Library News for the Faculty

From University Librarian Gary E. Strong

In the winter quarter issue of Library News for the Faculty, I mentioned the shift of some of the Library's behind-the-scenes staff to the Kinross South Building. One of the major reasons for this move was to facilitate plans to enhance our public facilities.

In the Charles E. Young Research Library, the move has opened up space on the first floor and lower level for other purposes. We've worked with the campus Capital Programs office to develop and issue a request for qualifications to select an executive architect to renovate these main public floors to better meet the needs of faculty and graduate students in the humanities and social sciences.

On the main floor currently are the main entry; information, circulation, and reference desks, exhibit space, computer workstations, periodical stacks, administrative offices, and a conference center. The renovation would focus on creating flexible, aesthetically appealing public spaces and improvements to space flow and function. On the lower level, spaces would be reconfigured to relocate reader services and stacks for periodicals, microforms, and maps. Space would also be developed on this level for the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana, now part of the Research Library Department of Special Collections, which has been in storage since the Arts Library moved out of Dickson Art Center.

This is the what I hope is just the beginning of a long-term project to bring the Research Library back to its mid-century modern glory. Designed by renowned Los Angeles architect A. Quincy Jones -- who designed houses for Gary Cooper, among others -- the building once won awards for its architecture but now must be renovated and updated to become a contemporary information and active teaching and learning center.

We are also currently in discussions with campus administrators about a new Performing Arts Library. This facility would combine the current holdings of the Music Library with the performing-arts-related collections of the Arts Library to support programs of instruction, research, and creation in dance, ethnomusicology, film, music, musicology, television, and theater. Visual arts materials, including art, architecture, and design holdings in both circulating and special collections of the Arts Library, would be incorporated into the holdings of the Research Library. This would keep those materials close to the students and faculty who use them most frequently.

The design currently under consideration, which would be located in an expansion of the Schoenberg Music Building, contains enhanced study space and creative areas for individual work as well as group projects. In addition, performing arts materials in the Arts Lib­rary Special Collections would be consolidated with those of the Music Library Special Collections within this combined facility, allowing researchers to more easily access and work with related collections.

For some time, the spaces occupied by the Science and Engineering Library have been problematic. The collection has been split among multiple locations, none of which offers adequate shelving, study space, or technological capacity to meet current study, research, and instructional needs. A new Science and Engineering Library would allow the chemistry, engineering, geology, geophysics, and mathematical sciences holdings to be brought together in one state-of-the-art facility and would provide individual workspaces, group study rooms, and technologically equipped classrooms for library or course instruction.

Resource sharing among the UC libraries is a cornerstone of the system's collection development and management strategy because it enables us to make the widest possible collections available to UCLA faculty, staff, and students in the most cost-effective manner. A key component of our resource sharing is the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRLF), where lesser-used materials from the five southern UC campuses are housed and various collaborative digitization projects are taking place.

The site and phased design of the SRLF, which opened in 1989, allow for expansions as needs dictate. The facility's second phase was completed in 1996, and as the building approaches capacity, planning is now actively underway for its third phase. Because this is a UC rather than a UCLA facility, we are working with the Office of the President to identify and secure funding for the expansion from the state.

All of these initiatives will require substantial capital campaigns, but we are encouraged by the reception our plans have received to date, and we look forward to working with the various stakeholders to refine them and to identify funding sources. We view our facilities as we view our collections: important in the short term, for immediate use by a person who needs them, but equally essential in the long term, to the faculty and students of tomorrow who will work and study here, and to the people of California for whom we hold the Library in trust.

I welcome your questions or comments about any of these plans. You can reach me by telephone at extension 51201 or by email.