News-Letter

Media Credit: Eileen Huang Planned extensions to MSE Library will create additional places for students to study.

The Milton S. Eisenhower Library (MSE) will expand to include a new 50,000 square foot building on campus, spreading the entire complex southward and connecting the two buildings underground.
The new addition, which is still awaiting an initial $25 million donation, is intended to solve a number of problems with the current building, such as highlighting the library's impressive special collection (most of which remains stored on levels A and D out of view), adding more space for individual study, and providing additional space for group study.
"The MSE Library is the busiest building at Homewood, and we cannot provide 21st-century library services for our demanding students and faculty in a 20th-century building," said Sheridan Dean of University Libraries and Vice Provost of the Arts Winston Tabb.
Tabb cited the example of how last spring during final exams, the library ran out of chairs. The library was extremely crowded, with students sitting anywhere from on top of tables to the floor. More chairs had to be rented to lessen the problem, and the library staff fears that lack of chairs and space will reemerge at the end of this semester.
There are more students than ever before on campus, and their technological needs are more advanced now than ever before. Tabb hopes to add more audio-visual labs where groups could collaborate on presentations and where classes could meet. Tabb points to the increasingly common occurrence of teaching assistants using rooms in the libraries for office hours. One of the goals in expanding the library is to create more space that would be conducive to this use.
"We need open, flexible space that we can adapt as much as possible, whether it's [for] a group, single person or class," said Special Assistant to the Dean and Head of External Relations Pamela Higgins.
A feasibility study was done in 2004 to demonstrate the need for a new building and to prove that the library could reasonably expand without any problems, structural or otherwise. When the plan was approved, the library added building expansion to its ongoing fundraising goals. The total estimated cost for the new building stands at about $40 million; as of now, an initial $25 million is still needed for an architectural plan to be initiated and carried out.

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