The Ewha Centennial Library recently went through major changes to provide a better study environment for students at Ewha. The school installed new facilities including separated study tables, multiple carrels, new bookshelves, and smart sofas on the third floor of the library.
In order to promote the changes made at the school library, Ewha uploaded photos of the Ewha Centennial Library after the renovation on March 11. After seeing these posts on Instagram, Kim Gyu-ri, a senior in the Division of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, visited the school library to see the changes even during her leave of absence.
Kim, who has been to the school library several times before, stated that Ewha’s library used to be focused on providing reading spaces rather than study spaces. She recalled that many of her friends usually went to the first floor or the basement floor when they had to prepare for quizzes and exams. Only those who could not find seats in the reading room went upstairs to look for the remaining spots.
After visiting the renewed library, Kim felt that students at Ewha were now given significantly more spaces to concentrate on their studies other than that of the lower floors. What caught Kim’s attention the most among the third floor’s latest facilities was the smart sofa.
A smart sofa has a height-adjustable table attached to one of its arms where students could put books, papers, or laptops with ease. It also provides a book lamp, has outlets for electronic devices, and supports wireless charging for smartphones. Kim found the wireless charging feature especially helpful as she frequently forgot to bring smartphone chargers and power banks with her to school.
Lee Eun-ji, a senior in the Scranton Honors Program, shared a rather different opinion regarding the renovation that took place at the Ewha Centennial Library. Although she was glad to hear that the school provided more spaces to study on the library’s third floor, Lee pointed out that the library still needs improvement.
When Lee first heard of the renovation, she assumed the school was certainly going to replace the wheeled chairs with stationary chairs. She felt highly distracted with the chair constantly moving when she was studying or reading a book at the library, and many of her friends often complained about the same issue as well.
Despite the unresolved inconvenience, Lee highly recommended freshmen at Ewha to take an active interest in a school competition entitled Ewha Ecrire. At Ewha Ecrire, students are given a list of books to choose from and have to submit a book report that is relevant to the given themes. All selections of the books for the competition are available and displayed at the Ewha Centennial Library.
“I ended up only being awarded the third place at the competition but received 150,000 Korean won as prize money, which was surprisingly higher than I expected,” Lee said.
Lee also suggested freshmen to give a regular visit to the second floor of the library. The library’s second floor offers course reserves assigned by professors from every department and division. As freshmen have a keen interest in their majors and subjects that they are going to learn at school, Lee believed books which are carefully selected by professors would be a great study guide.