Founders build-out creates space, buys time

by Joseph King

If a massive room filled with empty shelves doesn't thrill you, then chances are pretty good that you don't work at Founders Memorial Library. For those who work there, however, the installation of hundreds upon hundreds of moveable shelves in the basement—approximately 17 miles worth of shelving in all, enough for three-quarters of a million volumes—is one of the biggest things to happen in the 25-year-old building since the card catalogue went online.

Stephen Wright, associate dean for public services at University Libraries, stands in the remodeled basement of Founders library.

"I've been here since 1985 and they were talking about the need for this back then," said Stephen Wright, associate dean for public services at University Libraries.

The project was on the capital development request list for almost that long, finally winning approval in 2000. Last spring, crews finally set about transforming what was essentially a 30,000 square foot unfinished basement into an ultra-modern, climate-controlled library storage facility. The work required pouring a 10-inch-thick concrete base to support the tremendous weight of the books, then installing steel rails with laser accuracy to ensure they were perfectly level. An additional inch of concrete was poured to hold the rails in place, and finally the motorized shelves were installed.

The rails allow the shelves to be moved back and forth at the push of a button, eliminating the need for aisles between each unit and effectively doubling the amount of shelving that can be utilized in the space. Motion sensors trigger lights over the appropriate aisles and also ensure that the shelves will not move when anyone is standing in an aisle.

The project cost about $4.5 million to complete (including improvements to the aging cooling and de-humidifying systems in the building), says NIU Libraries Dean Arthur Young, but was far less expensive than other alternatives for acquiring a similar amount of storage space.

"To expand the building to accommodate 750,000 volumes would have cost about $35 million," says Young, who estimates that the new storage facility will eliminate the need for any addition to the building for 15 years. "It was tremendous foresight on the part of those who built this facility to not only build a basement that they wouldn't need for years, but also to make sure that the elevators ran all the way down to that level."

The first documents to take up residence on the new shelves were the holdings of NIU's Regional History Center, which was moved from Swen Parson Hall to Founders. That move clears the way for the creation of new classrooms for the College of Law, which will be specially equipped to prepare students for the use of the latest in courtroom presentation technology. The new classrooms were made possible by a $250,000 gift by alumnus Kenneth Chessick.

The library soon will begin moving older periodicals to the basement, followed by government publications, then parts of its primary collection.

While those items will be out of sight, they will by no means be out of reach for those who need them, Young emphasizes. "Because we were able to build this facility on site, we will be able to retrieve items in a matter of hours, not days, which is a significant advantage over other universities which have had to build off-site archives."

As the central collection (which currently totals about 1.4 million volumes) is re-deployed from the present stacks, library staff will remove shelving, increasing useable floor space by about 20 percent, and create some much needed breathing room and space to add up to 250 seats.

"The end result is that this will allow us to make our most used materials more accessible and allow us to create a much more open, airy and inviting environment," Wright said.