"We are anticipating our move back to the Library and thinking about how we will provide service in the new space-how to deal with open stacks (well, open-able stacks), and having enough computers, copy and microform machines so we don't have lines." Jane Cramer, Government Publications & Microforms Librarian
"As the Field Library has acquired more staff and responsibilities, our temporary facility is becoming cramped. Our limited meeting space is becoming increasingly problematic to schedule. While the staff is good natured and understanding, it's becoming more and more evident that it's time to move back to our enlarged permanent facility. We eagerly await the call to start packing for the trip back." Anthony Cucchiara, Associate Librarian for Information Services & Distinctive Collections
"As the Field Library has acquired more staff and responsibilities, our temporary facility is becoming cramped. Our limited meeting space is becoming increasingly problematic to schedule. While the staff is good natured and understanding, it's becoming more and more evident that it's time to move back to our enlarged permanent facility. We eagerly await the call to start packing for the trip back." Anthony Cucchiara, Associate Librarian for Information Services & Distinctive Collections
By March we knew that our move to the new Library would be delayed a few months. From the start, this project had a very ambitious schedule, although it also had a built-in "time cushion" to allow for the usual delays. However, there were some delays that would've been very hard to foresee.
First, there was far more asbestos abatement that could've been anticipated. Then, when the Gideonse slab was exposed there were unanticipated cracks which were carefully repaired--again, at the expense of time. The icing on the cake was the very cold weather during the winter of 2000-2001, which significantly slowed the brickwork. (Mortar contains lots of water, and it freezes.) These delays were unavoidable, and no one's fault. All of the above led to doubt that the building could be completed, and that we could move in, in time to open for business on September 1, 2001. The president was concerned about the safety of staff, readers, and collections, and no one wanted anything resembling the chaotic opening of the new Graduate Center in the old Altman's building. For all these reasons, it was thought best that we plan to open for business at the start of the spring semester, 2002, rather than pushing strenuously for fall 2001 and perhaps missing the target. The delay would be a small one--scarcely four months.
September came, and the building envelope was still not full enclosed. It began to look as if spring 2002 was too optimistic an opening date. On Wednesday, October 17, Dormitory Authority of the State of new York top brass met with President Kimmich and a series of new milestone dates were established:
02/20/02 Substantial completion achieved; building commissioning begins
03/18/02 Begin moving collections to the new building
04/04/02 Begin the process of obtaining the temporary certificate of occupancy (TCO; required before staff can occupy the building and readers can use it)
07/01/02 Open the building to readers and begin developing the punch list
09/01/02 Grand opening!!
As of this writing, new crews have been added to the project and a September 1, 2002 opening seems well within our reach.
On September 20, 2001, Vice-President Steve Little let us know that he was setting aside $300,000 in soft money to purchase equipment for the new Library. This will buy about 300 machines, and we have another 125 machines on hand in our temporary spaces that are fit to be taken back to the new Library. At a second meeting February 20, 2002, the number of PCs was revised upwards to 400 machines. We believe that Michael Ribaudo/CUNY central will provide some additional equipment.
While the College's $300K is a start, it is important to keep in mind that $1.2 million would be required to equipment every net tap in the new building. This means:
We still have a long ways to go before the new Library either is, or appears to be, highly wired. It certainly will not appear to be equipment-rich on opening day, or for some time thereafter.
CUNY Central's projected contribution is a critical one and must be shepherded and encouraged. The Library has some very tough decisions to make about where to locate the equipment available to us--the four electronic classrooms and the Faculty Lab alone require 150 machines. Without additional equipment, some of these spaces will sit empty.
Mark Gold, Howard Spivak, and Anthony Cucchiara will be looking at equipment offered by various vendors (Apple, Gateway, Dell) and recommending brands and configurations. We must make choices that make the most of available resources and also meet the needs of readers and staff.
The New Media Center does not even exist in the present Library.
For the first time ever, the music collection (scores, books, sound recordings) will be accessible every hour the Library is open, a significant service upgrade.
The same is true for the audiovisual collection, whose availability will jump from 40 to 72 hours of service.
The number of workstations near the Reference desk and the service point on the lower level will double on Day One.
The new building will attract significantly more readers. Not only will it be well-located, spacious, and built to a high aesthetic standard, it will also offer three to four times as many seats, more and better equipment, and greater creature comforts. It will contain the largest student computer lab on campus--140 machines in the second floor New Media Center.
Brooklyn's Weekend College is growing and craving more Library hours.
As the centerpiece of the campus, it seems unimaginable that the new Library will close at 1:00 PM on Fridays and offer only half a day's service on Sunday.
If the College is to get the public relations benefit from the new Library that it should, a respectable pattern of hours and services is essential.
The Library Cabinet performed a variety of scheduling simulations for the new building's several service points. We thought long and hard about the locations from which students most need help, the sort of help required, and whether this assistance could best be provided by professional or supporting staff. In October 2000 the Cabinet presented a plan to the College administration that calls for increasing hours by 12.5 percent and requested the necessary resources: one new line and $91,089 for part-time staff.
In May 2001 Vice-President Little agreed to fund the extended hours the Library proposed. We were delighted and began immediately (in consultation with Human Resources) to discuss staff schedules for the new building. (Extending hours requires not only an infusion of new temporary services dollars and one new position, but also certain schedule changes for staff.) Over the summer, each member of the Library management team worked out a wide range of sample staff schedules and in September Howard Spivak and Anthony Cucchiara began meeting with staff in Human Resources about our plans. The unions were consulted, and with HR's approval in January 2002 managers began discussing the new schedules with their staffs. It is critical that staff understand and feel comfortable with their new schedules well before the move back to the Once & Future Library.
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 Library 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 whose costs have steeply declined.) For these reasons, in October 2000 the Library recommended to the College that, once we occupy the new building, departments and other College units be equipped to meet their own audiovisual needs. In May 2001 our proposal was accepted.
We have now begun the planning process. It will be necessary for the College to purchase some equipment (there will not be enough to go around) but monitors and VCRs are not costly items. We anticipate no serious problems in restructuring AV services.
Fund-raising for the new Library continued. Before long, we anticipate that several major gifts will be announced. A system of donor signage has been developed by Terry Colbert, the talented designer who did the sign program for the new Library. The general idea is that donor signs should be uniform in design, appropriate to their spaces, and in proportion with the gift.
Collections will begin to move to the new building in March of 2002, and project manager Marla Appelbaum has developed a detailed move-back plan and schedule. (Ms. Appelbaum and the Library management team held an all-day off-campus retreat on the topic on February 26, 2001.) We will deliver service from our temporary locations throughout the spring semester 2002 and perhaps into summer session. If construction permits, we will page materials from the new building to our temporary locations. In February 2002 this letter was sent to all faculty:
This memorandum contains important information about Library and AIT services during the spring 2002 semester.
1) The new Library is slated for completion in the late spring, 2002.
2) Throughout the spring semester 2002, the Library and Academic Information Technologies will continue to deliver service from our current locations in Roosevelt Hall and the Field Library.
Please consider these important factors as you plan for the spring 2002
3) The gradual move of the collections to the new building will begin on the first of April with the materials shelved off-site at LaGuardia Community College (the bulk of the Archives, and pre-1980 bound journals, government publications, and microforms).
A) Once a volume is moved to the new building, it may no longer be available for use until the Library reopens in its new quarters.
B) For this reason, if there are books or journal articles to which your students must have access in the spring 2002, seriously consider placing these materials on reserve. To arrange to put materials on reserve, contact Barbara Allier reserves@brooklyn.cuny.edu .
C) Encourage your students to begin their research and writing projects early in the semester, when the maximum number of print resources are easily available to them.
D) Faculty and students now have access to quantities of electronic resources that enable them to meet their research and instructional needs. These resources are unaffected by the move.
E) Should you have any questions about the Library's electronic resources, or arranging for remote access for yourself or your students, please contact your department's bibliographer.Presently, the Library licenses more than 10,000 full-text electronic journals and reference resources, covering every conceivable subject area. These are accessible from our Web site http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/library/electronic_resources/index.html
The Library's collection of electronic books (all published by well-known scholarly presses) exceeds 8,000 and covers a broad range of disciplines. These titles are available at http://www.netlibrary.com/
These substantial electronic holdings are available not only from all campus locations offering Internet access (including the Roosevelt and Field Libraries, as well as the Library
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/library/electronic_resources/facproxy.htm . http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/library/electronic_resources/stuproxy.htmCafé) but also from remote locations (your home, or the homes of your students).
To arrange off-campus access to the Library's e-collections, go to
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/library/electronic_resources/facproxy.htm (faculty) or
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/library/electronic_resources/stuproxy.htm (students) and follow the simple directions found there.
Please encourage your students to take advantage of this important benefit of being enrolled at Brooklyn College. (At the present, Brooklyn is the only campus in CUNY to offer students remote access to all its e-resources.)
If you are unsure who your bibliographer is, contact Professor Susan Vaughn svaughn@brooklyn.cuny.edu If you experience any difficulty configuring your browser for remote access, contact Professor Beth Evans bevans@brooklyn.cuny or Professor Mariana Regalado regalado@brooklyn.cuny.edu . If there are any questions I can answer for you, or if you require any further assistance, please contact me at x5342 or barbrah@brooklyn.cunyledu.
At the start of the 2001-2002 academic year Associate Librarian for Research and Access Services Miriam Deutch was named chair of the Art Committee. Under her leadership, the committee has worked with a new energy and purpose.
In the spring 2001 the Art Committee purchased its first piece. The oil painting, Bridge, 36"x54," 1999, by Brooklyn artist Nicolas Evans-Cato. The artist works in a naturalist style, in the tradition of nineteenth century realism. The cityscape painting is an actual view of the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges at the present time, but captures a somewhat romantic mood of nostalgia for the past. Evans-Cato has eliminated landmarks that would focus on a specific era and by using an atmospheric palette, the painting exudes a timeless quality. The appeal of the painting no doubt will increase in the next few years when the Brooklyn shoreline is transformed by the Brooklyn Bridge Park and condominium construction, and the painting comes to represent a lost vista. Evans-Cato works are being purchased by discerning collectors and have been exhibited at well-known galleries and public venues. This painting is hanging in the home of Brooklyn College President Christoph Kimmich, until the new Library is complete.
The committee has also identified and reviewed the works of numerous other artists. We have decided, however, to wait until the building is complete before purchasing any additional pieces. This approach will give us an opportunity to view prospective major pieces on loan in the new building, before purchasing them. (Following a May 2001 site tour of the building by the Art Committee, $4,000 from the art budget was allocated to reinforce the large wall in the Reference reading room for a major piece of art.)
So that we can open the new Library with art on its walls, the committee decided to organize an exhibition of art by the College's MFA students. President Kimmich approved this exhibit and agreed to fund the installation, labels, catalog, and possibly a prize.
Howard Spivak, Marla Appelbaum, Judy Wild and Miriam Deutch met with College security chief Donald Wenz during the summer 2001 to develop a security plan for the new Library. There will two security guards stationed in the new building, one at the front entrance, the other at the rear. Policy and procedures must still be developed for opening and closing routines, food and drink issues, periodic security checks (during operating hours and while the Library is closed), emergency evacuation, and theft.
The security equipment for the building includes cameras, two-way emergency call stations with connections to the College's central security office, and video monitors.
Work has begun to develop a cleaning plan for the new Library. Project Manager Marla Appelbaum, Anthony Cucchiara, and Miriam Deutch met during the summer to identify the various finishes in the new Library, determine what must be done to clean them and how often they should be cleaned. Michael Golan, Superintendent of Custodial Services, has been included in our planning.
"We are still in Roosevelt Hall, 4th Floor. The heat and the AC work admirably. No further incidents with wildlife or water have occurred. We have made an effort make the temporary space appealing and welcoming to students and faculty." Jane Cramer, Government Publications & Microforms Librarian