Shelved Books

Widener Library refuses to let undergraduates check out back issues of scholarly publications, bound volumes of pamphlets, and almost all periodicals or occasional materials. Undergraduates can use these works only in the library--and then for only five days (the works are put on a special shelf) instead of the 30 allowed for books that circulate.

Yet these publications are not in any greater demand. Nor are they, for the most part, more valuable than many, out-of-print books which undergraduates can take with them.

The increasing pressure on undergraduates to produce original research--in tutorial or on a thesis--makes more and more perplexing the nonsense of distinguishing them from the rest of the scholarly community. It is also becoming more and more maddening--maddening to watch the lights of Widener's reading room signal its 10 p.m. closing when one is only half way through a 200-page article, maddening to take extensive notes on a work one could just as well read at leisure in one's room.

By abandoning the restriction on undergraduates' checking out publications, Widener could make studying a great deal easier. It should do so immediately.