McIntyre Library Construction Update

Demolition will begin next week and take place on all floors - first, fourth, and fifth floors - simultaneously.

Construction will take place primarily between the hours of 7 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.

Construction of the new walls in different areas is supposed to start June 21.

Dell projects the compact shelving in the new Special Collections area will be installed relatively early in August.

The completion date for the new instructional lab is August 4.

The completion date for the remodeling of the classrooms (2023A, B and C) is August 18.

There will be emergency doors installed just beyond the Family Friendly Study. Dell agreed in the meeting to build the wall but hold off on installing the doors as long as possible so users will have continued access to LILL in its current location until the equipment has been moved to its new first floor location.

Bester Bros was able to move all the shelving on the fifth floor into its final configuration today (though we still have to fill in a few gaps). There is also single sided shelving to be installed on the east side next to the existing graduate study. Dell Construction will be building that.

I encourage you to go up and take a look. Even though the lighting is not in place and even though it's clear we are going to have to find some money for additional carpet in some areas, I think you will be pleased with how much this opens up the stacks. There is much more room as you come off the main and southern stairways and it should be much easier for users to orient themselves to where they are on the floor when they exit the stairs. And take a look at what a difference made by having wider aisles.

Fourth Floor:

June 19 and 20 - stacks moved to temporary location for carpet repair; also stacks moved to enable addition of one section at end.

June 28 and 29 - stacks to be moved to their final configuration. This gives Wall to Wall a full week in which to do the carpet repair in that area of the fourth floor, though it would be better to do it in the first couple days of that period so there will be sufficient time for the carpet glue to dry and to have that carpet shampooed.

Today, Bester Brothers moving will be moving shelves and books into their final configuration on the fifth floor. There may be some noise associated with this.

Contractors will be in the library on Wednesday, May 10, to begin patching green carpet that was hidden under previously existing stacks. In order to remove the carpet, workers will need to use a machine which should create a significant amount of noise. We apologize that this will be occuring so close to finals. Unfortunately the timeline of the project dictates that it be completed as soon as possible. We will make our best effort to not have this significantly effect your studies.

Bester Brothers, a moving company out of St. Paul, MN, will be working on the fifth floor of the library this Thursday and Friday, May 4 and 5, to dissassemble shelving for storage/removal. Shelving will also moved from the fifth to the fourth floor. Also as part of this project, Dell Construction will also be arriving to remove single-sided shelving on the floor. This may result in noise. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

We continue to move existing library shelving and furniture into new configurations, anticipating the reconfiguration of the floor to make room for the construction a new Special Collections area. There may be noise from time to time due to shifting of collections, moving of shelving or moving of furntiure.

The library is currently exploring moving the DVDs out from behind the Circulation Desk into a location near the Music CD collection on the first floor. Some processing is necessary, but by the fall you should be able to freely view all of our DVDs. Stay tuned!

Due to current collection shifting and impending construction noise, we have decided to temporarily move the Quiet Study Zone from the fifth floor to the fourth floor. With the end of the semester at hand, we hope this will offer students the quiet study area they deserve. The fifth floor will again become the quiet study floor in the fall when construction ends.

You may have noticed how open the Reference collection area has become. High shelves and low shelves have been switched so all low shelving greets you from the beginning row of the collection. We have also removed shelving from the beginning of the Reference collection in an effort to make it easier to locate items and offer additional study spaces.

Weeding of the collection will continue through the summer and additional shelving may be installed to accomodate the newspaper indexes, currently located on the north wall of the first floor, just after the new book shelf.

The carpet and furniture has been installed in its permanent location in the Old Library/Schofield breezeway. This area will be open 24 hours, expanding the area already open 24 hours in the library's Grand Corrdior.

We have completed shifting books on the fifth floor. Weeding of the books on this floor continues, however, to offer opportunity for growth of the collection. Temporary shelving have also been set on the southeast corner of the floor. This shelving will be moved in late May to its permanent location.