Support for Excellence in Service at Mann Library
When the renovated Mann Library building re-opened its doors in the fall of 2007, one of its most anticipated features was a dedicated quiet study space for students completing advanced degrees. The David R. Atkinson Graduate Student Study Room on the library’s third floor (map it) provides roomy desks, lockable shelves, white board, table space and other facilities that support intensive project work. Opportunities to reserve the desks in the area for the academic year are open to graduate students at the beginning of each semester.
The Atkinson Graduate Student Study Room commemorates the generosity of CALS alumnus David Atkinson ‘60. Giving by Mr. Atkinson and other generous friends of Mann Library has helped to build the Mann Library Excellence Fund, a major resource that allows the library to make the many different kinds of investments needed to effectively facilitate excellence in research, teaching and scientific communication.
In the Atkinson Graduate Student Study Room, the Excellence Fund helped realize the space's completion by funding the purchase of some of its most popular features, including an extensive array of lockers that allow graduate students to safely store the essential tools of their trade—laptops, portable scanners, other computing equipment, books, paperwork—and to count on Mann Library as their fully equipped and reliable “base camp” on campus.
"I use the graduate study area because it is spacious, airy, and very convenient; I store my books and study materials in the nearby lockers,” is the way that Shooshan Danagoulian, a doctoral degree candidate in economics and mother of a busy two-year old toddler, describes the facilities of the Atkinson Graduate Student Study Room. "With departments strapped for office space," says Shooshan, "Mann's space for graduate students allows me to create an office for myself"—a service that can come as a virtual lifeline for time-strapped grad students navigating the shoals of a demanding course of study and research.
Of course, much the same can be said of the impact that the Mann Excellence Fund has on the library’s ability to pursue our mission of service to a world-class university. As students like Shooshan can attest, Mann Library simply wouldn’t be the same without it.