Penn State Libraries Today and in 1950

         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