The Ithaca College Library will be open 24 hours a day from 10 a.m. on Sundays through 10 p.m. on Fridays, beginning Sept. 8. It will be open on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. All regular facilities, such as printing and multimedia, will be available during these extended hours.
In coming weeks, the library will also implement print-management software to monitor the number of pages printed by users in preparation for limiting the number of free printouts for students as a cost-cutting measure.
Users will be required to enter their Netpass credentials to print documents from library computers. The software has already been installed in the computer labs in Friends 110, Williams and the Center for Health Sciences.
College Librarian Lisabeth Chabot said students will not have a limit on the number of pages they are allowed to print until Summer 2014.
“We won’t have a quota this year,” she said. “We are going to be gathering usage data, and we will make a recommendation [on the appropriate user allowance] to the president’s council.”
The decision to keep the library open 24 hours during the week comes following several years of feedback from students, Chabot said. She said the library has hired seven new student workers and managers to staff the library during these extended hours in two or four hour shifts.
Ben Hogben, the manager of access services, said the use of library resources increased over the course of two years. Between 2010 and 2012, the library patron counter, located at the library’s entrance, showed the average number of people using the building went from 9,000 per week to 11,000.
Senior Lindsey Williams, a resident assistant in the First Year Residential Experience, said these extended hours will be particularly useful, because several study lounges have been converted into temporary bedrooms to accommodate the larger-than-expected Class of 2017. She said this leaves only the smaller TV lounges for general use.
“There will probably be a struggle with what the TV lounges [in residence halls] will be used for,” she said. “Will it be for studying, or will it be for people who just want to hang out? If the library is available [24 hours], this will help the students that are in the TV lounge so they can have that space to hang out and not worry about being quiet for other students.”
