VCU is pushing for most of the heavy construction at the library site to be done over the summer. Photo by Brandy Brubaker.
The service desk at a local college library is offering something new to studying students: free earplugs.
Noisy construction is underway at Virginia Commonwealth University as the school overhauls its James Branch Cabell Library on the Monroe Park campus.
The state is funding the construction of a 93,000-square-foot addition to the university library and renovations to more than a third of the current space.
The sounds of construction are growing louder as the school looks to get the noisy work out of the way while students are on break.
“During the semester, we are open 24 hours a day so there is no time for these folks to come in and do noisy things,” University Librarian John Ulmschneider said. “They can’t rely on time that the building is closed. We have to work with them to sequence around students. We can’t have noisy things going on while students are studying for exams.”
Ulmschneider said the current 240,000-square-foot library, built in the early 1970s, is too small for both its books and its visitors.
The library has doubled the number of annual visitors from one million to two million in the past 10 years, and Ulmschneider said the library is so overcrowded that students often can’t find a place to sit.
“We’re taking up student space to store books,” he said.
The James Branch Cabell Library is one of two VCU libraries. Photo by Brandy Brubaker.
The original building was designed to accommodate a collection of up to one million books, Ulmschneider said. The library is crammed with more than 1.5 million, including one of the country’s leading collections of comic books and other forms of comic art.
The new construction will also expand the size of the library’s popular Starbucks.
Construction began in December and is scheduled to wrap up in the fall of 2015. VCU is trying to raise another $10 million for furnishings and an endowment.
W.M. Jordan Company, which has an office in Richmond, is the project’s general contractor, and Shepley Bulfinch of Boston and Virginia-based Moseley Architects designed the building.
Construction updates, including alerts on the day’s expected noise level, can be found at http://wp.vcu.edu/new-library/.
The addition onto the VCU James Branch Cabell Library is set to be completed by next fall.
VCU is pushing for most of the heavy construction at the library site to be done over the summer. Photo by Brandy Brubaker.
The service desk at a local college library is offering something new to studying students: free earplugs.
Noisy construction is underway at Virginia Commonwealth University as the school overhauls its James Branch Cabell Library on the Monroe Park campus.
The state is funding the construction of a 93,000-square-foot addition to the university library and renovations to more than a third of the current space.
The sounds of construction are growing louder as the school looks to get the noisy work out of the way while students are on break.
“During the semester, we are open 24 hours a day so there is no time for these folks to come in and do noisy things,” University Librarian John Ulmschneider said. “They can’t rely on time that the building is closed. We have to work with them to sequence around students. We can’t have noisy things going on while students are studying for exams.”
Ulmschneider said the current 240,000-square-foot library, built in the early 1970s, is too small for both its books and its visitors.
The library has doubled the number of annual visitors from one million to two million in the past 10 years, and Ulmschneider said the library is so overcrowded that students often can’t find a place to sit.
“We’re taking up student space to store books,” he said.
The James Branch Cabell Library is one of two VCU libraries. Photo by Brandy Brubaker.
The original building was designed to accommodate a collection of up to one million books, Ulmschneider said. The library is crammed with more than 1.5 million, including one of the country’s leading collections of comic books and other forms of comic art.
The new construction will also expand the size of the library’s popular Starbucks.
Construction began in December and is scheduled to wrap up in the fall of 2015. VCU is trying to raise another $10 million for furnishings and an endowment.
W.M. Jordan Company, which has an office in Richmond, is the project’s general contractor, and Shepley Bulfinch of Boston and Virginia-based Moseley Architects designed the building.
Construction updates, including alerts on the day’s expected noise level, can be found at http://wp.vcu.edu/new-library/.
The addition onto the VCU James Branch Cabell Library is set to be completed by next fall.