Hayden Library – Science + Humanities

Like Casey S. Before me, I’m not a student but I know from Good libraries.
Free WiFi
Ergonomic seating options at work stations that not only have multiple outlets. They have quaint. Indispensable scrap paper caddies!
You want upholstery? They’ve got it.
Manga & graphic novels to temp you away from work? Fine.
River views? Check
Lots of natural light And good lighting? Yes.
Attached libraries of music & history? Of course.
And, open to the public. Thank you.

I’m not a student at MIT, but I can appreciate a good library when I see one. And this library is good, b/​c hey, it’s open to the public and there’s a view of the Charles River by the large tables. Anyway, definitely a great place to study with a gorgeous view as well as free wifi (yes, just sign in as MIT guest, no questions asked!) plus, covered drinks and snacks are welcomed, which is always a plus!

Sometimes, after a whole day working in the lab, I really want to take a break from the bench work. Hayden is one of the places I will go to.

This building sings. It’s one of my favorites on campus!

I got a chance to spend a little bit of time in Hayden exploring the various levels for sociology-​related books and other books for my various work-​related shenanigans (my personal favorite: I went into the basement and scrounged through their archives of old school Life magazines to find a 1930s article on Joe DiMaggio that directly referenced his Italian roots. Good stuff).
Hayden also has a lot of other nice stuff for the MIT-​type. Whether you’re looking for manga and animé books, videos, or just a non-​scientific book to read, they’ve got it. While it is specialized, it feels more like a standard library than some of the others because of its more varied possibilities.

One winter day while in Boston a year ago, I woke up to an early alarm, packed my differential equations book into my bag, pulled on my pea coat and hat, and set off into the morning sun, towards the nearest T stop. It was frigid outside, and the wind howled between the old houses, the old leaves of the fall swirling and swooping like orange and brown butterflies. I arrived at my stop, checked the map, a train pulled up, I sat down on the smooth red plastic. Just like in Good Will Hunting, I thought to myself, as the train jolted off towards Kendall Square.
I grabbed a coffee and muffin for breakfast on the short walk to the MIT campus. Boston is a city of beautiful trees, tall oaks, and they lined the Charles that morning in full vibrant autumn regalia. The wind was icy so I clutched my blazing hot coffee tightly, though it almost burned my hand; I didn’t care. After a few minutes walking I realized that I was actually there: actually at MIT.
I had thought about this moment for a long, long time, and I’m sure this sounds ridiculous to anyone who is from the area or who attends MIT, but I had even dreamed about what it would be like: the long corridor hallways I had read about in Steven Levy, the tangled webs of cable and hieroglyphic LED lights of the Tech Model Railroad Club, the physics labs Feynman had played in, the austere courtyards I could never hope to really study in, but only visit with awe.
I finally found the library: it was a student holiday, so it was mostly empty, the long tables only dotted sparsely with graduate students pouring over graph paper, multiple notebooks scrawled with partial derivatives, capital sigmas, phase diagrams, engineering shorthand, arcane Greek variables. There are big windows in the reading room, the sun shines through in great, full beams, and I found a small desk among the stacks and quietly read about second-​order diff-eq’s for a few hours, my mind’s eye brimming with dreams from my childhood of particle physics, Hilbert problems, machine architecture, artificial intelligence.
Thank you MIT library for being open to the public, and thank you for letting me stay and read awhile, lost in reveries from long past days of high school studies and scientific, abstract dreams.