Just like new NW students are settling into their class schedules and learning to navigate the campus, so are the NW librarians settling into their new library.
In the first fall semester since moving from a cramped classroom, thousands of books are being shipped to NW Campus to add to the new Walsh Library that opened this January.
The previous library, which was a classroom in NW05 the librarians call the “swing space,” was a temporary placement during campus renovations over the past few years.
“We had to pare down our collection from about 27,000 items to about 3,000 to 5,000,” NW library director Alexis Potemkin said. “The real challenges were moving into that smaller space and kind of surviving there for a few years.”
Now the librarians get to help decide what they want the library to look like and offer to students.
“Designing a new space, it definitely presents some challenges, but it’s more positive challenges because there’s some excitement around,” Potemkin said. “OK, this is our new space. What do we do?’ ”
The new library on the second floor of NW02, under the Learning Commons, has computers, study rooms, chairs and desks for students to lounge or study and even kits of various crafts for students to check out.
“With the swing space, we were pretty limited in terms of how much traffic we could have,” librarian Jadelyn Ibarra-Borgonia said. “So yeah, it’s just been really great to see all the students coming in, as well as the faculty.”
NW student Bronwyn Wright said he had visited the old library in the past, but he prefers the new space.
“There’s a lot of different places to study, and I think that because there’s a lot of different help in the library, like the tutors and stuff,” he said. “It makes it feel a little less overwhelming to come in here in case I need help.”
A 2026 Stanford study on tutoring since the COVID-19 pandemic found a connection between consistent tutoring and students earning higher grades.
“I don’t even know that you can measure the impact it has,” Potemkin said. “They (students) came in not even knowing how to use our resources. They left knowing about stuff they didn’t know we had and what they needed.”
While the library circulates thousands of new books into its collection, Potemkin said the library doesn’t have as many options when it comes to textbooks.
“I can’t go to the bookstore and buy textbooks, but if faculty members give the library copies of the textbooks, we’ll put them on reserves,” he said.
Potemkin said that aside from the academic resources available to students, he also wanted to establish a place where students could “just be.”
“We are certainly a library of books, but we can also be a library of things,” he said. “That can be DVDs. That can be board games. That can be those maker kits. … It was important that we begin to bring these things that connect students more with the campus and promote community and engagement.”
One thing Ibarra-Borgonia said she really enjoys about the library is that she gets to add some personalization to her workplace.
Every week, the librarians write a different question on a whiteboard for students to answer. These questions are often funny, like “If you were a pirate, what would be your pirate name?” Or “Which would you rather get rid of: laundry or dishes?”
“It helps because I think it draws a lot of students in,” Ibarra-Borgonia said. “It makes them feel comfortable in the space. Also, it makes us feel comfortable in the space because we’re kind of like putting our own touches on what’s representative of us.”
