Pace University made changes to the Mortola Library during the summer in order to be more beneficial to faculty and students.

In recent years, the Mortola Library has been lacking in its collection of academic journals with not enough journals benefiting to the needs of faculty members and the growing population of graduate students on campus.

“For faculty and graduate students they tend to need a higher level of journals that are one step above in quality,” Associate University Librarian, Steven C. Feyl, said. “So that second level we are lacking in, when you are doing advance research there is a second tier in journals that we are missing out on in terms of our access.”

Feyl pointed to statistics from the interlibrary loan which show that Pace students are asking the library for academic journals and the library borrows the journals from another universities to loan to the student.

For this academic year, the Mortola Library has been given $30,000.00 to spend on subscriptions to fifteen academic journals that will help meet the needs of the faculty and the graduate students.

The new selection of the journals will be based on the fifteen most requested journals from the interlibrary loan. Feyl also discussed how the library will monitor the use of these academic journals.

“We will be looking closely at these journals in the next year to see if they are being used,” Feyl said. “If we subscribe to a journal that costs four thousand dollars a year and it’s only being used ten times, we would stop that subscription.”

In addition to the academic journals, the Mortola Library will be adding 20 new laptops that the library will be able to loan to students.

Every four years the library receives new desktops to display, but Feyl feels that desktops can be obsolete.

“If I had money to renovate, I would think twice about adding desktops to the library,” Feyl said.

Feyl said that the laptops allow students to “do things that they want to do.”

“[The laptops] definitely give us more flexibility,” Feyl said. “Laptops let students create their own space in the library.”

Students will also be able to take those laptops out of the library and to class.

Finally, Mortola Library will also be opening the first multi-stalled gender-neutral bathroom on the Pace University campus.

Feyl said the gender-neutral bathroom is being created because it’s “the right thing to do”, and it will ensure that everyone on the Pace campus will feel welcome.

“College is a time for you to come to grips with who you are,” Feyl said. “That’s something that I really like.”

Feyl said he hopes that over time the Pace community will be “very welcoming” to the gender-neutral bathroom. Some students have already voiced their opinions.

“I think that it is really cool,” Pace student Abi Longo said.” People who don’t identify now feel welcomed.”