This is impressive: the administration of the University of California Irvine has given a victory to occupiers of their campus library, and the occupiers haven’t entered the library yet.

Before Thanksgiving, students at UC Irvine announced that they would be staging a library occupation beginning today. Although they didn’t make any formal demands at that time, they did state their belief that students “should have full access to books, computers, and library materials before and during Finals Week.” They asked that the university keep automated book checkout and computer labs open during the occupation. (They also promised not to barricade the building if the university’s response to the takeover was peaceful, and stated their intention to “leave the library cleaner than how we found it.”

That was on November 23rd. The occupation is scheduled to begin at three o’clock this afternoon. On Tuesday the university announced that the library, and three other study centers on campus, would be open 24 hours a day beginning this morning and continuing through the end of finals a week from now.

Planned occupation activities, including study sessions and teach-ins, will continue.

(You can follow this story at the Occupy UCI! website.)