Berkeley Library

Wont say anything about the place itself — it is famous enough! For those going there to do some academic work the best spot are in open plan desk area at new side of the building. All floors have big glass windows overseeing the campus.
It is very calm even during the semester.
The reading area underground is very quite too but it is always cold.

This reviewer runs the risk of sounding like the dusty oldies once laughed at in her own college years when saying «You kids don’t know how good you have it».
The expansive, quiet calm of the Trinity Berkeley Library complex is an ideal place to absorb and compile one’s thoughts (on the condition that one is a student, as layfolk aren’t permitted inside). Having evolved over a few decades from three locations into one massive depository –Berkeley makes up part of what can be an unwieldy network of shelves, halls and desks, only sometimes tamed by signposts (which can read more like bibliographies themselves).
Here, new and old technology (quietly) rubs elbows as laptops share space with microfiche readers and DVDs are shelved with 1915 archival volumes. While time has not been kind to the library’s Brutalist architectural exterior, inside the Berkeley’s airy and modern study areas remain relevant resources to inspire great ideas.

Manys the hour I spent up on the top floor of the Berkely library in Trinity College. This is where all the dusty old history books are hidden away, and all the dusty old history folk too. Everyone respects the silent rule in this library, and it was always a very peaceful place to study (or to have a wee snooze). There’s an open-​plan desk area in the centre of the library, but if you get here early enough in the morning there are a few desks hidden away in little cubby-​holes amongst the shelves of books.
The law library is on the second floor, and the basement is dedicated to old periodicals and ancient publications — you can only bring pencils (no pens allowed) into the basement because the books are so old. I love that.

This place puts the B in boring… especially if you actually have to go there and study. But perhaps its dark corners and unsettling silence is a blessing in disguise as you try in vein to get that last bit o study done before your exams. The building is a concrete lump of… well concrete. The main floor hogged all the windows and so seems lovely and airy… but if you go up to the upper floors. you suddenly feel like you are in some kind of soviet bunker. a truly secret archive of top secret documents. There are windows. real small ones. some are mere slits in the walls others are like portholes. clearly this place was built before people believed fresh air to be important to learning.