photo by Mark Schmidt

Ten years in the planning, budgeting, constructing and now equipping, the newest addition to the University Libraries — a 142,430 square-foot, five story high-tech facility — opens Monday, Sept. 27, promising to serve as a 21st century resource for students, faculty, citizens of the region, and scholars from New York State and around the world.

special "ribbon cutting ceremony," led by President Hitchcock, will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 19, to unveil the $26.6 million facility to the public, and to celebrate the first new academic building on campus in 30 years. It will also celebrate the private-public partnership that has made the project a reality. �We planned our newest library building to be an inviting, beautiful and functional facility in which students and faculty may pursue research, discovery and collaborative learning with ease,� said Meredith Butler, dean and director of Libraries. �It was designed to serve both analog and digital needs and it should do that very well.� Last year, more than one million people — students, faculty, visiting scholars, community members — used the University Libraries, which include the Uptown Campus Main Library and the Dewey Library on the Downtown Campus. Together, the University's libraries contain more than 1.9 million volumes and represent one of the top 100 university research collections in the country. A decade ago, the campus realized that the Main and Dewey facilities were not equipped to face the new challenges of the modern library. The growth and transformation of information technology required new space and facilities for such features as on-line databases and integrated Internet access; and a campus whose student body had doubled since 1967 needed expanded library facilities of all types. Accordingly, the new library is a multi-purpose building with a multitude of assets. In addition to allowing compact storage space for approximately 1.5 million print volumes � so that much needed study space will be restored and 600 additional user seats added to the Main Library � the new building contains: a half-million volume Science Library on three floors with networked databases, bibliographic and full-text. the University's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, including the Instructional Technology Center. laboratory facilities for instructional technology, digital imaging, and information retrieval. electronic multi-media workshops and seminar rooms. more than 500 seats for users, including individual and group study facilities with data and computing access. the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives. the Library Preservation and Digital Imaging Laboratory. Said Butler: �With its advanced technology, its ubiquitous electric and data connections, its increased access to information resources, and its mix of individual and group study spaces and meeting rooms, the new library building should meet faculty and student needs well into the next century.� Still, a challenge remains to complete the project. Although the cost of the new structure was allocated by the Legislature, an additional $3.5 million campaign in private support was launched last year. Its goal is to provide equipment and technology that will lift and coordinate the levels of all the University Libraries to the most modern and efficient capacity possible. More than $2.1 million has been raised in the campaign thus far. The rest is within reach, because the Kresge Foundation has pledged $500,000 toward the $3.5 million goal — but only if $3 million is raised by Dec. 31 of this year. The push toward that last $900,000 in private funding is therefore now being made with renewed vigor. �Being eligible for a Kresge Foundation Challenge grant brings increased visibility to our Campaign for the Libraries,� said Butler. �The funding we raise will allow us to complete the furnishing and equipping of the new building and to reorganize, upgrade and enhance the University Library.� Find out more about the Kresge Foundation Challenge and naming opportunities for donors.

A Look Back by Vinny Reda Libraries open up worlds of opportunities, but former University Libraries director Alice Hastings Murphy �40 distinctly remembers one opportunity that wasn�t on the drawing board for the current Main Library when it opened its doors in 1967. �The tennis coach called me and asked me if it would be all right for his team to practice in the basement during the winter,� she said. The basement, crammed today with periodicals, microfilm, archives, audio, laserdisc and VCR equipment, and offices, was then empty. There were not even wall partitions. And the ceilings were pretty high. So, the team was let in. �Yes,� said Murphy, �they had a great time down there.� But Murphy was determined not to let this athletic-training feature persist, not when the University was building a research university of national magnitude. �I remember just after we moved in, walking one day into a ladies room and hearing one young woman say to another, �Well, I guess this University is not going to be proud of itself — with all this space and no books!� �We knew that had to change, that millions of volumes had to be added,� said Murphy. �We hired a crew of bibliographers, specialists in the field, and in relatively short time got the job done. We acquired all the major periodicals in every field and became a serious depository of government documents. My goodness, we brought in documents from the Government Printing Office by the bale full. And we tore our entire Dewey Decimal System card catalog apart and converted to the Library of Congress system.�