The university library should test opening at later hours for a trial period of time before making any long-term changes. The reason for testing opening at later hours is not because all students are night workers. There are many different situations that are affected by one closing time for a university. A student who is a commuter and works from 2pm-6pm for example may only have a few hours to use the library after finishing work for the day. Also, a student who lives at home with family in a small flat may find that he has little or no space to work at home and so needs to come to the library after his family come home from work.

Additional hours would come at a cost however, to staff to heat and secure a large building to transport staff around, for example. In addition students who work late may have difficulty getting home late at night. So while extending hours may aid students who work late it is not a solution without detailed consideration of the costs and alternatives. This would include consideration of a smaller supervised study area, possibly bookable, and the extended hours for particular assessment periods.

Therefore, a small trial should be undertaken to assess the use of later opening hours. This could be a single study area on a late night for a six week period and be open two weeks a night (e.g. Monday and Thursday). The main things to be assessed would be the number of visitors during the extra hours, and feedback from visitors, particularly commuters, students who work, and students with disabilities, through an anonymous on-line survey. Also the experience of staff and the cost of each additional staffed hour.

These late opening hours would need to be assessed against alternative solutions to support access to study such as extending opening hours at other times, introducing bookable study spaces in the evening, or even increasing access to online resources to support study. Only if late opening hours sustain use and are cost effective would it be rational to extend hours in specific periods of the academic year.