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Many people go to Paley's 3rd floor to study in a quiet area. However the floor is getting noisy and noise everyday. People talking on the phones, chatting with their friends, eating meals on the table. And I do not see any body commenting or stopping them from doing so. I've personnally asked some of people to quiet. Can you keep 3rd floor quiet please? Where else do i have to to study quietly on the campus if the library is too loud?

Have you noticed that it's difficult to find a truly quiet public place these days. People on cell phones on public transportation. People talking loudly in movie theatres. People listening to music so loudly you can hear it through their headphones. Noise in public places is a societal issue because in general people are less considerate of their fellow citizens than they used to be. Paley Library - in fact all libraries - are not immune from this problem. A library used to be equated with golden silence, but that is no longer the case.

We appreciate that you are sharing your concerns with us, and it's great that you have attempted to solve the problem by asking others around you to be quiet. What we've heard from our library colleagues at other institutions is that the most effective resolution to noise in the library is when students self-police and police their fellow students. When asked to hold down the noise, most students will politely comply, though we know this is not always the case.

What we're attempting to do about the noise challenge is to use a "zoning" approach. We have specified different areas of the Paley Library as quiet zones or group study (noise-tolerant) zones. For example, the first floor west is a group zone - and noise there is tolerated. However, the east side of the first floor is a quiet zone, and we expect students to study quietly there. The east side of the second level, on the other hand, is a noise-tolerant zone. So please make sure that you are studying in one of the quiet zones. It is possible students will not be aware of which zone they are in. So if you are in a dedicated quiet zone and other students are making noise please do remind them they are in a quiet zone - all these zones are clearly marked when you enter them.

If you find a group of students are being particularly noisy or a single student is speaking loudly into a cell phone, first consider pointing out to the offending party about the quiet zone location. If the student(s) continues to be noisy, please bring it to the attention of a staff member who will intervene. Please bear in mind that at some late hours or on weekends we may not have sufficient staffing to attend to every noise situation.  

Hi! I noticed that nobody really seems to follow the food policy at all. I'm constantly seeing people with chinese food and other pretty smelly stuff not only on the ground floor but in the stacks as well. It's not only the smell that's gross but also the "eating sounds" and the mess that's usually left behind. I've even seen people come to the library with food, eat it, and leave. Any way that the policy could be more prominently displayed?

Thanks for sharing your concerns about students eating what our policy refers to as "messy or aromatic" foods when in the library. We too are concerned when students ignore the policy rather than self-police their food consumption in Paley Library. Our policy does allow covered beverage containers and small snacks. As you point out, it can not only be distracting or even disturbing to other students, but food and beverage messes make the Library a less enjoyable place to study and it invites bugs and mice to boldly go wherever they can find food.

We currently display the policy on posters on every level of the library. This semester we added reminder cards about the food/beverage policy on computer tables throughout the first floor. Despite our efforts we acknowledge that it will be impossible to enforce this one hundred percent in a building of Paley's size. Although the door guards will flag students bringing in obvious bags or containers of food, many students can easily conceal it in their book bags. Our food/beverage policy is one of self-enforcement, which may not always work. It is not our intention to police the policy and ask those violating it to leave the building. We want everyone to feel welcome in the building.

Please know that this isn't a problem unique to Paley Library. We hear the same concerns about food and beverages from our library colleagues around the country. However, given the lack of good food consumption areas on campus and the food truck culture of Temple, it really does amplify the problem at Paley Library. What we have heard from our colleagues is that the best solution is for students to police each other. Simply reminding another student about the food policy may be the most effective way to encourage your fellow students to follow the policies. You might remind other students that the Library has a cafe on the first floor which is open for food consumption. 

If you see an egregious violation of the policy you may wish to bring it to a staff member's attention. A staff member is able to bring the policy to the attention of students, but again, we typically will not ask students to discard their food or leave the building. We hope that over time more students will voluntarily observe the policy - and over the past two academic years - we have seen a significant reduction in the amount of food being consumed in the Library - thanks to both our cafe and signage. It may be a bit of exaggeration to say that "nobody follows the food policy at all." Just look at all the food being consumed in the cafe. Notice how many students are only eating snacks - no messy foods. The vast majority of the students in Paley Library are following the policy. Unfortunately, there is a minority that ignores the policy. We hope to do better in the future with help from you and other students.

It's really cold in here. Can it be at least a little warmer? It doesn't have to be this cold.

Ah, if only we were able to achieve the ideal temperature setting in every area of Paley Library. But given the nature of our 165,000 square foot facility, and the idiosyncrasies of our heating and cooling system, were we to ask facilities to come and warm up the building, we might regret that the very next day by experiencing too warm temperatures. While we do our best to regulate the temperature across the entire Paley building, there are going to be situations where it may be too cold or too warm for individual preferences in any particular spot in the facility. But it would be a challenge to warm up or cool down any specific zone without perhaps affecting the temperature in another zone. The Temple University's facilities department regulates the building temperature on a seasonal basis. This can be a challenge if it is unseasonably warm or cold for a few days.

If you find the area where you like to study a bit cold from time to time, bring along your favorite hoody. And if you do want us to follow up on what you think is a particular problem, please be sure to let us know exactly what part of the Paley building you think needs a temperature adjustment. We will then follow up.

I'm sitting here using a computer and there's a group nearby that is kind of noisy and they're watching a video with loud music. I'm reluctant to ask them to stop. I don't want to get into a confrontation. What can I do to get some quiet in the library?

We want your visit to and time spent in the Paley Library to be productive and peaceful. In other words, we want you to have a good library experience - and we want you to tell others about it and come back again. So never hesitate to let us know what we - and by "we" that means any library staff member at any desk or at work in the library or someone in our administrative office on the mezzanine level - can do to make your time in the library more satisfying.

Were you in one of our quiet zones? The computer commons on the first floor west (13th Street side) is not designated for quiet study so you can expect more noise there. However, we do ask everyone to use headphones if listening to music or any type of audio. If someone is creating computer noise that is disturbing you feel free to ask a library staff member at any service desk to intervene on your behalf. There are quiet zones throughout the Paley Library. Many of the quiet zones have computers. You can also borrow a laptop or netbook computer from the Circulation Desk in Tuttleman for use anywhere in the library. Take a computer to your own quiet spot.

In the future, consider simply asking your fellow students to hold down the noise, especially if it's a quiet zone. Most students are courteous and will be glad to comply with your request. If that doesn't work or you would rather not ask, again, seek assistance from a member of the Library staff.

Is there any chance that the library could be open a bit longer next weekend since finals are on the Monday right after it? It would really help a lot of students to have access to a quiet study area.

Thanks for your suggestion. We always have extended hours for finals during the fall and spring semesters, but not during the summer sessions. We can't offer as many extra hours as we do during the regular semesters, but to accomodate requests for additional hours we are going to extend the building hours from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm on Sunday, June 28. So you'll have a few extra hours in the Library before finals on Monday. We hope this helps, and we'll keep this in mind for future summer sessions.

In general I love using the library, particularly as a place for quiet study, but there's one incredibly frustrating aspect of this during finals. I really like the extended hours during final weeks, but workers in the study areas should respect students' need for quiet. I was trying to work in the library last night and workers were talking loudly and then I heard a worker playing music too loundly. This sort of thing makes the extended hours kind of pointless, especially in the quiet zones. Is there any way this could be addressed?

We are glad to hear you appreciate our keeping the Paley Library open around the clock during finals week, and it's great to hear you and other students are taking advantage of the extended hours. We are sorry to hear that your library experience is being greatly diminished by the noise being made by some workers. Our goal is for you and others to have the best possible library experience we can deliver - so clearly we need to improve this situation. We absolutely will address the problem you have described. Within hours of receiving your suggestion the appropriate supervisors and administrators were contacted in order to share your concerns. We have asked that all those who work in the Library are reminded about the need to maintain the quiet atmosphere - at all times but especially during extended hours.

If you continue to experience this problem in Paley Library please contact Steven Bell directly for further assistance. 

All the doors in Paley-- particularly the ones in the stairwell and the elevator lobbies-- need to have the handles changed to vertical ones on the side that say "Pull." The standard is vertical for pull, horizontal for push. That way, you end endless minor embarrassment for people pushing on pull doors. It is a simple and considerate thing to do-- not the cheap and lazy set-up you have now. You could use the current handles or invest a little in handles that visually command pulling.

We can't argue with you on this one. What you point out is a basic design feature of most buildings (are you an architecture student?). In fact some design sites suggest that any door that requires a push should have no handle at all, but simply a plate where the hand is placed for the push. We don't know what they were thinking when they installed the doors back in the sixties.

Now, what can we do about this? We will pass your observation on to our facilities manager to see what's involved in a changeover of this sort. Chances are it will not be cheap or simple to do, and in that case we must ask ourselves if it is the best use of students' tuition dollars. And we have to keep in mind that over the last 40 or so years, with thousands upon thousands of people going in and out of Paley, this particular problem has hardly ever been pointed out to us. 

I will point out that when you come to the first stairwell door opposite the Ask Here Desk - we got that one right!

I often work on the third floor of Paley and it's really frustrating when I can't find an outlet to plug in my laptop. Any chance you can add more outlets on the upper levels?

We agree that the study areas of Paley are woefully short of electric outlets.  Most library buildings built in the mid-1960s suffer from the same problem.  Back then no could have anticipated students with laptops, cellphones, iPods and loads of other devices needing constant power. Adding a lot of outlets is impossible in the current building since we are now at full electrical capacity and cannot add any more circuits to existing panels. 

Nonetheless within the last month we squeezed in a few added outlets at locations in the  2nd and 3rd floor study areas where we recently removed shelving and installed carpet and comfortable tablet arm chairs.  We also added three more outlets on the 3rd floor in an area of large study tables that has attracted laptops users.  Four outlets were also added in the reserved graduate/faculty carrel room, a location where there used to be one outlet for approximately 50 carrels.  Even these few outlets were very expensive given Temple's labor costs.