When planning for the new Library began--and even after this planning was well underway--it was anticipated that the Electronic Campus Project would be completed before the new Library was ready. Many decisions about the building were made using this assumption, and one of them was to exclude space for housing AV equipment and operating an equipment delivery service. In all likelihood, even if the College had anticipated the delay in completing the Electronic Campus Project, it is improbable that the new Library would have been designed to support what has become a space-intensive and outdated approach to meeting the College's audiovisual equipment needs, that is, the centralized housing and delivery of audiovisual equipment, chiefly monitors and VCRs whose costs have steeply declined.
In October 2000 the Library proposed to the College that it equip departments and other College units to meet their own audiovisual needs by supplying them with equipment or enabling them to share equipment using building-centered equipment closets. In the spring, this proposal was accepted. Staff are presently inventorying existing equipment and preparing a budget for the new equipment that will be required.