It’s time to admit that Adsetts is the best library in Sheffield

The library is a big part of the university experience. A home from home, yet with even higher rent. You’re essentially paying £9000 a year for a library pass – an overly expensive way of accessing levels of stress you never knew you could reach and mining untapped reserves of bullshitting you didn’t think you had in you.

In Sheffield there are two universities and multiple libraries, so depending on which one you attend you’ll either feel the full force of this article’s #relatability, or it will make absolutely zero sense.

But, my thesis is this – Adsetts is the best library in Sheffield.

You’ll find all sorts of people in this library

In Adsetts, you get the hopeless library romantics and their library crushes who don’t really do any work, instead swooning over a mystery library-goer in the distance, planning out every move of their hypothetical life together as if that isn’t weird as hell.

You get the warriors, the doomed heroes turning up with a packed lunch and full on kitchen utensils (toasters, kettles, you name it), in a bid to get that essay out of the way in one long slog, yet you know the most productive thing to come out of it will be a photo of them napping next to their kettle on the ‘SPOTTED’ Facebook groups.

There's the sports science lads, turning up in packs, all dressed in puffer jackets and their very best smart casual tracksuit bottoms. Why are they there? Why do they all look the same? Why are they coming towards me? Please don’t sit next t– they’ve sat next to you.

It has so many ground floors

Adsetts Centre, or ‘the library’, is special for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s flooring system is mental. You enter Adsetts on Level 4, the ground floor, because you are on the ground and that is floor you enter on.

Go down to Level 2, however, and you’ll find yourself on the same level as the bus station. In other words, YOU’RE STILL ON THE GROUND FLOOR.

Go up to Level 6, that’ll get you off the ground floor, right? NOPE. Level 6 is on the same level as the O2 Academy and the entrance on Arundel Gate. Level 6 is also the ground floor. Every floor is somehow the ground floor.

Say you’re at the North Pole – you’d say you’re on top of the world. Say you’re at the South Pole – you’re on top of the world there too. That is the Adsetts conundrum. Adsetts is both the North Pole and the South Pole. Adsetts is the Earth, and we are on a journey to the centre of it.

The heating system caters to everyone

There are some things in life that are certainties – death, taxes, and Hot Fuzz reruns on ITV2. Another of these facts is that heat rises. Heat also rises in Adsetts.

If, like me, you’re not from Sheffield, the word ‘nesh’ means a person who is easily/always/chronically cold. Adsetts, the best library in Sheffield, is all about inclusiveness, even catering to the nesh.

Say you’re on Level 2, or rather the ground-ground-ground floor, and you get cold. No need to worry, just head on up to Level 6 where it’s unbelievably warm. What happens if you’re on Level 6, the upper-upper-ground floor, and you get too hot? Just head on down to Level 2, it’s absolutely freezing down there in the winter.

There's signs on the windows reminding you to keep pigeons out

I won’t lie, when I was writing the list of people you are likely to see in the library I totally forgot to add pigeons to that list, because apparently a lot of pigeons get into Adsetts.

Last year a pigeon was reportedly spotted inside Adsetts, becoming the luckiest pigeon in the pigeon world (do pigeons grasp the concept of luck?). The pigeon problem has become so bad that it’s caused Hallam to intervene, putting stickers on windows (that’ll lose their deposit) warning people to close windows after use so as not to allow pigeons unwarranted entry to the building. That’s the kind of issues being tackled right now at Sheffield Hallam. No strikes for us.

It’s just a really cool building

Without getting all BBC4 on you here, the inside of Hallam is just really cool architecturally. Its central staircase is a treat if not vertigo-inducing at times, the walls are sort of a mix of glass and brick, and inside there’s ample space to work both on and off computers, in silence or whilst munching on a really loud bag of crisps, simultaneously annoying everyone around you.

Adsetts is well and truly the best library in Sheffield, even if it does look like a walk-in health centre from the outside. At least it’s not the Diamond though.