By Aly Ferris
Planning is underway as the University looks to build a new library. The Wilson W. Clark Memorial Library averages about 1000 visits per day and roughly 60,000 checkouts per year; however, between September and December of 2007, they also logged 143 complaints, according to a study done by University Librarian Drew Harrington in April 2008.
A Library Needs Assessment study was conducted in 2006 by the Task Force for Library Facility Planning that included input from students, faculty and staff. The study found that while the current library is highly utilized by students, with a 164 percent increase in visits per day since 2003, its design is not as student-friendly as it could be.
"I think there's a lot of frustration," Harrington said. "We have a lot of usage but we also have a lot of complaints. Students don't always have the experience that they would hope for here."
University President, the Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C., echoed the importance of having a good library on campus.
"Obviously, any university that's worth their salt wants to have a library that reflects the quality of the university," Beauchamp said. "It's not that we have a bad library. We have a very good library."
One of the biggest problems that the library faces is the building itself.
"In its current building, the University Library Program struggles against an outdated, inadequate facility," according to the assessment, written in April 2007. The assessment goes on to cite "inefficient layout and adjacencies, dated technology infrastructure, too little seating and study space, inadequate instructional space, worn and uninviting public and staff spaces, furnishings and fixtures and a general air of overcrowded shabbiness" as some of the largest problems that the current library faces.
The Library Needs Assessment cited three possible approaches to the inadequacies facing the current library: first, renovating and adding to the existing library; second, constructing a new library at a new location on campus; or thirdly, knocking down the existing library and building a new library on the current site. The Task Force met with Beauchamp and together decided that a new library, rather than a renovated one, would best serve the University.
"Members of the Task Force deemed re-construction on the existing site as preferable to a new campus site based on the merits of the existing location and anticipated costs that would be associated with renovation of the existing building to meet other campus needs," according to the Library Needs Assessment.
Harrington pointed out that what students require of a library has changed drastically since the library was last remodeled in 1978. While a library's book collection used to be the most important feature of the building, the increase in technology and other forms of media in the classroom has necessitated a library that offers more than just books.
"It used to be in libraries that you wanted collections to grow as large as they possibly could," Harrington said. "Now, we target collections and share (with other university libraries)."
According to Harrington, who is in her third year at the Wilson W. Clark Memorial Library and has a background in library planning, the plans for the new library are student-centered rather than collection-based.
"The furniture would all move and there would be lots of technology as well as books (so that) students could create information as well as use it," Harrington said, adding that instead of having more space, the space would be better organized. "It would be bigger, but it would not be vastly bigger. We don't anticipate hiring a bunch more people."
Junior Briana Stein agrees that the current library could be better organized and expresses frustration at the noise level in the current library and the lack of individual study areas.
"It is hard to schedule or sign up for a group study room during finals week and midterm week because there are so few of them and everyone wants to be blocked off from other people," Stein said. "If there were more group study rooms that would help a lot. Also, having smaller, individual study rooms that are open to everyone whenever so that you can get away from noise and other people."
Stein said that she spends an average of 10 hours a week at the library, but thinks a new library might attract more students.
"I think we have a good library but it would never hurt to re-do it," Stein said. "I think a lot of kids would appreciate a newer facility to study in. And it might draw more kids in if there were more materials available to them."
So far, only about a third of the required funding has been raised for the proposed library, making it difficult to pinpoint when the new library will be completed.
"All I can say is that we're diligently raising the money," Beauchamp said. "It's often a matter of a combination of finding benefactors and finding benefactors interested in the library. The University has a lot of needs and there's only so much money that can be raised."
The Library's Needs Assessment ?study and concept images of the proposed library are available on the library's website.
