Breaking Ground
In Louisville, a recently completed library expansion and a planned renovation reimagine the academic library
By Andrew Richard Albanese -- Library Journal, 5/15/2006
Scanning the University of Louisville's, KY, spacious new library expansion, patrons will be nearly as taken by what they won't see as by what they will. What they'll see, of course, is an inviting, comfortable, and open space teeming with students and bustling with activity. What they won't see, however, are long shelves of books or clunky banks of computers. Welcome to the future of the academic library.
“We wanted to have a space where students could learn and do research but also socialize. That was a goal of ours. We wanted to offer a library space for all of those things,” says Hannelore Rader, university librarian and dean of the Ekstrom Library. “Our students are urban, many are part-time and don't live on campus. We want them to be on campus.” To accomplish that, Rader says, the library did what academic libraries all across the country are beginning to do in earnest. They completely reimagined their library for the 21st century.
Space exploration
For academic libraries, the digital age has its share of both challenges and benefits. But clearly one of the major benefits is that library space need no longer be overwhelmingly consumed by racks of print journals, row upon row of books, fixed study carrels, or awkward card catalogs. “Space was an issue,” Rader says of the library's planning process. “We were running out of space for our materials, and that's pretty much a problem for most academic libraries.” Today, the library space is more than repository but a place for instruction, to showcase unique holdings and exhibits, and to foster student collaboration and all forms of interaction, both with information sources in all formats as well as with librarians.
With space a key concern, the highlight of the Ekstrom Library expansion is its robotic retrieval system (RRS). The system, one of just a handful in the country, is made up of more than 7000 steel bins, offering climate-controlled storage for up to 1.2 million volumes. Rader was already familiar with how efficient the system could be, having come from Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, one of the first to install such a system. “We never really considered an off-site storage facility,” Rader concedes. “We don't want to store the books miles away, send for them when a student needs them, and then wait to have them delivered to campus.” The robotic system, she notes, can retrieve and deliver a book in a matter of minutes while off-site storage can sometimes take days.
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EVERYTHING EKSTROM The entrance to the new Ekstrom Library expansion takes advantage of the generally mild Kentucky weather with ample, inviting green space. Students (above) can study or just catch a break at a number of outdoor tables on the terrace (outdoor furniture provided by KenCoat, Bardstown, KY). The long, snakelike sofa (below) nicely fills one of the library’s new spaces, but the piece itself was actually part of the first Ekstrom Library, dating back to 1957, and will be celebrating its 50th “birthday” next year. Associate dean Diane Nichols says she wasn’t sure that particular item would stay in the new library, but designers told her “this spot seemed to cry out for it.” The library’s massive atrium (right) allows light to pour into the building and over the circulation desk. Students love the comfortable (and movable) furniture (below), much of which is arranged around the atrium and the natural light it offers. |
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Still browsable
The system gives the library enough space for three million volumes, and with the library having just acquired its two millionth edition, that's considerable room to grow. Rader says that the less frequently used volumes will be loaded into the system, and students can still browse titles in open stacks in the old wing of the library, something the students in surveys said they wanted.
Books stored in the RRS are identified as such in MINERVA, the library's catalog. To request the item, patrons need only click a “request” button, and it is delivered to the circulation desk within minutes. But time isn't the only savings, Rader adds. Having the RRS also saves the library the cost of a courier service and the additional library staff needed to operate a remote storage facility.
Efficiency aside, what immediately stands out about the Ekstrom Library's RRS is the way it is artfully built into the central design of the new addition. With numerous windows on the system, students can literally watch it work. It serves almost as a piece of 21st-century art, a book fountain of sorts, whizzing and whirring volumes past the windows. “It's an open and integrated system,” notes Hillier architect Joseph Rizzo, who worked on the Ekstrom project. “Students can stand at the circulation desk, make a request, and actually see the system fill their order.”
Make yourself comfortable
In all, the Ekstrom addition contributes a hefty 42,500 square feet of space to the library. Partnering with architectural firms Voelker Winn Architects Inc. of Louisville and Hillier of Princeton, NJ, the expansion was completed in less than three years from its groundbreaking—and not a moment too soon. With over two million visits last year, Rader notes, the library needs every square inch of its new space.
The University of Louisville is a public institution, Rader explains, and open to the general public, putting an even greater premium on space and efficiency. So rather than filling the space with immovable objects, such as banks of PCs, it is completely wireless and filled with flexible seating, from stuffed, comfortable chairs and small tables to wooden chairs and large, roomier tables for students to spread out their work. “The students love it,” Rader says. “Students can bring their own or check out laptops at the circulation desk.” Meanwhile, 600 traditional workstations remain in the old wing for those who wish to use them.
In addition, the Ekstrom expansion added two other elements increasingly found in today's campus libraries, a café and a 24-hour space, located near the café. “The café is very popular,” Rader says. The spacious new study respite is open from 7:30 a.m.–10 p.m., Sunday through Thursday, closing at 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. It is staffed by the university's food service provider, Chartwell, which in turn has a contract with, you guessed it, Starbucks. “Huge, huge success,” echoes Louisville associate dean Diane Nichols. “So much so that I'm already thinking we may need to add a second cash register.”
Finally, the new wing offers a feature that schools in the South will always be able to tout over their Northern counterparts: outdoor space. “In this region,” Rizzo notes, “there are a lot of days you can spend outside.” That, he says, made a green space especially inviting. At the entrance to the new building, a lovely terrace is equipped with outdoor furniture, facing a pleasant green commons. On nice days, there are few better places to study—and certainly it makes for an inviting entry.
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Driving forces
Comfortable chairs and Starbucks coffee are nice features, but any academic librarian contemplating a remodeled space will tell you that pedagogy drives design. This is especially true at Louisville, which offers one of the nation's best information literacy programs. No longer just places for research, libraries today are places of active instruction, and the Ekstrom expansion embodies exactly that principle.
In addition to increased room for student collaboration, the library expansion features three new library instruction labs, where formal or informal classes are held, and the charming new 150-seat Elaine Chao auditorium, all handicapped accessible, of course, and equipped with the latest technology, including wireless Internet access and state-of-the-art AV equipment.
With digital resources offering access to information, much of the library's space is freed up for the library's more unique holdings. The Ekstrom Library now features additional archival display cases, where Rader says materials from the library's Rare Books, Photographic Archives, as well the University Archives and Records Collection, can be highlighted for library users. Indeed, Rader has big plans for the new Ekstrom Library, with an ambitious slate of lectures, seminars, conferences, exhibits, and displays, all designed to engage students, faculty, and the community in the library. Just last month, for example, Chao, who serves as Labor Secretary under President Bush, spoke in the auditorium that bears her name.
In addition, the library is also the proud home to the McConnell Center for Political Leadership, featuring the papers and exhibits of Kentucky's Republican Senator Mitch McConnell. The bipartisan center will sponsor a range of programming, including lectures and seminars all based in the library, that makes the Ekstrom one of the best places for the study of politics in the South. In fact, the Ekstrom expansion owes a great deal to the McConnell Center—the $14.2 million project was funded by federal grants earmarked by McConnell.
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Always a phase 2
With the Ekstrom project now complete, library administrators still have little time to breathe easy. Phase 2 of the project—renovating the old wing of the library to match its stunning new half—is now in its planning stages. Rader is fundraising and says initial plans are in the works, with a lot of ideas fomenting. All she knows for sure right now is that she has some funding and a plan to turn the entryway of the old library wing into a “learning commons.”
No question, Rader says, it will be a bigger challenge to renovate the old wing than it was to build a new wing. “It always is,” she says. “It will take a while; it's not something we'll do overnight.” But Rader, now in her tenth year at Louisville, is profoundly upbeat and at the fore of reimagining what the academic library can be. “We are in a changing environment for sure; the information age has had a major effect on libraries. I do feel that libraries will continue to be important, print will not go away. There will be more electronic stuff, yes, but also more space for people.”
A 21st-century library
It's noteworthy that only at the end of our conversation has the term commons come up. The concept of an information or learning commons has been the buzz for the last five years in talking about the new wave of academic libraries. But not necessarily with Rader—so what does she call her new library?
“To me, it's still a library,” Rader says, mulling over the question. “It has information, but it is also a place for people to hang out, a place for the whole university, a space to be, a space for events, for special teaching and learning sessions.” Simply put, she finally decides. “I call it a 21st-century library.”
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The Ekstrom Library's robotic retrieval system (RRS), one of only seven such systems in U.S. academic libraries, allows patrons to access books effortlessly directly from the library's catalog. Using MINERVA, the library's catalog system, a patron simply clicks on a live “request” button onscreen. Upon receipt of the request, the RRS then sends a robotic crane off to find the item, moving among racks of steel bins, each holding books and journals. The items are identified by barcodes. The robotic arm then selects, grabs, and delivers the appropriate bin to a pickup station, where humans reenter the process. A library attendant pulls the exact item from the bin and delivers it to the circulation desk. The entire process takes only minutes and can handle numerous simultaneous requests.
