When Syracuse University’s E.S. Bird Library opened its doors in November 1972, it contained 23 million books, 11,500 periodicals, 45,000 linear feet of manuscripts and 3.6 million microforms in its seven levels.

Back then, students were accustomed to finding and retrieving data the good old-fashioned way: by manually searching through card catalogs, reels of microfiche and archives of journals, periodicals and manuscripts.

Today, the library has shifted much of that to its Web site.

The digital revolution has radically changed how students and faculty use the university’s library. For a long time, the library has been a place that has offered more than silence and books.

But now, as technology enters a new decade, students crave more than digital collections and Web-related services to do their work. They want places to nap, listen to music, practice presentations and curl up on multi-colored beanbag chairs.

The library is responding with renovations costing up to $25 million, which will turn it into a more user-friendly and multi-dimensional space.

Suzanne Thorin, dean of libraries at SU, said libraries these days are a combination of electronic resources and on-site services.

‘But then what does library as a ‘place’ become?’ Thorin said. ‘It’s a place being used more and more by students to study, to use the computers, to use the newspapers, to eat, socialize.’

The trends at SU parallel those at other college campuses across the country.

According to a prediction published by the Association of College & Research Libraries in 2007, in the future, ‘students will increasingly view themselves as customers and consumers, expecting high-quality facilities and services.’ In response, universities will become ‘more aware of the importance of attractive library facilities as an effective recruitment tool.’

Lesley Pease, director of the Learning Commons at Bird, agreed with that assessment.

‘We’re changing how we use our space,’ Pease said. ‘People don’t use books as much, and so people haven’t really had to come into the library to get things if they didn’t want to.’

Total circulation has dropped 20 percent in the past five years, even though full-time undergraduate and graduate student enrollment has increased by 7 percent, according to documents compiled by Nancy Turner, senior program officer for research and analysis at the library. At the end of the 2007-08 academic year, the number of volumes added was down 65 percent from 2003-04.

In contrast, during the same time period, the total number of serial titles received, which include journals, magazines, electronic journals, continuing directories, annual reports, newspapers, and monographic series, was up 67 percent. Not surprisingly, electronic titles accounted for 84 percent of the increase.

But the numbers don’t show that patronage is increasing, despite the fact that paper books are becoming a thing of the past.

‘Usage of the library is dramatically up,’ Pease said. ‘This place is hopping, but it’s not because people are here to use books. They’re here because they want to work with each other.’

Since the opening of the new café, Pages, in January 2008, traffic has increased in the library by about 20 percent, Turner said. Still, a surge in visitors doesn’t necessarily mean that the library is prepared to handle all of its new clients.

‘Let’s just say this library doesn’t come to an ‘A’ on many things,’ Thorin said. Among some of the most obvious problems: old-fashioned fluorescent lighting and poorly constructed wiring that make it difficult for adding ports and plugs.

‘It’s just ugly and sad,’ said Alejandra Almonacid, a senior in the College of Human Ecology. ‘There’s just too much clutter, too many tables and chairs, the furniture is not comfortable.I usually do work in the café where the seats are nicer.’

Thorin said she agreed.

When Thorin stepped into office in 2005, she was picking up where her predecessor, Peter Graham, had left off. The former dean’s idea, composed in a project titled ‘Big Bird,’ called for the construction of a parking garage underneath Walnut Park and the extension of a bridge across Waverly Avenue that would connect to a continuation of Bird on the other side of the street.

But before ground was ever broken, the plan dropped off the funding list.Graham passed away soon after.

‘When (Thorin) arrived, she saw a lot of things happening,’ Pease said. ‘What she thought was ‘Why not have a master plan?”

The renovations, which will cost between $20 million to $25 million, Thorin said, will be Bird’s largest facelift since its construction in the early 1970s.But the renovations will happen in baby steps, especially within the current fiscal state.

Thorin said the Board of Trustees has delayed onsite work at the library until the university is in a more solid position to spend money. She said until then, small changes would occur.

One of the biggest changes expected to take place in the future will be the consolidation of circulating books – currently on floors two through five – onto the fourth and fifth floors, which will open up more space to students on the lower three levels for group work and quiet study zones.

Once the remodeling project gets underway later this year, Pease said around April or May, the plan is to move the extraneous books into a temporary off-site facility, where a service will be set up so students and faculty can either view materials online or receive them within 24 hours. Eventually, the books will be moved to a permanent heat controlled warehouse, where they can be stored by size and delivered to faculty and students.

The massive repurposing of the library, however, could be a source of conflict between older faculty members, who are accustomed to browsing for books, and students who rely more heavily on digital services. But the demands of students come first, Thorin said, because they ‘are paying to come here.’

‘The library is 97 percent full,’ Thorin said. ‘The university doesn’t want to get rid of books, but the bottom line is we were not going to get a new addition, so you have to figure out how to get to your goal.’

Meanwhile, to tackle some of the design challenges left in the wake of clearing out space, Thorin has partnered with Chris McCray, a professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the marketing strategist behind COLAB. COLAB is a program started in Fall 2008 designed to engage students to work together on projects to solve ‘wicked problems,’ McCray said.

McCray’s idea is to bring in bright colors that will mask the austere feel of the upstairs space, and to recreate a setting that might be more similar to what a person would find in his or her home, apartment or dorm room, he said.

‘The idea behind the library is changing,’ McCray said. ‘We are leaving what’s known as the information age and entering what some people call the ‘conceptual age.’ The information age was the birth of the Internet…almost everything we need is at our fingertips, so the idea of the library in the traditional sense of the word is different.’

dlspecto@syr.edu

Published on February 3, 2009 at 12:00 pm