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Re: Thanks HN

#21

Post by tokenadult »

impendia wrote: post #10
petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

I can't speak for Germany, but in the United States practices vary. You can't just walk into the library at the University of Wisconsin, but at North Carolina State you can.

As the other kind reply to your comment said, sometimes access to open stacks and circulating privileges are distinct. Here in Minnesota, any member of the general public can enter the open stacks of all the University of Minnesota Libraries. I can readily gain circulating privileges as a "friend of the library" for a small fee, made smaller in my case because there is discounted membership fee for being a friend of the library for members of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association.

When I lived in Washington State, I had no particular connection with U Dub, but I could also walk onto campus and walk into the library shelving areas with no problem. When I wanted to circulate books, I looked up the state administrative regulations (it helped that I was working as a lawyer, so I knew how to look those up) and found out that a state regulation basically allows most state residents to obtain circulating privileges at University of Washington libraries for the payment of a small fee. That library has a GREAT collection of materials on east Asian languages, and I circulated some of those while I was living in Washington state.

Re: Thanks HN

#22

Post by rmoriz »

petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

All university libraries in Germany are open to the general public if you have an ID card/passport.

For some libraries you have to pay a small fee to get an access card. The mentioned Grimm Zentrum/HU library is free of charge:

"The Humboldt University Library is a scientific library open to the general public. Every person over sixteen years of age and resident in Germany may register to use it in accordance with the Library's Benutzungsordnung (Regulations of Use)." => see http://www.ub.hu-berlin.de/using-the-library/registration

Some libraries limit the borrowing of books (depends on the library) to university members (usually because of high demand) but you can almost always read the book while at the library.

Of course it's not allowed to do commercial work like coding on your startup, but if you don't annoy the people, probably nobody will care...

Re: Thanks HN

#23

Post by artursapek »

dnlk wrote: post #12
petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

At my university everybody can just walk into the library during normal hours. After that, you need a (photo id) library card (which you can get right there in the library for 10 euros). This card not only allows you 24 hour access to the building itself, but to also loan books, get access to journals and newspapers, etc... I certainly can't speak for every university library here in germany, but I have so far seen q…

Wow, 24 hour access? Damn.

I feel like in the states it really varies. Brown university and RISD (down the hill) both require a Brown or RISD ID to get in but in high school in Seattle I did all of my research for history in University of Washington's largest library which is open to the public. I sometimes wish any of these were open 24 hours though.

Re: Thanks HN

#24

Post by donald_draper »

rmoriz wrote: post #22
petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

All university libraries in Germany are open to the general public if you have an ID card/passport. For some libraries you have to pay a small fee to get an access card. The mentioned Grimm Zentrum/HU library is free of charge: "The Humboldt University Library is a scientific library open to the general public. Every person over sixteen years of age and resident in Germany may register to use it in accordance with th…

To work at Grimm Library, you don't even need an id or anything. Just go there. But they have some rules about main times of the day like 8-19 reserved for actual students - although I never experienced anybody controlling it.

I go there for anti-procrastination as well, it's great.

Re: Thanks HN

#25

Post by ugh »

rmoriz wrote: post #22
petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

All university libraries in Germany are open to the general public if you have an ID card/passport. For some libraries you have to pay a small fee to get an access card. The mentioned Grimm Zentrum/HU library is free of charge: "The Humboldt University Library is a scientific library open to the general public. Every person over sixteen years of age and resident in Germany may register to use it in accordance with th…

… and those rules are quite often not strictly enforced. It’s usually no problem for anyone to walk right in and start reading books. As long as you behave appropriately for a library it’s no problem.

Re: Thanks HN

#26

Post by TillE »

donald_draper wrote: post #24
rmoriz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All university libraries in Germany are open to the general public if you have an ID card/passport. For some libraries you have to pay a small fee to get an access card. The mentioned Grimm Zentrum/HU library is free of charge: "The Humboldt University Library is a scientific library open to the general public. Every person over sixteen years of age and resident in Germany may register to use it in accordance with th…

To work at Grimm Library, you don't even need an id or anything. Just go there. But they have some rules about main times of the day like 8-19 reserved for actual students - although I never experienced anybody controlling it. I go there for anti-procrastination as well, it's great.

Some of the university libraries in Berlin are quite strict about what you're allowed to bring in (ie, no bags of any size). Fortunately, the Amerika-Gedenk-Bibliothek is close by and if they have such policies, they certainly don't enforce them.

Haven't been to the Grimm yet, but I remember passing by on the S-Bahn maybe a year ago and being excited about the huge new library under construction...I'm not in Mitte very often.

Re: Thanks HN

#27

Post by bane »

If you live in the Northern Virginia Area, you can hit the phenomenal Johnson Center at George Mason University.

Private group rooms (with whiteboards), a semi-isolated reference area for even more quiet, couches, coffee tables, power at most tables, a movie theater, coffee bar, cafeteria (with everything from a taco bell to chinese food), convenience store, two banks (last I checked), a pretty good uni book store, art exhibitions, a halfway decent restaurant on the top floor and a computer store, parking decks are pretty close and relatively cheap.

If even has a private prayer area in case you need to call to a higher power for help with a particularly difficult bug.

Wifi requires you to be a student (last I checked), but tether to your phone and you're pretty much all set.

If you're working with a distributed team and don't want to shell out $3-4 grand a month on office space, just pay for parking once or twice a week and use this facility.

(also, if the Johnson Center is full-up, there's always the Fenwick library across campus that can be even more private since fewer people use it, and I believe most of the technical reference books are stored in the stacks there)

Re: Thanks HN

#28

Post by impendia »

matsur wrote: post #19
impendia wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for Germany, but in the United States practices vary. You can't just walk into the library at the University of Wisconsin, but at North Carolina State you can.

You _can_ just walk into the library at the University of Wisconsin. There is only one library on the Madison campus (Memorial Library) that requires an ID to enter. That leaves 49 other libraries on campus open to anyone.

Fair enough, I was thinking of Memorial. And, for that matter, I was thinking of one particular library at NC State which may have been for math and science only.

Re: Thanks HN

#29

Post by LeafStorm »

impendia wrote: post #28
matsur wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You _can_ just walk into the library at the University of Wisconsin. There is only one library on the Madison campus (Memorial Library) that requires an ID to enter. That leaves 49 other libraries on campus open to anyone.

Fair enough, I was thinking of Memorial. And, for that matter, I was thinking of one particular library at NC State which may have been for math and science only.

Nah, at NC State, D. H. Hill (the main library) is open to the public during normal hours. The "satellite libraries" are Design, Textiles, Natural Resources, and Veterinary Medicine, and I'm not sure whether those are open access or not.

I also don't know whether the new Hunt Engineering Library is going to be public access or not, but I hope it will be because it's going to be awesome.

Re: Thanks HN

#30

Post by coolgeek »

paxswill wrote: post #13
petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

In the US it depends, but I'd venture a guess and say most public university libraries are open at least regularly to the general public. Most of the schools in my state are on this [1] list, and most law libraries I've encountered are also open to the public as well. After hours access is usually restricted to those with a library card though. [1] http://www.gpoaccess.gov/libraries.html

Apparently gpoaccess is no longer being updated and is shutting down in 2012. It looks like the new system is:

http://catalog.gpo.gov/fdlpdir/FDLPdir.jsp?mode=-2

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