The Eunice and James L. West Library was briefly evacuated Wednesday afternoon due to a strange smell on the third floor, a campus official said.

The smell came from a bad ballast that had overheated a light bulb and made the light turn blue, Interim Director of Library Administration Elizabeth Howard said. A ballast is a power source for the bulb.

A maintenance man replaced the ballast and bulb, Howard said.

“There was no fire or smoke, just a smell of something burning, no one was hurt and the library was evacuated for about 15 minutes,” Howard said.

Junior finance major Taiwo Akinsola said she told the library receptionist at the circulation desk on the first floor about the smell.

“I walked down there the second I could smell that something was not normal and then she announced to evacuate,” Akinsola said.

Freshman biology major Dhruiv Patel said she was aggravated that everyone was evacuating the library as she was trying to enter to get some work done for a five-page paper.

“I had to write a report for one of my classes and it made me very disappointed that I couldn’t start on it as soon as I wanted to,” Patel said.

Freshman biology major Hamsa Hasona, like Patel, said she had to write a paper and didn’t know how long the library would be closed.

“I had a five-hour gap to write my paper and if the library was closed for a long time I wouldn’t be able to do it,” Hasona said.