Features

Inspired Addition: Vassar's Library

By Jessica Winum

With its high-tech information resources, bright and airy study spaces, convenient and expansive reserve and periodicals rooms, and a new home for the Vassar College Archives and Special Collections, the Martha Rivers and E. Bronson Ingram Library — the newly minted addition to the Vassar College Libraries — was a popular and much used academic center even before its official dedication in May. While work continued around them, students and faculty eagerly began using the Ingram Library this past academic year.

The facility adds approximately 30,000 square feet of new space to the Vassar College Libraries, bringing the total to 143,000 square feet. It was designed by the New York and Los Angeles architectural firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer with Hugh Hardy as the principal architect. The $20 million project includes an asset preservation endowment and funds for library programs.

new library addition
new library addition
Improvements to already existing facilities were also part of the project. There are new reading rooms, an electronic Media Cloisters area with high-end computer clusters for multimedia and production (see Media Cloisters, Winter 2000 VQ, in print and online) and a technical help desk; an electronic classroom and electronic seminar room for hands-on computer instruction and traditional bibliographic instruction; additional shelving space; and data/electrical/network connections throughout. Even the Cornaro window and lobby tapestries were cleaned and refurbished. Some old features were also returned to light: Printer’s marks, which once adorned library windows but had been removed during earlier renovations and constructions, were retrieved and reused in the new Class of 1951 Reading Room.

All in all, the new Vassar Libraries are, in the words of Sabrina Pape, library director, "truly inspirational spaces. The infusion of technology into the library has been handled with sensitivity and creativity in a successful and happy marriage of old and new.

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NOW AT VASSAR LIBRARIES:

  • New and updated facilities for research and teaching
  • An Information Resources Complex
  • An expanded and updated reference room
  • More computers, data connections
  • A new reference desk
  • An electronic Media Cloisters area with high-end computer cluster for multimedia and production and a technical help desk
  • An electronic classroom and electronic seminar room for hands-on computer instruction and traditional bibliographic instruction
  • A new home for the Vassar College Archives and Special Collections in an expanded rare books and manuscripts department
  • Five new group study/viewing rooms for student/faculty use
  • 86 faculty studies outfitted with data/electrical/network connections
  • New periodicals reading room on the second floor of the new building
  • New reading rooms in the Thompson Library
  • Reserve reading room outside new reserve room on the first floor of the new building
  • A total of 775,000 volumes