LJ Academic Newswire Newsmaker Interview: Fresno State's Peter McDonald

-- Library Journal, 01/29/2009

In late 2006, Peter McDonald was named became the new dean of the Henry Madden Library, succeeding Michael Gorman. On February 19 of this year, exactly two years to the day that McDonald officially joined the campus staff, Fresno State will open its new library, a building McDonald describes as “second to none” in the nation. The library will open, of course, in difficult economic times. We recently caught up with McDonald and found that, while budget pressures have taken a toll on the library’s finishing touches, this has clearly not dampened the excitement on campus for this incredible new library. 

LJ: Like most new libraries, yours was very much designed for people first, right?
PM: Yes, the library was designed with people in mind and was planned with much open space for a variety of seating configurations. This openness is matched by many group study rooms, single room carrels, a large teaching center, multi-media labs, several auditoriums, conferencing rooms, two exhibit galleries, and several large, 3800 square-foot presentation rooms. However, the collection level below the first floor is arguably the largest single-floor open compact shelving in the world, according to SpaceSaver, and can hold on a single floor upwards of 1.3 million items. So the books as such remain in the building, it is just that they are significantly compacted to make room elsewhere in the building for user centered services and seating.

How much of a problem will it be not to have all your furniture when you open?
Many of the planned services and space configurations are on indefinite hold. We will instead focus heavily on upgrading traditional services, expanding outreach, creating innovative programming, and renewing our commitment to online access. Students at Fresno State have not had a proper library building in over three years. For faculty, for humanists especially, just the fact they will finally be able once again to browse open stacks will be a big plus, and we have expanded most all our services to support faculty as well.

We intend to make this transitional period a can-do proactive time of fun and exceptional services for them, doubling our efforts to make up for sparse furnishings. We are all really excited to be able to make this work for all our users, and we intend to partner with many campus stakeholders to better integrate student success services into the library. Every library employee, especially those not in public service areas, are being trained to serve in a “concierge” capacity during this period of retrenchment, meaning all staff will wear tags identifying them as library employees so that any user in the library will be able to identify them immediately and receive immediate attention and response to their inquiries. The emphasis is therefore on highlighting and improving all aspects of public service.

Despite the late furniture delivery, the library itself sounds like an amazing addition to Fresno State, and the CSU system. Can you talk about some of its features?
Indeed, the building is amazing. At more than 350,000 square feet, it is the largest in the CSU system and one of the most impressive library buildings in the state of California, if not the country. The garden areas around the library have been extensively landscaped to highlight the great glass north face of the new wing. There is a 30-foot high LCD TV screen against the back of the main elevators that will project a film through three stories of glass to the Peace Garden with an image of a Mono Indian basket weaver weaving an enormous gaming basket in traditional style. The film itself is about 360 days long and each day, on continuous loop, the screen will show the basket indelibly getting larger. A single female weaver is now being filmed for this. It is a very meditative, calm conceptual piece of designer art, by Susan Narduli, which was part of the $10 million gift the library received from the Table Mountain Rancheria, a local foothill Indian tribe. Also, these funds will pay for enormous murals in the building, special furnishings, and a native plants garden. I believe all of this is still on schedule as it is non-state funds.

Aside from the late furniture, how else is the library being affected by the budget crunch? 
Like the rest of state-funded higher education in California, Fresno State will get a budget hit. However, Fresno State is one of the best positioned universities in the entire state, notably because it has managed its finances so well, and is recognized for such. The library will get a cut, but as of today it is modest given the actual state of state finances. Doubtless the collection will take its proportion of the cut along with operating. We feel very confident however we can handle these cuts with no reduction in hours, services, or journal holdings.

Any idea when this budget mess may begin turn around in California?
For state funding, the projected turn-around is hard to gauge. We are guessing that if, and it is a big if, the state passes a budget—no sign of that yet—and if it closes the projected $42 billion deficit—yes, that’s billions—and when financial liquidity finally returns to state coffers, the bond money set aside by the governor’s stop order in December might be released by summer 2009 and the furnishings will be ordered or delivered then. If there's no state budget soon, it's anyone's guess, but every university in the state will be similarly impacted. Nevertheless, this is truly an exciting and upbeat time for us despite the setbacks. This library, in terms of its services, its beauty as a building, and as an asset to intellectual discovery and pedagogy on campus will be second to none in the nation.