Renovation in Progress

The library staff is looking forward to the completion of the renovation of the former university bookstore space on Lauinger's lower level and of part of Special Collections and the Administrative Office suite on the fifth floor. After more than 20 years, the library will finally have the use of all available space in the building, and we anticipate that, besides creating more space for readers, adding more book storage space will enable us to house our growing collections for another five years.

On the lower level the main features will be storage rooms for the library's rare book collections, for rare books in the Woodstock Library and for incoming gifts, and open stacks which will alleviate overcrowding on the current stack floors. All of these areas will be furnished with movable compact shelving, so that in the area of roughly half a library floor, the final capacity will be in excess of 300,000 volumes. In addition, the Systems Office will gain needed new office and storage space, and provision has been made for new and more efficient supply and mail rooms as well.

On the fifth floor the changes will be less dramatic, though equally important. The current office of the Special Collections Librarian and a small part of the Gunlocke Room will be annexed to the Administrative Office suite, providing additional office space and a new conference room. The Gunlocke Room will be completely refurnished to augment measures for increasing the security of the collections as well as for making the work of researchers easier and more efficient. Space in the Special Collections stock area currenly devoted to rare books will be furnished for the storage of archives, manuscripts, and graphic arts, and a network linking the division's personal computers and printers will be installed. Totally unseen is perhaps the best change of all: the air-handling unit providing providing heat and air conditioning for the Special Collections stack area will be replaced with an upgraded, more powerful unit with far better filtration and humidity control. This will go far toward assuring preservation of the library's collections of manuscripts as well as the essential records of the university itself.