Bracken Library is 'Second Home' to Students During Finals Week

Ball State University’s Final Examination Week is in progress and the whole campus feels different. For the past few weeks, students are busy in the Library completing term papers and group projects, meeting in study groups to review notes and quiz each other, finalizing research for creative projects, and also taking online final examinations.

It is very satisfying as a librarian and administrator to see our students and faculty using the Libraries during finals as well as throughout the semester. This activity shows that the University Libraries are a destination for research, learning, and friends. The constant use of the University Libraries’ extensive resources (personnel, collections, technology, spaces for studying, meeting rooms) reassures our Libraries’ professional and paraprofessional personnel of the value and importance of our fundamental service objective to support students’ pursuits of academic success and greater personal awareness as well as our faculty’s endeavors for the creation of new knowledge, classroom instruction, and enhancement of academic learning outcomes.

OVERHEARD ON CAMPUS:Recent Quotes about the University Libraries Reported in The Ball State Daily News

I always come to the library throughout the semester, and then during Finals Week everyone comes and takes all my spots. There are so many people it’s like a social occasion. It’s like they think it’s Club Bracken.

(Luke M. Boggess, junior, responds to the question, “What stresses you out the
most about Finals Week?” Dec. 12, 2008, pg. 9).

It’s coming to that time of the semester where everyone is living at their second home, Bracken Library.

(Anonymous student letter to the editor, Dec. 10, 2008, pg. 4).