Two construction projects at Fresno State are moving ahead. Workers continue to install steel on the new Henry Madden Library and to assemble solar parking structures in a parking lot at Woodrow and Shaw avenues.

The library steel work is expected to be complete in mid-July. Pouring of the concrete for the first floor is scheduled to begin the second week of July.

The $105-million library project will yield a four-story, much larger, technologically advanced building dramatically designed and furnished to evoke the region’s Native American heritage.

When completed in late 2008, the Henry Madden Library will become the largest library in the California State University’s 23-campus system and the biggest academic library between Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

About 3 million pounds (or 1,500 tons) of steel will be used in the project. Additional fascinating facts about the structural steel include:

• 177 columns

• 1,913 beams

• 9,742 plates

• 5,451 bolts

• 3,830 drawings

• 5.3 miles of linear feet of weld

The parking structure project, topped with photovoltaic solar panels, is being built by Chevron Energy Solutions, a Chevron (NYSE: CVX) subsidiary, and will be the largest of its kind at any university in the United States.

Photovoltaic panels installed atop 10 metal shelters will shade more than 700 parking spaces from the San Joaquin Valley sun and will convert the sun’s energy into one

megawatt of electricity. That’s about 20 percent of the university’s base demand and enough to power 1,000 homes.

The $11.9-million project is scheduled for completion in the fall.

Webcams with live images of the work are aimed at both construction projects. See the following links:

Library Webcam 1: www.csufresno.edu/library/welocam.shtml

Library Webcam 2: http://tlt.csufresno.edu/library.php

Solar parking structure: http://spaces.csufresno.edu/streaming/LotVWebcam/