The Farnsworth Room

The original purpose of the Farnsworth Room was a space dedicated to relaxation and the enjoyment of extracurricular reading; it was a room designed to be a ‘getaway’ from the busy campus life where deadlines and finals drive students to new heights of stress; it was created by book lovers, for book lovers, and was seen as a sanctuary where one could get lost for a few hours in a world of their choosing.

This was the intended purpose for the room when it was created at the start of the 20th century. Now that it is 2015 we wanted to find out how present day undergraduates use this sanctuary; of course times have changed dramatically since its opening, yet we were curious to see whether the foundations and ideals from which the room was created were firmly held over the decades or whether the recent shift in focus of an undergraduate education, from learning to think to acquiring a degree, has changed the mindset of today’s youth in regards to the importance of extracurricular reading.

To do this we did three things; First, we visited the Farnsworth room and took note of the layout, the feel, the people using the room, and what they were using it for. Next, we interviewed several of the people in the room, asking them how often they used the room, what they used it for, whether an extracurricular reading room was still necessary at today’s college, etc.. Finally, we took this survey to the wider undergraduate community and acquired their answers to the same questions about the room to get a better general consensus.

Upon visiting the room, we all noticed the staggering amount of people NOT using the room for its originally intended purpose: extracurricular reading. Instead what we found were undergraduates, grad students and staff members alike, sitting at the various desks either using laptops, eating/drinking or studying for class; all of which were originally banned practices when the room was founded (including use of the room from graduate students and staff members).

From the interviews with students in the room we found that the most common use of the space was for homework, and that the majority had never read anything from the shelves: from those who had, the most popular choice was a novel. Although most believed in the need for an extracurricular reading room in the library, few realized the intended purpose of the Farnsworth Room, in which, ironically, they were then sitting.