Trustees of the California State University system approved the conceptual design of the new Fresno State’s Henry Madden Library at their meeting today (March 16) in Long Beach.
The approval allows Fresno State to move forward with construction drawings for the library, which is scheduled to open in 2008.
This $91 million project will be financed with funds from the Proposition 55 bond measure approved by voters in March 2004.
Older portions of the library will be demolished and a new structure built, bringing the total footage to 315,600 square feet for reading rooms and study areas, collections, library administration, individual study carrels, group study rooms, specialized libraries and special collections. The university administration will be housed on the fourth floor of the building.
The “newer” four-story South Wing of the library, which was built in 1980, will be retained and connected to the new structure.
Information about the project is available at a new Web site, www.maddenlibrary.org. The site will be updated as the project advances.
The new building will include state-of-the-art information technology systems, 3600 reader stations and a wide variety of study configurations
The central stack collection (750,000) and 150,000 bound periodicals will be moved to a warehouse, with the location and logistics of book retrieval to be determined. Library employees will be relocated into the South Wing during the construction.
Also to be relocated into that section will be the reference and circulation departments, map library, government documents and the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature. The special collections department will remain in the wing.
The Madden Library is the largest academic library between Sacramento and Los Angeles. The current structure was designed to accommodate 13,000 full time equivalent (FTE) students, but the university now has about 18,000 FTE students (21,000 individuals). The expansion will provide space to serve a campus community of 25,000 FTE students.
