Lydia M. Olson Library

"Last I checked, libraries were supposed to have books. Well, not this one. They've got a couple of shelves of books that they managed to fit into a corner of the rapidly-deteriorating and likely asbestos-infested building conventionally known as "Gries Hall." If you want to browse any of their other hundreds of thousands of books that are advertised, you're out of luck. "Not to worry," they'll tell you. "You can still request the books and check them out!" While true, one of the most beneficial characteristics of a university library organized in the fashion of this one is the ability to quickly skim many books on a similar topic and see which ones you may want. You can no longer do that, and the extent to which you can easily access relevant information and discover new and unexpected but useful information in the process has been astronomically decreased. There's gotta be something good to say about this though, right? I mean, at least you can still print stuff! While true, the ease of access to printing in the new "library" comes nowhere close to what it once was. Instead of strolling through on your way to class, you now have to walk all the way across campus to access the printers. And if you're lucky enough to be printing from a Mac, well, forget your luck here! You'll have to walk to the building, wait for the elevator to take you to the ground floor, log on to the public computer there, send the job to the printer, take the elevator back up, and finally collect your print job, all in the time it would've taken you to print ten jobs at the old library, attend class, and walk into town and back. This all may sound fairly negative, but I'm not lying when I say that I really tried to find something nice in this new situation. At least something that wasn't appallingly worse. One thing I was happy about was the ability to still use the study rooms. Sure, there's hardly any study space compared to what it once was, but I figured I'd use it to my advantage and go get a room to memorize some of my lines in. I reserved a room, showed up at the right time, and I kid you not: NONE OF THE STUDY ROOMS HAVE ANY DOORS ON THEM. Meaning that they're just as useless as any other lobby area on campus to work. You can hardly collaborate at all! At this point I'm unsure what the "library" is even there for, since it seems to be good for pretty much the same things that the run-down Gries Hall would be doing anyway: aka nothing whatsoever. One would think that rising tuition would guarantee comparable access to the services we had before. Let us browse the books! Put doors on the rooms! Fix the printers! It shouldn't be that hard if there's money to remodel almost all of Harden Hall. But it seems like that's too much to ask."

"Great place to study if you’re a student, plenty of space and privacy if need be"

"Very calm atmosphere I enjoy checking out with the employees, they are very kind and welcoming. Good place to get and request the books and films you need for Northerns academics and personal reads! They also have a VR area and puppy therapy once in a while which is awesome."

"Everything is fine except the temperature. I try to come and study, but end up leaving because it's always freezing. Turn up the heat!!"

"First!! Great place for books, cheap printing, and other library essentials. Attending this library was life changing and Lydia M Olson would be proud of this fine establishment under her nomenclature."