1. Peter J. Shields Library
2. At home
3. Mishka’s Cafe
610 Second St.
It is no surprise Shields Library clinches the top spot for best place to study in Davis.
Students, faculty, and guests alike enjoy Shields for its resources, space and study-friendly hours. With a computer lab and dozens more sporadic computers, wireless internet and 3.1 million volumes on loan for checkout, Shields has everything one may need for cranking out an essay or researching a project.
Offline, Shields users not only have access to UC Davis’ library, called the Harvest system, but also the catalogs of fellow UCs, called the Melvyl system. Where most people must subscribe or pay for premier electronic journals and databases, UC Davis students boast the ability to use those otherwise expensive and exclusive resources, “52,473 journals and 799 databases in total,” according to Shields employee Daniel Goldstein, for free (aside from tuition).
In addition to the rows between stacks of books, Shields’ four floors leave plenty of square footage for socially acceptable study spots: long tables, study carrels and private rooms. The library is open until midnight every school night, closing at 6 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
If it’s a 5-hour energy kind of night/morning though, pack your belongings and head next door to the 24-hour reading room. The jail cell lighting and entertaining desk carvings will keep you awake enough to finish your work and get the heck out of there!
Coming in at a close second is studying “at home,” be it in your dorm room, house or apartment. And the ever-popular, always-packed Mishka’s Café on Second Street medals bronze, finishing out the competition for Davis’ best study places.
— Chelsea Mehra
