The William Allen White Library has been working on remodeling the fourth floor this semester into a new study space for students.
The librarians worked on creating names and sent out a poll for students to choose their favorite.
Students can take the poll at https://goo.gl/ptdRf5 or find it on the library website. The poll will close Friday.
“We wanted this to be a participative process,” said Terri Summey, professor of university libraries and archives. “In a staff meeting we did some brainstorming with the entire staff for…some ideas for names. We took those ideas and did a survey monkey that we sent out. We wanted to see which ones rose to the top, which stood out and what students could suggest. From those we took the top five…and that’s what is in our last poll to see which name ends up on top.”
The possible names are “Hornet Hive,” “Hornet Hangout,” “Scholar’s Spot,” “Genius Floor” and “Hive Mind.”
“Hornet Hive sounds good,” said Pekka Viiru, international student and information systems major. “It rhymes and some of the ones are kind of geeky, like ‘genius floor.’”
Hive Mind is currently in the lead and the librarians and workers at the library have chosen to not vote in the poll.
“We want students to feel like it’s their floor,” Summey said. “There’s lots of ways you can study, like individual booth things and there’s hopefully, something for everybody. That’s why we do these contests and have students help us come up with the name. We want students to see this as their space to go up and study and use.”
The floor was remodeled for students to use as study space.
“There was a desire from the student body to have more study space and I think that is happening across the nation,” said Michelle Hammond, dean of university libraries and archives. “Students are really needing to get away from their dorm rooms and find space to concentrate. I think the fourth floor was created to meet that request.”
The grand opening for the floor and unvelining of the name will happen Monday, Dec. 12 at 4 p.m.
“There’s a lot of really cool furniture up there and Honors (College) has a piece of it in the back,” Summey said. “We moved all of their furniture back there. There’s study rooms that could have some groups back there but they’re not going to be noisy study rooms. They’ll have to be quiet ones.”