books and reveal the room on the other side. Spacious study areas outside seems better. This library is practical and full of graduate school sensibilities, but I would not want to study here.
Silence rating: sounds like a new library, without much deafening weight of history or personality. Boring kind of quiet.
Baker library/Bloomberg Center
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Looks like a hotel lobby with its checkerboard floors and quaint lights. High and spacious and dark academia vibes. I really like it here because it has the scale of a rich nobility’s summer house that overlooks a quiet world outside through the great windows. Quite far out though, unless you are in the Allston campus.
Silence rating: has a quality of hollowness such that anyone walking would create a slight echo. Very breathable and peaceful.
Widener library
:
Insane library that feels like a monument in itself. Well lit and cozy, and full of life with the filled rows of students. This is the kind of library that inspires intellectual ambition. Stacks, where do many books are kept, is eerie with the presence of the combined intellectualism of the dead authors. It is also so quiet that I understand why sex in the stacks is a thing.
Silence rating: never really quiet. Full of sighs of distressed students, and the general background thrum of the ventilation.
Lamont library
:
We end with the infamous mugging library, where its frequent visitors are called Lamonsters. Very geometrical and angular, full of sharp corners on head rooms and the windows and the pockets of study spaces. Warm bright lighting.
Silence rating: so quiet you cannot breathe, and the students studying there seemed to have teleported into their seasoned seats noiselessly, not daring to disturbing the stale silence. Would not study here or I might go deaf.
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