But Glazer, who pledged during his campaign to fight for extended library hours, says he will still push for Lamont to stay open later.

The council is currently conducting a survey that Glazer hopes will shed light on students’ study habits, their sleep routines and their demand for late-night study space. The council plans to draft a position paper based on the results by next month.

“Harvard should not be making students stress about where to study,” Glazer says. “They already have enough to stress about.”

BEYOND HARVARD YARD

Several of the nation’s top universities currently provide study spaces for students working late at night.

Rockefeller Library—Brown University’s primary liberal arts library, which students affectionately call “the Rock”—has extended its hours over the past decade and now closes at 2 a.m., Sunday through Thursday nights.

During these late hours, one security guard and two student workers staff the library, and most library employees leave by midnight, according to Florence Doksansky, Brown’s interim university library director,

And additional maintenance fees resulting from these extended hours are “relatively small” compared with total annual maintenance costs, Doksansky says.

Brown is currently planning to open a 24-hour student center in its Sciences Library in the summer of 2006, Doksansky adds.

Cornell University already has a 24-hour undergraduate library, Sunday through Thursday.

The costs of keeping Uris Library open later have been “relatively inexpensive,” according to Anne R. Kenney, an associate university librarian at Cornell.

“It was one of the best things we ever did in terms of meeting undergraduate needs,” she says. “The students are overwhelmingly grateful.”

Stanford University also provides study space for undergraduates who choose to study late at night. The first floor of Meyer Library, Stanford’s undergraduate library, stays open all night, seven days a week.

Stanford’s library website lists locations available for students who need work space or computer access late at night.

Safety officials patrol the library, but no library employees monitor the space during extended hours, says David Futey, Stanford’s associate director of academic computing.

Brainard, in response to comparisons with Brown, Cornell and Stanford’s library systems, says HCL is still weighing its options.

“Each library has its own set of circumstances,” she says. “We have to take our libraries and our users into account and figure out the best possible solution.”

—Staff writer Daniel J.T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.