Lamont Plans Longer Exam Period Hours

Lamont Library will repeat its mid-year exam experiment by extending the library hours during the spring examination period, Philip J. McNiff, director of Lamont, announced yesterday.

The program of special hours will begin on Sunday, May 22, when Lamont will be open from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. Thereafter, the library will be open from 8:45 a.m. until midnight Monday through Friday until the end of the exam period.

Hours on Saturdays will remain the same, 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m., but the library will be open from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m. on Sunday, May 29, and Sunday, June 5.

McNiff indicated that the late hours during the exam period were being continued because of the successful results of the program in January. "We found that the heaviest load on students came just a few days before their exams and during the exam period," he explained.

Reports on the success of the lengthened hours at mid-years show that students made constant use of the library on Sundays. Daring Sunday, Jan. 23, the buslest Sunday of the period, 468 students were in the library at 9 p.m., as opposed to 839, the maximum number which the staff has counted on ordinary week days.

McNiff remarked that freshmen had more need of the later hours than the upperclassmen since they lacked facilities comparable to the House Libraries.

Lamont tried a similar project last year which lasted for five weeks instead of the three this year.

When students discovered last full that the Faculty was considering not repeating the program which it had tried last spring, Stephen L. Reynolds '55 formed a library committee from the Student Council to determine the need for library extesions. The committee's report included a survey of poor study conditions in dormitories and the inadequacy of House Libraries.