We're ready to go!
The Mary Couts Burnett Library is about to embark on a big adventure. This will be the type of adventure that happens rarely in the history of a Library. It is a two-year journey with one year behind us and the BIG year ahead of us.
Last year the University acquired a Library Annex about two miles from campus. We moved nearly a half million volumes to high density shelving at the Annex. With careful faculty and staff selections, we moved volumes offsite that had no circulation in recent years. Those volumes recently purchased or with recent circulation were kept onsite. To help library users who are used to browsing the physical shelves and seeing ALL volumes in one place, a new function was added to the library's database for Virtual Shelf Browsing. When using this function we added images of books shelved on either side of the selected volume. Last year, we temporarily located over a dozen staff to the Annex to open up office space in the building. Next to the Library on the East side is a new building Rees Jones Hall, that has offices for TCU's Institute of Child Development, TCU's Energy Institute, many classrooms and group study rooms for students. AND the big news from this past year is the Library now has a beautiful new entrance on the West side, facing University. If you haven't driven by the Library in recent weeks, you should!
With all of that behind us, the upcoming year has even more in store, A very large construction crane now sits between the Library and Rees Jones Hall. The East wing of the building becomes a construction site in the next few weeks. During that time, all offices and services housed in that wing move to the East side during construction. The front steps that have been the Library Entrance for around 30 years, will be no more. The Information Commons with all of its computers will be relocated to the West side of the building. We expect construction to be finished in time for fall semester 2015. And a note of warning, with all of the construction around us, please allow yourselves more time to find parking when you visit us.
Please visit our website to stay current with these changes: http:/www.blogs.lib.tcu.edu/wordpress/renovation/
Sincerely,
June Koelker, Dean of the Library