Temple University has unveiled plans for a sleek, new
$190 million library that will span a city block and serve as an anchor in the
heart of the North Philadelphia campus.
The 210,000-square-foot library - which will rise at the
current site of Barton Hall, between Liacouras Walk and 13th Street - will
replace Paley Library, which will be retooled as a welcome center, with a cafe,
classrooms, and gathering spaces.
A rendering by the architectural firm Snøhetta shows a
futuristic expanse with a sweeping front arch, a green roof, and an outdoor
balcony offering cross-campus views.
The library will include a "robotic text-retrieval
system," which is just what it sounds like. Students will order a book
online and a crane with a robotic arm will go into stacks of tightly packed
bins to retrieve it.
"It will not be the book warehouse you or I used when
we were in school," Temple president Neil D. Theobald told the
university's board of trustees on Tuesday. "Temple has partnered with
Snøhetta, one of the world's most innovative library architectural firms. . . .
Our plan is to create a bold new library - a place for truly collaborative
learning."
Temple had intended to put the new library on North Broad
Street, but scrapped that idea in favor of a central location. The plan
released Tuesday includes input from the Temple community given through a
website and at group sessions, the university said.
"I believe libraries and their role in teaching,
learning, and research are and always will be central to the university
experience," Theobald said in a statement. "The location of our new
library reflects my vision of its centrality. Temple's academic heart will be
where it belongs, at the core."
Construction on the library, which will be funded with
$140 million in state aid and $50 million in university funds, will begin late
next year and conclude in 2018, the university said.
The library will be bounded by Polett Walk to the south,
Liacouras Walk to the west, Norris Street to the north and a new large green
space planned for the east.
Snøhetta is designing the library in partnership with
Stantec, a Philadelphia-based firm. The library will feature quiet study and
reading spaces, larger meeting rooms, and areas for special events and
technology-related activities such as data visualization and 3-D printing, said
Joseph P. Lucia, Temple's dean of libraries, in a statement.
The robotic retrieval system will include about two
million volumes, stored in bins stacked three stories high, said Margaret
Carney, university architect. When a student orders a book, one of three
robotic cranes will go down the narrow aisles and retrieve the appropriate bin.
Each bin will store about 100 books.
"A person then opens the box, picks up a book, and
hands it to a student," she said. "The whole transaction takes a
couple minutes."
University officials like the system because it frees up
a lot of space in the library. Only about 180,000 volumes will be on the floor,
she said.
Other universities have similar systems. The University
of Louisville's system can hold up to 1.2 million volumes. Each robot (crane)
weighs 6,900 pounds and can carry a bin that weighs up to 500 pounds.
In the University of Chicago's library, huge robotic
cranes retrieve the books from bins stacked five stories beneath the main
reading room.
The University of Missouri-Kansas City's Miller Nichols
Library offers a video, showing its robot, affectionately nicknamed Roobot by
students, in action.
See Roobot at: http://library.umkc.edu/newmnl/about-robot
Source: Philly.com
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