Harold Cohen Library

The sciencey yin to Sydney Jones’ artsy yang, the Harold Cohen library always seemed imperceptibly weird to me. On the few occasions I used to come here, normally to meet a member of the technical side of the university’s undergraduates, I’d find the hairs twitching on the back of my neck. I’m not sure what my hackles are but they definitely raised themselves too. Even the man the library was named after tried to get out of the deal, dying on the day he was supposed to lay the foundation stone.
The Harold Cohen library is a sprawling rat’s nest of a building with no clear layout and rooms upon rooms of students on computers who will stop dead and stare at you as you enter. They could tell I was an Arts student. They didn’t like that. I was half-​expecting one of them to stand and point at me, howling like a banshee before being joined by the others until they formed a haunting, all-​encompassing wail. But they didn’t.
Weirdos.

Well, I couldn’t possibly recall how many visits I made to the Harold Cohen Library when I was a student. This was many times for me, the quiet escape I needed to study alone or to use one of their hundreds of computers available.
By now, I guess there will have been much more improvements to the centre not that it was previously poor. In fact, there’s nothing much I could fault, certainly in terms of their service at reception, where friendly staff will be willing to help you find the book (s) you’re seeking amongst the miles of shelves there is. Believe me, it can be a headache looking up those digits corresponding to that specific book — not something you can do in a rush!
If any improvements, I would suggest they need brighter lighting on their book floors as it can be dull in places. Plus, there’s so many books that aisles are narrower than they ought to be. Anyway, its a big library to say the least, plenty of resources available and many hidden suites for you to discover!

This is the smaller of Liverpool Uni’s 2 libraries, and caters to the science and medical based courses at the Uni.
The silent study room is legendary for being crammed full of medical students till the early hours, a by product of the 24 hour opening times.
There are several computer rooms and they are never that busy unless it is exam time so you can mostly get a terminal.
A good tip if your revising, head to the rear of the library and at the end of every book stack there is a single study desk which is great if you like your space!

The Harold Cohen Library is *The* library for science, engineering and medical, dental and veterinary sciences for the Uni of Liverpool.
It’s Huge, there are 320 computers, wifi and plug in points all over for your laptop… quiet study areas and group study areas, there’s loads of room on the desks to spread out those dusty medical tomes.
As an English student, this library was rather alien to me (apparently there are 12 miles of bookshelves, crikey!) but I went once to find a particular book and the lights wouldn’t click on in the section I was in… it was so spooky, should have taken a torch!