BSU library work to begin in July

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

June 14, 1996

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

After 10 years of waiting, and five years of planning, the construction of Bemidji State University's new and improved A.C. Clark Library will begin in July, building program coordinator and librarian Stu Rosselet said.

The library will be both new and improved because, although the building will be gutted, it will be rebuilt with the existing infrastructure left intact," Rosselet said. The $8.1 million project will expand the current 68,000 square feet by an additional 4,500 feet.

Two-thirds of the funding for the project will come from the state Legislature through bonding, BSU's Vice President for Administrative Affairs Tom Faecke said. BSU will be responsible for paying one-third of the remaining one-third, and the other two-thirds will be absorbed by the newly formed Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System by which BSU is administered.

According to Rosselet, the north and west walls of the current facility will remain untouched, and a portion of the south wall will remain. However, the east wall, facing Hagg-Sauer Hall, will be completely rebuilt to add more room.

The principal addition to the structure will be a 16-foot extension planned for the south side. This will involve replacing the main entrance serving the current library, which has always been an item of contention.

Currently, there is no entrance to the library on the same level as Birchmont Drive, the street adjacent to the library. From street level, a person must go down a flight of stairs to enter the library.

The only way a person in a wheelchair can enter the library unassisted is to go to the next building over, take an elevator down to the tunnels connecting both buildings and use the library's elevator on the tunnel level to enter. Rosselet said the new building will relieve this problem because the entrance will be on street level.

Although there are no serious safety concerns with the current building, Rosselet said, there are other problems that will be addressed with the new building. For instance, the open stairwell in the current facility would act just like a chimney in case of a fire, he said.

According to law, there can be at most two floors not separated by some type of fireproofing. This library has four floors open to each other, he said.

An actual air conditioning system will be installed in the new library, whereas the old library was cooled by a system that pumped cooled ground water through pipes in the library. Rosselet said this system has been illegal for quite sometime, but BSU has been receiving waivers until the new library is built.

Rosselet also said the new library would be better equipped to handle telecommunications. "Nothing in this building has been built for telecommunications," he said. "Most electrical conduits were placed for vacuuming or floor waxing." The new library should double the number of computer stations in the building.

At 5:45 p.m. July 11, the old library will close its doors to the public forever. During the construction, Memorial Hall will serve as the hub of library operations, Rosselet said. Reference materials, current periodicals, the interlibrary loan office and as many other services as possible will be housed there.

The general collection will be housed off-campus, and to order a book the borrower will fill out an order card, and the book will be retrieved from the warehouse. About three to four of these retrievals are planned per day to begin with, he said.

"We all need to have some patience," Rosselet said. "As long as people keep a sense of perspective and say, 'Yeah, this is only a year and a half,' we should be fine."

The library is expected to be finished in December 1997 and open for business in January 1998.