UCR’s libraries are a resource beloved by all with study rooms that can be reserved for quiet time, reference materials aplenty, and just casual seating for you to catch up on work.
Both Orbach and Tomás Rivera maintain the same hours, open from 7:30am to 10:00 pm from Monday through Thursday, 7:30am to 6:00pm on Friday, 9:00am to 5:00 pm on Saturday and from 1:00pm to 9:00pm on Sunday. They both specialize in the circulation of various texts, with Orbach specializing in the life and physical sciences, as well as other STEM resources, and Tomás Rivera provides material for the humanities, social sciences and the arts.
Both libraries are constantly changing, material is added, new features are implemented, and new people are brought into the mix. According to Tiffany Moxham, the Deputy University Librarian, “The library is committed to providing exceptional ongoing services, developing new services whenever possible, and continuous quality improvement of existing services. ”Maintaining these services requires an abundance of manpower to keep the whole system running.
While the library would like to extend hours, it is difficult to do so without having ample staff prepared to run all its services. Once again Moxham states that “a large part of our efforts at the moment, and over an unprecedented extended period of time, has been focused both on recovering employee numbers and providing the onboarding time to develop the skills of new employees.”
ASUCR also passed a resolution during their 7th senate meeting in the fall that called for extended hours at both the Orbach and Tomás Rivera libraries so that they remain open from 7:30am to 11:00 pm from Monday through Friday, 10:00am to 5:00pm on Saturday, and from 1:00pm to 10:00pm on Sunday. On top of that they support expanding the budget so that the library can hire more staff to maintain their extended hours, and to provide the library with further resources to carry more programs for education and wellness.
As for now the library aims to provide extended hours for finals week once again this quarter, making it so that Orbach remains open till 2am. Not only that, they are considering extending hours in general for the spring quarter, meaning that the libraries will be open for longer hours not only during finals but throughout the quarter, and are also considering keeping one library open for 24 hours during finals week.
