Paul Babbin of Stafford Painters uses a roller to paint the wall near the Forbes Café sushi area last Wednesday, Jan. 9. Forbes Café, in the Stata Center, closed Dec. 21, 2012 for renovations. It reopened this past Monday, Jan. 14.

The MIT Track and Field teams hosted their annual Alumni Meet this past Saturday, Jan. 12 at the Johnson Athletic Center Indoor Track. The event invites former varsity athletes to return and compete against the current varsity squad. This year, the varsity team defeated the alumni 174.5 to 69.5.

Hackers placed a mask over the “Alchemist” statue, situated in front of Building W20. The hack, photographed last Friday, Jan. 11, may be related to Mayor Thomas Menino’s declaration of a public health emergency regarding this year’s flu season.

The Institute closed on Friday, Jan. 3 in response to a snowstorm that blanketed the northeast with large amounts of snow. Here, a snow-shoveling crew takes a break in Lobby 7 on Friday afternoon. Ismael Imul, one of the members of the crew, said that they started clearing snow from walkways around 5:00 a.m., and they had stopped around 2:30 p.m. because the snow had stopped falling. He said they were expecting to start again in the evening if the snow returned.

Monday evening found the reopened library in this state. The now-contiguous paperback section extends off to the right, and the taller-spaced shelves of comics, magazines, and references occupy the area to the left. Over 300 books were added to the circulating collection, and around 100 went back into boxes.

Benjamin J. Kaduk PhD ’12 disassembles a bookshelf that was no longer needed.

Yelena Tsitkin ’06, Jennifer Chung ’02, D.W. Rowlands G, and Laura A. McKnight ’15 work together to add custom-sized protective covers to the dust-covers of books before they are shelved. The hardcover books had been sitting in boxes until more space could be made.

Two years after a similar undertaking in 2013, the MIT Science Fiction Society (MITSFS) closed this past weekend to perform another phase of reorganization. The overarching goal was to make books easier to find in the library.

As part of an effort to consolidate the paperback section, James K. Hobin ’16 re-shelves an armful of books. It is estimated that MITSFS circulates around 46,000 books, not including the 4,000 reserve books which can be read in the library.