Santa Rosa Junior College’s New library ia a clear winner.
Not so fast, there, slick. It is not quite time to mourn. The Internet notwithstanding, those bells you hear in the background are not tolling the death of the library. Rather, they’re an invitation to see “library” in a whole new way—one that’s as exciting as it is liberating and inviting.
The Magnificent Yankee himself, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., said it best: “A mind expanded by a new idea never returns to its former size.” Well, the Santa Rosa Junior College’s brand spanking new Frank P. Doyle Library, just opened in August, has been decidedly and decisively designed to expand more than a few mental horizons.
Let me put it another way. Will Baty, the JC’s Dean of Libraries and Learning Resources, has been having the time of his life figuring out how to make this new bastion of higher learning utterly alluring and completely useful to students, staff, faculty and (pay attention here) community. Yup, it’s open to one and all, and there’s plenty to sate your cognitive requirements, now and for quite some time to come.
“You have to understand,” says Baty pensively, “that we’ve been working with the idea of a new library since 1985. And, in a perversely wonderful way, it was a good thing we didn’t get to do it earlier. When you see all the new technology we’ve been able to incorporate—both in its construction and in all the online, wireless capabilities we’ve built-in—well, it was definitely worth the wait!”
Baty fairly beams with delight over the in-depth thinking that’s gone into the process, from the basement to the fourth floor reading room that overlooks Sonoma County hillsides from a structure whose color schemes echo the colors of nature and whose brick-sheathed exterior is a perfect fit to the mature campus’ architectural theme. It won’t take long for the new library to look like it’s been there for decades.
Let there be light
The very layout of the building excites Baty. “We wanted it to be open, flexible and transparent. You can see how much light comes into the building. Light makes you feel good, but the amount of outside light is also going to save us some serious dollars. The floor-to-ceiling interior ‘walls’ provide a sense of security for users. Everything is open, clear, almost translucent. We have a resource room for faculty and staff. When students see their mentors at work, improving their skills, that provides a healthier mind-set for the students.
“As you can see, the layout is cruciform. From the rotunda at the center of each floor, you can see virtually every public work space on that floor. The building is virtually transparent, inside and out. That means you can find your way about easily and that we can accommodate change in our function and service more easily. We believe that beauty and function are opposite sides of the same coin. I think it was Jorge Luis Borges who said, ‘I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.’ Cicero observed that a library gave a house a soul. For me, the closest thing to order in the universe is a good library.”
In this instance, the universe is in good order, for this library has everything you’ll need to access information—and that’s half of education’s battle. [Understand, the purposes of formal education are essentially two-fold: The first part teaches one how to access information; the second part teaches one how to process that information and put it into a form that’s useful to you or to someone else (who’ll hopefully pay you for that analysis). Get those two down and you have the world by the tail.]
“Our job is to organize information, create connections and, especially, to make our collections accessible,” says Baty. “Libraries used to be about ‘book collections’—how many books you had, the size of your journal collection—but there’s been a design shift. Now it’s all about how people find and use information. The body of knowledge in the life sciences has been doubling every six years, so we have to find new ways to keep up and to be able to show zour clients how to find and use that information. We offer 22 sections of Information Competencies, which are classes that teach students how to find and use information, how to think critically, how to analyze information. The entire building is set up for wireless Internet connections, and we have loaner laptop computers available at the circulation desk. You can take a tour of the library with your iPod, and live webcasts are being planned.”
At 144,000 square feet, the new library is four times the size of Plover (the old library, which will be remodeled for student services), currently has a collection of 123,000 books and has the capacity for about 200,000. There’s also a working collection of art throughout the building.
If you build it…
The Frank P. Doyle Library, pegged at $45 million, has come in right on budget. “Part of the money came from the state’s education bond and part came from our local Measure A,” notes Baty. “The building itself cost $36 million, and that was a bargain. Furniture and equipment ran $5.5 million, and associated site costs and improvements came to $1.5 million. Wright Contracting was brilliant in its planning. It convinced the Junior College to let it buy steel futures early on, then closed the contracts three weeks before steel prices went up significantly. We figure the building itself, at today’s prices, would come in at $62 million, almost twice what we actually paid.
“
Instead of simply putting out the jobs to the lowest bidders, we went with a construction management process called ‘multi-prime contracting,’ which let us set firm prices ahead of time and employ more local firms. Instead of the jobs going to San Francisco- and Los Angeles-based firms, seven of the nine trade packages involved were local. By going with construction management, we were able to set certain quality standards, avoid myriad change orders and keep our costs manageable. Scott Thomas and Jay Wright have done a magnificent job keeping our costs in line.”
Baty is equally effusive about the work of the design architects involved in the project, both the nationally recognized (“they’re the oldest firm in the country”) Boston firm of SBRA (Sheply, Bullfinch, Richardson & Abbott) and the local team at TLCD (Tomasi Lawry Coker DeSilva Architecture), a firm that’s been around for more than 40 years.
“We also decided early on to go as ‘green’ as possible. We used water-based paints and glues to minimize fumes. Several of the rooms have bamboo flooring, which is quite durable and also an easily renewable resource. The photovoltaic solar panels on the roof will go a long way toward deferring electrical costs, perhaps saving us $30,000 a year in utility costs.”
Several aspects stand out in the use of sustainable materials. The acoustic ceiling tiles are produced from 80 percent recycled materials, the carpeting is made of 90 percent recycled fibers, and the lighting fixtures use much lower power than normal and are computerized to shut off when meeting and study rooms are unoccupied. Wall coverings are comprised of recycled cotton rayon, and counter and desktops are granite or linoleum.
Linoleum? “Linoleum is wonderful,” expounds Baty, preaching to the unconverted. “Linoleum is a natural product, composed of cork, flax and linseed oil. It is incredibly durable and will outlast vinyl products many times over. And linoleum cleans up easily with water-based products, so it keeps environmental impacts low.” Ergonomically, note that many of the desktops are easily adjustable in height, both for the handicapped and for those who simply work better in an unconventional position. Or pay close attention to the furniture, particularly the chairs (both the upholstered chairs in the meeting rooms and the wooden chairs in the common areas): They’re designed with comfort in mind. I’m 6’1”, and even the wooden chairs promise comfort without back pain. That takes thoughtful planning.
Learning for a lifetime
Baty and his cohorts clearly understand that learning is a social process, and made sure the library’s design reflected that. “All our design notions put the user first in the equation,” he says. “The traditional approach was to design libraries around their collections, but we felt we could be much more efficient by focusing on our users. We feel that learning occurs pretty much everywhere. Thus, a library should be designed to accommodate individual and group learning and include teacher and student interaction. Media services features two distance education classrooms that bring remote users into the classroom in real time.
“The main thing is we’ve organized our learning technologies into two categories—building-wide and floor-specific. Those available throughout the library include the fact that all collections and resources are accessible via computer; more than 400 library Web pages have been developed to meet user needs; there are public access computers—nearly 300—available on all floors; we have 50 laptops available for checkout; we have wireless access throughout the building; we offer networked print and copy centers on three floors; we have instructional spaces with full media and network resources; and we have 27 group study rooms, each with network access.”
As to floor-specific organization, the first floor has media services, including networked media viewing carrels and group viewing rooms, the distance education classrooms, a digital television studio and multimedia production area, satellite and media distribution racks, a tutorial center and an art gallery. The second floor features a networked information commons, public access and laptop computers, teaching spaces and digital periodicals and magazines. There’s also a newspaper reading room and coffeehouse.
Floor three houses the Center for New Media (providing tech support and digital teaching resources for faculty and staff), wireless reading rooms, a fully networked teaching lab, an academic computer technology training and demonstration area, three digital design studios, CATE (“Center for Advanced Technology in Education,” an online class development and support center), a networked conference room and part of the general book collection. The fourth floor has the remainder of the book collection along with wireless meeting and reading rooms and reserve services.
Finding his place
The deep care and thought that went into all this becomes evident when you understand the great love of learning that possesses Baty, who was raised in Morro Bay (on the Pacific Coast, about 15 miles south of San Luis Obispo). “My father ran a liquor store, and my mother taught high school. I studied political philosophy at UC Santa Barbara, thinking about becoming a public interest lawyer but found I liked philosophy a lot more than I liked the law. I didn’t know quite how I would make a living as a philosopher but noted I was spending most of my waking life in libraries, so I went for my master’s in library science at UC Berkeley, graduating in 1978. I worked for a time in a law office in San Francisco, filing legal documents and, more important, finding them.
“I then worked at the Public Health Library in Berkeley and, once again, became aware of the time I spent in libraries, even when not working. At some point, with luck, you begin to understand your tendencies…and honor them. Which led me to the Junior College.”
Baty is married to Mary Pierce, who teaches in the communication studies program at the JC’s Petaluma campus. They have two cats and share an abiding love of reading, hiking and sailing. Not that he’s had a lot of time for any of those pursuits over the last few years.
What most pleases Baty about the whole thing? “I’m doing quite a few tours, helping the Library Foundation raise $2 million endowment to provide ongoing support for our collections. We’re more than halfway there, by the way. But what I hear most, and utterly delight in, is the comment, ‘I can’t believe we’re getting something of this quality, right here in Santa Rosa!’”
Well, we are getting something of great and enduring quality, and it’s right here in our hometown. And it’s open to everyone, student and non-student alike. “We offer a community borrowing card, renewable each semester and, typically, about 600 people take advantage of the opportunity each year.”
I’ll be willing to bet you, Will Baty, that that number is about to escalate rather dramatically. Right about…now.
Hinkle is the author of eight wine books. You can check out his work at www.RichardPaulHinkle.com
