Students who wait until Sunday at 11:59 p.m. to do their assignments no longer need to worry.

 ULM library director Charles Hughes announced that the library will remain open on Saturdays and Sundays. Last semester, the library notoriously closed at 5:00 p.m. on Fridays and reopened at noon on Sundays.

 The idea of such a drastic hour change stemmed from a short conversation between Hughes and SGA President David Hernandez.  

After a quick meeting and a firm handshake sometime in August, Hughes and Hernandez started the semester-long campaign to change library hours.

“[Hernandez] wanted us to stay open Friday afternoon and suggested we open up some hours on Saturday,” Hughes said. “I thought, for 2024, we’ll add some Saturday hours. But in order to have the hours for Saturday, I needed to borrow some from Sunday.”

Instead of being open for 12 hours on Sunday, the library is now open from noon to 4:00 p.m. on Saturdays and 4:00 p.m. to midnight on Sundays.

The change in library hours resulted in mixed reactions from library frequenters. Freshman social work major Lexi Castle believes opening the library on weekends benefits on-campus residents.

“I love how convenient it is,” Castle said. “If I had a job where I could only get off on Saturday, studying a bit at the library would be awesome instead of my dorm.”

Changing hours can benefit students, but they could also cause complications.

“I just don’t understand why they changed the hours,” freshman chemistry major Landon Wiegand said. “They could’ve been much more efficient with it.”

Hughes figured that many students would have issues with the change in hours. However, he believes that students will appreciate the new hours over time.

“People just haven’t had a chance to adjust to the change,” Hughes said.

The new hours will remain in place for the rest of the spring semester. The library is open to suggestions for the fall semester schedule.