Everyone has his or her favorite place on campus. For some, it’s Central Campus, for others, the Hub, and, for others still, it is the Memorial Union.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to tell you about my favorite place on campus. You can checkout nearly one million volumes of reading material and a newspaper from every town in Iowa. There are TVs to watch movies on VHS and DVDs, you can check out CDs by artists from Tupac to Beethoven, and you can even sneak off to the fifth tier for the infamous “study break.”

On the first and second floors of this magical place are the largest Grant Wood murals in the nation. Yeah, Grant Wood, like “American Gothic” Grant Wood. Also, if you go into the periodical room, you can see a portrait of every past ISU president.

Holy crap, you must be saying to yourself. What in God’s green earth is this place? It sounds wonderful; heavenly almost. Well my good friends, this is the Iowa State University Parks Library, located between the student refueling station — the Hub — and Durham Center.

Our mighty library is no ordinary library. The defender of freedom of speech and civil liberties, help at every corner from the reference desk and friendly circulation people; this building is hard to beat. Hard to beat when I am even able to take a two-hour nap, on the comfy chairs on first floor after reading this newspaper. Ahhh yes, basking in the sun, reading the newspaper, sleeping. Life can’t get much better than this.

In the library, we are able to expand our horizons, fill our heads with molecular bio-logistical stuff, learn what a dangling modifier is or memorize organic chemistry equations. Carbon triple bonds. Oh yeah, baby — all in the library.

But there are five important rules one should know before running off to the tiers to procreate. These, my friends, are the laws by which all library goers must live and, if necessary, die:

(1) Shut your flipping phone off! Everyone has one now, and it’s really not that cool that you have that ringer that kinda, but doesn’t really sound like, that new song on the radio. And besides, the vibrate mode is a lot more fun. Who doesn’t like an earthquake going off in their pants?

(2) Don’t talk so damn loud. Especially on the fourth floor. The library is here for us to study, sleep or procreate — not to talk about how absolutely wasted you got last night. Save the drunk stories for the drunk bus.

(3) Use the group rooms if you come with a group. Super, you got your entire dorm floor to come study, but you’ll just piss everyone off with how loud you are. The group rooms are there just for that purpose, and that way you don’t piss people off.

(4) Learn where your designated area is. If you’re really there to study, head to the fourth floor. We are serious and mean business up there. Third floor is all about socializing and group meetings (how convenient — that’s where the study rooms are too). Second floor is for those who are too lazy to walk up more than one flight of stairs. First floor is to grab a paper, do some research at the reference desk or catch a quick catnap between classes.

(5) Everyone has a laptop, and they seem to congregate around the power outlets. We are super lucky to have an entirely wireless library and many power outlets to keep our power-hungry devices rocking. Just be careful about leaving it at the desk while you go to the bathroom.

Our library rocks, and throughout the day many people appreciate it and take advantage of the library. As the foundation to a good university, our library has done well in providing an environment for free thinking and a foundation for civil liberties. In addition, the library is always there for me when I need that 25-minute nap, or when I need to study.

I just wish it were open 24 hours a day.