Libraries Are ‘In’ for School Crowd

The way Nancy Yin and her friends tell it, when school lets out at 2:35 p.m., they practically have to race to the Main Street library a block away if they hope to claim a table for studying.

At the library, which seats more than 200 people, chairs are snapped up minutes after classes end at the high school. Students often try to sit on the floor between book racks.

“If you get there late, you won’t get a seat,” said Yin, 16, a junior at Alhambra High School.

The city-run library tends to have more student patrons after school than many other public libraries because it is just a block from school, said library director Deborah Clark. And rising enrollment at the high school--which now has 3,300 students--has also increased library use.

“We were turning away a lot of students,” Clark said.

Because the majority of library users are students, the library board appealed for help from Alhambra Unified School District officials, who recently agreed to extend hours at the school library on campus by nearly two hours, to 5 p.m.

The expanded schedule, first offered on a trial basis last spring, has proven extremely popular with students, said school librarian Marilyn Mallow. The library has added an extra aide to staff the longer hours, and the 111-seat library is often filled to capacity, she said.

The students are “looking for not just a place to work, but also a place to settle themselves, to study with friends,” Clark said. “Kind of a student-union place is what they are looking for.”

At the high school one recent afternoon, teen-agers rushed into the library immediately after class, saving seats for friends or lining up at the copying machine and book checkout counter.

Some, such as junior Luc Hi, wanted a chance to do his homework before going home to baby-sit his niece and nephew. His friend Nguyen Hua said he preferred to study at the library because at home he is often distracted by his 10-year-old sister--and frequent trips to the refrigerator.

Hua said he preferred the smaller school library to the busier public library. “It’s more private here than the public library,” he said.

For Kimberly Halversen, 15, the extended hours offered her a convenient and quiet place to prepare for an English exam the next day.

Huddled with friends at another table was Scott Liu, who was working on a chemistry assignment with his classmates. He and his friends usually go to the public library, Liu said, but they decided to use the school library that afternoon because they needed a place to talk.

He said the group was thrown out of the public library once for talking too loudly. The school library also tries to keep talking down to a whisper, but it is more tolerant of group discussions, he said.

Librarians do not consider the students, mostly in their late teens, as part of the growing national trend in which parents sometimes use libraries as child-care centers for latchkey children.

“We’re talking about an age group that’s able to be in their house on their own,” Clark said.

She is pleased that the school board responded quickly by offering to extend hours at the school library. By offering students an alternative to the public library, she said, the district helped make more space available at the public library for other patrons.