He said that he hit upon the idea of sleeping in the library last September after he could not get a private loan to supplement his $15,000 N.Y.U. scholarship, his federally subsidized loans and the money he earns by working at multiple jobs. His parents are divorced, and he said neither is contributing to his education. The only question he was unwilling to answer was how to reach them.

But if limited finances were the original reason that he took up residence in the library, he said he soon realized it could be a rich experience for his writing.

As he put it on his Web site: ''I am a writer at heart, and go to N.Y.U. for creative writing, and this seemed like an experience I just couldn't pass up. I am an idealistic dreamer, and this seemed like something I could do, that would benefit me financially and creatively.''

The decision to share his experiences with the world came later, he said, as he grew tired of explaining to friends what he was doing and why. The more he wrote on the Web about his life as ''the Bobst Boy,'' as he christened himself, the more it became a kind of ''stress relief'' and a social network, he said.

Yesterday, as he led a visitor on a tour of his former haunt, down the marble steps to the second basement, he seemed familiar with the surroundings. It was a bare white room lit by fluorescent tubes and filled with a maze of study carrels. The basement floors are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sometime after midnight, Mr. Stanzak said, he would head to the far back corner with a pillow and pull four chairs together to sleep. He said he fit pretty well -- he is only 5 foot 6 -- and never rolled off. ''It's not as uncomfortable as it looks,'' he said.

At first, he was fearful, Mr. Stanzak said, but gradually he gained confidence. ''I wasn't afraid of being thrown out of the library,'' he said. ''I could have slept in the park. My worst fear was getting kicked out of N.Y.U. I love this school.''

He said that security guards awakened him perhaps five times. The first two times they told him he could not sleep there, he said. Later, they wanted to make sure he was O.K. -- and that he was an N.Y.U. student. He said he suspected that some people in the library might have been aware of what he was doing but chose not to say anything about it.