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Welcome to the Brooklyn College Library, one of the dozen largest academic libraries in New York State.
Brooklyn College has been described as an oasis in the heart of Brooklyn. The Library with its gilded clock tower anchors the graceful oval green around which the College's grand Georgian brick buildings cluster. This lovely and serene setting suggests the sort of contemplative spirit libraries were created to nurture.
Inside the Library, however, another story unfolds--one of motion, vibrancy, and excitement. Here, a progressive and energetic staff delivers both the College's library and academic computing programs, services that emphasize teaching students to identify and evaluate contemporary information resources and encouraging faculty to incorporate technology in their instruction, research, and scholarship.
Building is a major theme in the Brooklyn College Library. This fall we will inaugurate two new state-of-the-art multimedia classrooms, each networked and offering full Internet access. These spaces were designed by the firm of Kliment and Halsband, New York City. In design is the Library Café, an Internet café offering students relaxed study space, light edibles--cappucino, croissants, and the like--and high-end networked computing both from fixed workstations and laptops in a wireless environment. The firm of Thanhauser and Esterson are the architects for this facility, slated to come online in the fall, 1997.
But our biggest project by far is the new Library. The College will renovate and expand the existing building, transforming it into a state-of-the-art information hub for the entire campus. In the summer 1996, the State Legislature appropriated $53,000,000 to renovate the existing building (125,000 NSF) and build onto it another 72,000 net square feet. When one adds to this the funding for design, furniture, and equipment, the total cost of the project will exceed $70 million. The programming for the expanded Library is complete and the team of architects (Buttrick White & Burtis, New York City, and Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Anderson, Boston) are set to begin design. We are elated by this major construction project, the first to be built under the campus' new master plan.
As you browse our home page, you will get a good idea of what the Brooklyn College Library and Office of Academic Information Technologies is all about. If there's something you'd like to know that we've left out, please contact me--I would be very glad to hear from you.
Barbra Buckner Higginbotham, D.L.S.
Chief Librarian & Executive Director, Academic Information Technologies
Brooklyn College
2900 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11210
718/951-5342 (Voice)
718/951-4799 (Telefacsimile)
bxhbc@cunyvm.cuny.edu
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