The library renovations come just a few weeks away from the end of the spring semester and are planned to be completed in September of this year.
Courtesy of Sofía García Vargas | The Crow’s Nest
By Sofía García Vargas
The Nelson Poynter Memorial Library (NPML) at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg is currently under renovation, promising a better structure of the first floor to meet the needs of the growing USF community.
Just a few weeks away from the end of the semester, giant plastic curtains cover two-thirds of the first level of the library, disrupting the usual calmness of the building. Despite the inconveniences, the renovations aim to further expand the student, faculty and community experience at the university.
Interim Campus Library Dean Kaya van Beynen told The Crow’s Nest that the project is being built by the company DIRTT and will cost $1,250,000, with completion planned for September of this year.
The modernization changes the traditionally spacious front desk and The plan includes significant changes to two-thirds of the first floor, which will provide more space for the growing campus. Courtesy of USF.
A significant number of changes will be made, starting with the addition of a row of glass study rooms along the south side of the atrium. Additionally, the front desk will be redesigned to make it fit within a smaller, more modern space.
The Student Technology Center (STC) will also have a new look, expanding to include small workshop spaces and a “genius bar” –– where students can get tech support –– in addition to its existing software and hardware aid, a maker space with robotics, 3D printing, virtual reality/augmented reality equipment and high-end multimedia computers.
The Poynter Corner in the southwest area of the first floor, home to many university and community events, has been cataloged as problematic by many, including van Beynen.
“While this area is beautiful with windows along three walls, it’s been problematic for several reasons. Its tucked away in the back corner and visitors have a hard time finding it, there’s no barrier, so when we have events, these can be disturbing to students studying nearby,” van Beynen said.
For this reason, the current recreational gallery space near the entrance will be fixed up for improved capacity to hold events. The space and furniture will be flexible to better accommodate small and large events, and with the long row of glass study rooms, future library events will not disturb the studying of students.
According to van Beynen, one of the biggest changes will be the reconfiguration of the entrance and exit to the library.
“The exit will be removed and the front entrance will become both an entrance and an exit,” van Beynen said.
As one of the St. Petersburg campus’ main pillars is to increase sustainability, the renovation project plans to further these efforts by changing the current lighting to LED lighting.
Additionally, the current exit will be turned into a green wall including the use of plants to clean the indoor air and give the library a “calming, green aesthetic.”
Everything from the floor to the furniture is being renovated, which will allow for more students to navigate the first floor. Courtesy of Sofía García Vargas | The Crow’s Nest.
Planning for this renovation initiated back in 2018, which according to van Beynen, started with the holding of a series of focus groups with students and faculty to discuss what the library was missing.
“Unsurprisingly, this confirmed our anecdotal knowledge that students wanted increased capacity for safe late night study space, more study rooms, increased Wi-Fi and electronical outlets,” van Beynen said.
“Library staff knew that new visitors wanted to leave using the entrance and that visitors frequently didn’t notice the exit. We also knew that our front desk work patterns had changed. We just didn’t need that big of a desk.”
Courtesy of Sofía García Vargas | The Crow’s Nest.
While the NPML has undergone several significant changes in its almost 30 years –– the latest one being in 2019 –– it has never been fully renovated. However, after a $1 million donation made by Josephine Hall –– a regular attendee to the university’s public events –– and a $250,000 donation by Lynn Pippenger in 2019, USF was able to carry out this project.
According to van Beynen, considering the way the USF community studies, communicates and conducts research has changed in the past years, the renovations will provide an update to accommodate those needs.
“When I first started working at NPML in the early 2000s, most of the first floor was taken up by ranges of shelves filled with print journals, reference books (telephone books, encyclopedias, indexes, etc.), and films in DVD and VHS,” van Beynen said. “But technology has changed and most of these resources are now available online.”
“To adapt around, we’ve progressively weeded these collections to remove those that were out-of-date or available online. The remaining print journal collections (those that are not yet online) and the media collection have now been relocated to the second and third floor of the library. This opened up a lot of space that we could convert to student study space, the STC and the Poynter Corner event space.”
According to van Beynen, student study preferences have changed as well.
“Students do a lot of group work now, and we regularly host study groups particularly among the biology, business and nursing students,” van Beynen said.
“Library hours have progressively expanded into the evening and into the early morning. We’re open until 2 a.m. now Monday through Thursday, and regularly get requests for additional extended hours leading up to exam weeks. But we’ve always needed to balance access to the library with student safety and have never had the ability to close off some of the staff workspace and the second and third floors [to] students and members of the public. With this renovation project, we’ll soon have the capacity to close off most of the library during late evenings so that students can continue to safely use the library.”
Even though no further renovation plans have been scheduled yet, van Beynen said, “we are always trying to think how we can improve our library into a welcoming, service oriented, efficient, high-tech and just plain beautiful building.”
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