Santa Clara University

Campaign News

A World Class Library

One of the largest campaign goals, $75 million, is for the 21st century library. The structure will be built on the site of the 38-year-old Orradre Library, a building that cannot meet SCU's current and future needs in terms of collection growth or technology capabilities.

The new library will have a sophisticated automatic retrieval system capable of delivering any stored volume in less than five minutes.

The new library will contain books and desks, of course, but it will also be wired and wireless-enabled, featuring fast computer stations and specialty labs for multimedia use, language learning, and faculty curriculum development. The plans also include 34 specially-equipped workrooms for students to work on group projects, a learning method which closely mirrors the type of teamwork that students will experience on the job. These collaborative workrooms are fully supported by networking and display technologies that will allow students to jointly create and modify documents, presentations, and images. Orradre Library has only eight such rooms, and all are smaller than those planned for the new facility.

The new library will offer considerably more storage for books than Orradre has. The plans call for 250,000 volumes to be available on open shelves. The remaining two thirds of the existing collection will be housed in an adjoining space equipped with an automated retrieval system (ARS) capable of delivering any stored volume in five minutes. Nearly half of the ARS total capacity will be free when the new library opens, which leaves plenty of room for growth. SCU's new library will be one of only a few in the nation with this sophisticated system.

"Almost everything about the new library excites me," says Ron Danielson, SCU's chief information officer. "The building itself is strikingly designed. The interior will be spacious, light, and inviting. The information resources and technologies available will be first rate. This will be a building that people will truly enjoy being in."

"As a technologist and an educator, I'm particularly enthused that we have been able to provide a few 'incubator' spaces, where faculty will have rooms easily accessible to students to experiment with innovative uses of educational technology," explains Danielson.

Elizabeth Salzer, University librarian, praises the building's flexibility. "The last 40 years have brought tremendous changes to libraries, both in terms of technology and in learning styles," she says. "The building is designed to bring together the latest technology in support of teaching, scholarship, and learning on day one and be flexible enough to change easily as both technology and patterns of higher education change over time."

Danielson agrees, adding, "We believe the library will be as effective for the children and grandchildren of our current students·and of alumni·as it will be the day it opens," he says.

For more information, see www.scu.edu/newlibrary.