At the request of students, the Brownsville library extended its Monday to Thursday hours by two.
The original hours were from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and now it’s open until midnight. The change took effect Nov. 13 and aims to better correlate the hours for the Edinburg and Brownsville campuses.
The Student Government Association, with the help of University Librarian Paul Sharpe and Associate University Librarian for Resource Management Peter Cortez, took on the project of extending the Brownsville campus’s hours of operation.
“The library hours in Brownsville were recently extended to better serve our students,” Cortez said. “It helped to better align library hours of operation, so that both Edinburg and Brownsville’s hours could reflect each other as much as possible.”
SGA President Alondra Galvan expressed her motivation for changing the hours.
“Since the [UTRGV] merger, I started coming over to Edinburg more, so I started noticing things that they had over here that we didn’t have in Brownsville,” Galvan said. “The library is trying to take the approach of, ‘anything that is on the Edinburg campus library, Brownsville should have’ and ‘whatever is in the Brownsville library, Edinburg should have.’ So, they have been working for equal amenities.”
SGA, Sharpe and Cortez collaborated to better serve the students in Brownsville, as well as accommodate those who board the Vaquero Express shuttles during later hours.
“[The library hour extension] also helps with those who were needing a safe place to wait for the final shuttle pickup at 11:45 p.m.,” Cortez said.
Students reached out to SGA through social media and in person to express their opinions regarding the difference in both campus’s library hours.
“I know that is something that students would say comments about,” Galvan said. “I would sometimes see it on social media or just in conversations since, keep in mind, we are a commuter campus. We do have a lot of students who travel to Edinburg, Brownsville, Rio Grande City. They were noticing that our Edinburg library was open until midnight, so they started wondering and questioning, ‘Hey, how come in Brownsville it closes at 10 p.m.?’”
Weekend hours for the Brownsville library are 7:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and noon-midnight Sunday. In Edinburg, the weekend hours are the same, except for Saturday, when the library is open from 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
The hours for the Harlingen campus library remain unchanged, from 7:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and 1-9 p.m. Sunday.
“I do know that the Mario E. Ramirez, M.D., Library is open to the public and it also helps medical students, as well as UTRGV students,” Galvan said. “In our conversation, we specifically just talked about the Brownsville library extension hours.”
In addition to the new regular hours, SGA also plans to have both Edinburg and Brownsville libraries open for 24 hours during finals week, from Dec. 10-13.
