Rocky Mount, N.C.— Construction of a 12,000-square-foot expansion of North Carolina Wesleyan College’s Elizabeth Braswell Pearsall Library officially got underway on Friday, April 25, following a meeting of the College’s Board of Trustees.

The trustees and Wesleyan’s president, Dr. Ian Newbould, turned over the first shovels of ground for the $4 million expansion and renovation project, which will nearly double the size of the existing library, which was built in 1967 as one of Wesleyan’s first structures. Construction is expected to be completed for the 2009 fall semester.

 

Among the most visible features will be a landscaped plaza leading to a re-positioned main library entrance conveniently located near parking areas and several residence halls. Just inside the entrance and overlooking the plaza will be an inviting, glassed-in Internet Café, where students, faculty, and others can enjoy conversation.

Other important features of the new construction and renovation of the existing library will include:

• An Information/Learning Commons. This service area will house the print reference collection, an information service desk, seating for students doing research, and workstations for both individual and group work. Library users will be able to tap into a full range of digital information resources. Seating will include computer stations where students can do research, use the online catalog, work with electronic resources, and prepare papers and assignments.

• A High-Tech Instructional Lab. The use of technology in teaching and learning has made instruction in information literacy a critical part of academic library service. Instruction in the use of new technologies and multimedia can take place in this essential new part of the library.

• A Media and Special Collections Area. This area will provide space for collections of music, media, and microform, as well as equipment needed to work with those media. The library’s growing collection of films numbers over 1,700, and the library has scores of over 650 choral works, 6,000 instrumental and operative works, and almost 2,000 miniature scores.

• A New Circulation Area. This will be a visible public service center where visitors will pick up and return materials. It will include a copying and collating center, a secure storage area for laptop computers that will circulate to students, display areas, a broad service counter with workstations, storage for reserve materials, and staff workspace.

• A Curriculum Materials Center. This will provide shelving for the juvenile collections, resources for teacher education students, and space where students can work with resource materials.

• Increased Seating. More seating choices will be available in areas for study, reading, browsing, research, and collaborative learning, and will include networked workstations for desktop computers and wireless portable laptops.

• Library Archives Area. The addition will provide appropriate space to preserve information about Wesleyan’s history as well as other materials, including the College’s Black Mountain Collection and other rare books.

Funding for the library addition and renovation has come entirely from private sources—generous trustees, foundations, corporations, businesses, alumni, and friends of the College—all who appreciate Wesleyan’s mission and want to be a part of the effort to ensure the College’s continued growth and service.