ISB Library

Hyderabad

The ISB Hyderabad library is in many ways represents the heart of the Campus. For one, this facility is symmetrically located right in the middle of the main building and offers a splendid view of the entire campus from the top floor. I particularly enjoyed sitting next to the windows that face the lake. Apart from the location, this facility is also the centre of activity when the academic session is at its peak. With study groups scattered on all the three floors working hard late into the night truly earns this place its pseudonym.

Mohali

Although much smaller that its sister at Hyderabad, the Mohali library too buzzes with infectious activity during the peak of the academic sessions. Despite the smaller scale, all facilities are in place to cater to the smaller class size at the Mohali campus. In time I heard that, as the Mohali campus scales, plans are afoot to upgrade the library to match the scale and grandeur  of the Hyderabad facility.

Another great feature of the 'one college two campus' philosophy of the college is that, students at both campuses can search the common repository for books of interest and any book that is not available in their base campus will be couriered from the remote campus and issued to the student. However, given the super compact size of each term, I do not see this of much benefit for term studies but can definitely come in handy for research projects.

Recommendations

During your time at the ISB, there are two type of books that you will need. The first type are called required textbooks and the second recommended textbooks. Required textbooks form the core of a course and students should ensure access to a copy for quick access.  For those who like to underline and annotate text while studying, I recommend buying the required textbooks. An additional reason to buy textbooks would be to have a robust library for professional reference later in ones career. 

Some students prefer not to purchase required textbooks and use the library copies that are issued for two hours at a time against a deposit of a student's identity card. This approach is perfectly fine as well and the choice totally depends on one's priorities. However note that sometimes the number of copies available in the library may be limited and may lead to non availability situations particularly before the exams.

The recommended books are available in sufficient quantity in the library and need not be bought.

For quantitative subjects for example statistics, a handful of solution books to the required textbooks are available in the library. It is of immense help if one can get these book issued as the textbooks do not carry solutions to all problems.

A generic approach to making the best use of the library would be to make a list of subjects in the upcoming before hand and get the relevant books issued in time. Talk to previous classes or ASA to get the list of books required in upcoming terms.