Salem State College Library Building Deemed Unsound, Will Not Reopen

Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 12/10/2008

• Temporary closure in 2007
• Engineers now say it's structurally unsound
• Interim facility in place, but new library uncertain
  
  (This article first appeared in the December 9, 2008 issue of the LJ Academic Newswire.)

A little more than a year after the library at Salem State College University (SSC) in Salem, MA, was ordered closed temporarily by the university’s president after state officials said they could not guarantee the structural integrity of the building, the closure has become permanent. Engineers investigating the almost 40 year-old building have determined it is in fact structurally unsound, college spokeswoman Karen Cady told the Salem News, and it will be demolished. Last year, Cady told the LJ Academic Newswire that the building was not necessarily unsafe, but that engineers were simply unable to properly determine the library’s true condition. With questions about its integrity, SSC president Patricia Maguire Meservey made the tough call to order the library closed mid-semester on October 15, 2007, until further notice.

With the library permanently closed, SSC will have to maintain library service while attempting to plan, fund, and build a new library, no easy feat given the lagging economy. This fall, an interim library facility on SSC’s Central Campus opened as scheduled, offering students a combined circulation, reserve, interlibrary loan, and reference desk; a “core collection” of over 100,000 books, periodicals, and media; and access to another 150,000 volumes in nearby storage. 

The space also has some 200 study seats, and 60 computer workstations. In addition, librarians have pushed electronic resources and databases, which had been popular anyway, Cady noted, and set up an array of satellite study spaces and new class locations.

End of a troubled era
The permanent closure marks the end of a troubled a history for the library, which has been plagued with problems from the beginning. With the building faltering and library needs changing, university officials last year began the process of modernizing the library with a comprehensive study. It was during that study that engineers pooled previous studies and gathered every piece of documentation available on the library building—and found troubling information gaps.

“The engineers couldn’t determine what the actual loadbearing capacity was,” Cady explained. “They just didn’t have any specific information.” In addition, she said, the library was being used differently than it was in its early years, with a space shortage on campus forcing administrators to convert to stacks areas of the library intended for things like faculty offices, which put additional stress on the structure. Cady told the LJ Academic Newswire that construction began in the 1960s during an infamous period of corruption in Massachusetts that shortchanged a number of public works in the state.

“The building has always had issues,” Cady said, recalling that corrective projects started almost immediately after the library opened in 1969. “There was a lot of remediation work in the 70s, and through the years specific areas have always been problematic.”

New library
Despite fairly robust interim services, a new SSC library is certainly needed. In 2007, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick earmarked $41 million for a library renovation at SSC in his education bond bill, but since then, the economy has sharply tumbled, and the library closure means SSC will need far more than a renovation. “In terms of funding, I think we’re just proceeding ahead and just hope for the best,” Cady told the Salem News. “The bottom line is we need a library. It’s kind of basic to a college.”

SSC officials have not yet estimated what a new library would cost, or where exactly it would go on campus. Cady, however, told reporters SSC hoped to have a state-of-the-art library built by 2012.  

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