One of my reading class assignments was visiting Foxdale
Village, which is a retirees’ community. I made a wonderful interview with Mrs.
Charlotte De Lissovoy. We talked about several interesting things about her
life. Also, I asked her some questions that I was curious about. One of these
questions was about where she is from. She told me that she was from Altoona,
PA, but she spent most of her life in State College. She studied at Penn State
University, and she was a freshman in 1950. From this point I asked her about Penn State and how the
student life looked like during that time. She said that they had a wonderful
time, but it was very different from nowadays. One of the big differences is
technology. For example, at that time students used to be depending more on
libraries. They studied and did research in them. Comparing with today, the
Internet made a big change for students. It allowed them not to go to the
library to study. Therefore, the number of students has decreased in libraries.
All of that made me interested about the libraries of Penn
State at that time. Therefore, I searched about them in 1950 using Penn State
Libraries’ Website. I found a news article about Penn State Libraries’ hours at
that time. Most of them started at 8 A.M. and closed at 10 P.M. (Summer Collegian)
These hours are similar to libraries’ hours today. However, libraries today
have technological services that were not available at that time.
References
Summer Collegian (Tuesday,
July 11, 1950). Libraries set Weekly Hours. Page 7. http://digitalnewspapers.libraries.psu.edu/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=collegian&BaseHref=DCG/1950/07/11&PageLabelPrint=&EntityId=Ar00700&ViewMode=GIF