(8) The Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Library

I've been working in Caius library for most of last week, partly due to commitments that meant I couldn't get to any interesting faculty libraries within their opening hours (namely training, classes, lectures, lunch and laundry)

However, today I found myself in the slightly uncomfortable situation of having an impending essay deadline and not much of an essay, so clearly it was time to ensconce myself in a (relatively) distraction-free library while trying to make sense of the pages of notes that I had accumulated over the last week.

I got to the library at 9:05. It's a small, nondescript block at the edge of the Sidgwick site.

Little bit boring

This is pretty cool

The usual combination of friendly and inviting signs. 

There's an interesting layout, with a rectangular central well in the middle surrounded by bookshelves, classified according to which area of the Middle East or Asia they refer to. 

Again? Why can't I just keep my large coat with me? 

By 11, I had reached the psychologically important halfway marker of 1250 words - always a good sign - so I took a little break and went for a stroll round the library with my totally-not-obvious phone.

All by myself

A major point about this library is that it's very warm. After my experiences with loss of circulation in the Whipple Library, this is initially a welcome discovery. After one hour of frantic typing, it's not so much. It feels stuffy more than anything. It didn't help that I started feeling hungry from approximately 10:40 onwards. I know that feeling ill from hunger is a thing - but less than three hours after a big bowl of porridge with a banana and an apple?

Nice little secluded table 

There were a few other people there, but not that many. In the central well there were five tables of eight seats, of which only two seats were taken the entire morning. I don't even want to consider how horribly stuffy it would get if it was at full capacity. It did start to fill up from midday onwards, presumably as lectures finished and/or people got out of bed.

Pretty standard bookshelves

I spent quite a lot of time blankly flipping through my notes, contemplating the nature of modern day international relations, wondering if Britain ought to be paying the rest of the world compensation, wondering if we ought to interpret foreign aid as our way of saying 'sorry', thinking about Zionism, Hamas and the role of religion... and then realising that none of these bore any direct relevance to the essay question that I was trying to answer. 

Looking across the well

All in all, I'm a big fan of the AMES library. It may be the worst course in Cambridge (according to the National Student Survey) but their library has a nice layout, plenty of desks to chose from, comfy chairs and the odd pot plant to make you feel at home. A hidden gem of the Sidgwick site, if only they'd turn the heating down a tad...