HUNT LIBRARY VISIT

On March 6, 2013 I was very fortunate to visit the James B. Hunt Jr. library on the campus of NC State University in Raleigh.  In the company of many enthusiastic librarians from across the state, we were given a generous welcome, and excellent tour of the new library.  Our visit coincided with spring break at State, which gave us an uninterrupted view of this bold new facility, albeit seeing the library when it was very quiet.

 

The library ranges over five floors and covers over 220,000 square feet.  Accommodation is shared with other entities, and provides facilities, such as an impressive lecture theater, that can be used both jointly and in common.  The feature that is most immediately striking, when entering the building, is the way that light floods in.  Built on a sloping site to a rectangular plan (with the approximate footprint of a football field), an exterior glass curtain wall built along one of the long axes, floods light into the heart of the building.

 

Upon entering the lobby, a clever LED-encrusted visual display spirals up through two stories, simultaneously carrying the eye up into the space, providing visitors with news and information.  Passing the ‘Info Bar’/desk, the building opens out dramatically into a three storey space, reminiscent of a hotel or corporate HQ lobby.  The ready-reference section is housed in two low circular shelving units that contain remarkably few printed volumes.

 

Indeed, one of the noteworthy features of this 21^st Century facility is the marked absence of printed books on display.  For, in the main, they have been housed in a book tower; an automated humidity-controlled space that currently houses approximately 1.5 million volumes.  With further capacity for another half million tomes, a remotely operated shelve-and-retrieve system is served by three robot delivery units (‘bookBots’), that travel between six 50’ high rows, containing a total of 18,000 bins.  Each bin contains a pre-determined quantity of books sized by height; small, medium or large.  The system promises lightning-fast delivery of texts from book-tower to reader, but relies heavily on student workers to load and empty the boxes being delivered by the bookBots.

 

One of the most attractive features of the new building is the way color has been used throughout.  A wide variety of chair types, in every imaginable color, complement bright carpets and yellow-colored staircases that connect floors.

 

The provision of 100 intimate study rooms, intended for group/collaborative study is impressive.  With a range of seating capacities, many are fitted with electronic projectors or LCD screens, satiating the need of students who want to share pixels as they collaborate on projects.  The Hunt Library is a technology showcase, ably demonstrated in the Game lab, built for collaborative gaming design and testing.  Two further tech-rich labs allow for 3-D design, visualization and simulation exercises.

One of my criticisms of the library is the lack of smaller, private spaces into which students can retreat for more contemplative solo-study.  A rather ugly modern take on the “formal reading room” is available.  A series of desk-groupings with attractive curved panels above, provide a practical (and visual) alternative to the many open-plan study areas.

 

So what has the price tag of $115m bought?  It was a bold move to create the open space that slices open the building.  I personally question the trade-off between admitting light into the building, against wasting such an extravagant quantity of “real estate.”  This voluminous space, with very few sound-absorbing surfaces, may become very noisy when the library is really busy. 

The gestation period for this build was nearly five years.  I wonder if the same building would be built, if one were starting from scratch today?  The NC State library management team was faced with faculty chairpersons who were reluctant to reduce print collections below the anticipated maximum of two million volumes.  If the Hunt Library was being planned today, I suspect that the print collection would have been weeded much more rigorously, and that the heavy capital and running costs of the book tower would have been applied to additional digitization of print sources, and replacement subscriptions for surrogates of weeded materials.

But all that being said this is a bold venture, and the employees and trustees of NC State have to be applauded for their vision and chutzpah.  Bon chance!