As of 2011, Columbia University and NYU students are allowed special access to one another's libraries through the Manhattan Library Research Initiative. Recently, NYU Local visited and wrote a story about Butler Library, so we decided to return the favor.
This weekend, yours truly did something truly extraordinary. Something so great… it can only be explained by one acronym: YOLO. Always looking to broaden my horizons and escape the Morningside bubble, I took a leap of faith and decided to do my reading downtown. After a quick jaunt down to the Lower East Side (read: I took the 1 train to the Christopher Street subway stop), I found myself face to face with New York University’s Elmer Holmes Bobst Library. I know, I know—it was a truly a weekend to remember.
At the time, my prior experience with Bobst was all secondhand (as in a friend once described it to me as "nothing more than a gym with books in it”), so I didn’t really know what to expect when I finally went. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised! For a library that Columbia had at least a 40 year head start on, Bobst has certainly got its shit together.
