Friends of the Library
Minutes of the Spring Meeting
March 4, 2007
Chairman, Ann Reams ’42 convened the Spring Business Meeting of the Friends of the Library in the Browsing Room of the Mary Helen Cochran Library on 4 March 2007 at 4 PM. Friends present included Greg & Edna Armstrong, Rebecca Ambers, Dean Jonathan Green, Dorthea Fuller ’53, Laura Glover ’86, Adelaide Hapala, Mary Ann & Bill Hostetler, Karen Hyde ’54, John Jaffe, Joyce Kramar, Debbie Kasper, Elizabeth ’59 & Lloyd Lipscomb, Joe Malloy, John & Bonnie Marsh, Stephen & Sigrid Mirabella, Jane Nelson ’66, Anne Richards ’84, Janet Steven, Doug Wills.
The minutes had been mailed out to council members before the meeting so that members would have time to read them and make notes in regards to any questions they might have. Since there were no questions or corrections to the minutes Mrs. Reams made a motion that the minutes be approved. The minutes of the Fall Meeting (2006) of the Friends of the Library were approved as submitted.
MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE
Connor Forren, Director of Development Communications presented the membership report. Ms. Forren reported that the Friends of the Library membership is currently at 125 with a total dollar amount of $11,780. Last year at this time the membership was 99 with a total dollar amount of $6,293.00.
Ms. Forren also reported that we have a new life member: Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Carroll, parents of Ashley Carroll Class of 2010.
Solicitations were sent out in September to anyone who had been a member in the past five years. First year parents were solicited in November, and renewals were also sent out in the fall. We will have renewal notices sent out again in January and then again in April.
FINANCE COMMITTEE
John Goulde Professor of Religion gave Finance Committee report. Professor Goulde proposed that we keep the same budget this year that we had for the last fiscal year. The Friends accepted the proposal.
NEEDS COMMITTEE
John Jaffe delivered the Needs Committee report for the new Needs Committee Chair, Professor of Classics Eric Casey who was unable to attend this meeting. Mr. Jaffe stated that we had a good variety of faculty requests, but for the first time ever we did not have any English Department Requests. The Needs Committee requests came to $7,655.23 and Mr. Jaffe requested that the Friends accept the Needs Requests. The Friends approved the purchase of these items.
Mr. Jaffe reminded the Friends that they are welcome to check out the new books, as well as being able to check out DVDS, CDs and Books on Tape. We will be glad to help you with any reference questions, help you find an out of print book, or any need that might come up that we can assist you with.
EVENTS COMMITTEE
Joe Malloy gave the Events Committee report. As there were no current events planned for this meeting. Mr. Malloy reported that at the end of March we are once again having some students demonstrate some wonderful Celtic Dancing. In the fall we plan to have Cliff Ambers, connoisseur of wines, and grape grower conduct a grape tasting. This cannot be at the same time as the Friends meeting because the grapes come in earlier than when we meet. Tom Burford, orchard grower and historic apple specialist has agreed to lecture and conduct an apple tasting at the Fall Friends meeting in October.
Mrs. Reams observed that Friends who live in the Lynchburg area were somewhat disappointed when the article came out in the Lynchburg newspaper about the program that said it was sponsored by the Friends of Art. After this error was brought to the attention of Public Relations they were so upset and so wonderful about knocking themselves out to correct the article. As a result of those efforts, there is now a lovely piece in the paper today that headlines “Friends of the Library” in conjunction with the Friends of Art. Mrs. Reams recommended the Friends invite a representative from Public Relations to our next meeting.
PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE
The Library Gazette is due to come out in April. There will be several Basbanes Book Collecting contestants featured. John Marsh’s talk will be also be included in this issue of the Gazette and hopefully some photos of the changes that have been made in the library.
Stephen Mirabella wanted to know if the new books purchased by the Friends could be featured in the lobby for our students, tomorrow’s alumnae and future Friends of the Library. Mr. Jaffe felt that was a good idea. We do have shelves in the lobby that contain new books in general, and of course, those purchased by the Friends have bookplates inside. What we can do is place a sign in front of the books bringing attention to the Friends books.
NEW BUSINESS
Our Fall Meeting will be held on 27 October 2007
Mr. Jaffe reported on the library saying, “First I bring you greetings from Lisa Johnston who is actually enjoying some time in Mexico doing intensive study as part of her sabbatical. Instead of being gone for and entire year she has parceled out her time so that there will always be library coverage.”
The library has been busy this year. We averaged serving at least half of the student body on any given day during the fall period and beginning this term we are serving about 350 to 400 patrons a day. Mr. Jaffe likes to attribute this to the wonderful services we provide, great books and wonderful staff and we think a little of this might be due to the wonderful setting or the improved seating here in the library. As you know we received a rather substantial amount of money to use towards the new library facilities. A portion of that money has been spent on things, which will not have to be redone when we actually move forward to create new library facilities. We will be happy to show any of you who are interested what we have done to date. We have selected, in conjunction with students who have been involved in every part of this process, furnishing to help us refurbish the main reading room both to meet the student requests and to do something about the dilapidated facilities. All the carpet in the main reading room, various other areas and the balcony has been replaced with new carpet, which the students chose from a huge selection. Students then selected a dark wood finish on all the furniture. If you will take a look at the tables, which are the old tables that have served for over 50 years, you will see they have been refinished in a dark wood stain. If you will notice also we no longer have a beige rug here in the browsing room, but now have the beautiful hardwood floor. All the student task chairs that are used for computers and in some of the seminar rooms (73 new chairs) are are now both very ergonomic and comfortable. There are other pieces of furniture in the process of being selected. There are two sample lounge chairs and four sample side chairs that the students have been sitting in and writing comments stating which ones they like and which ones they don’t like. I think we have had a dozen pieces of lounge furniture come in and ten side chairs that we have tried out. Until just last month, however, all the side chairs that we have had here for the last thirty years were better than anything we brought in from vendors. We finally found a vendor who created something based on what we had and one vendor who came up with a brand new chair and the student’s feel that those will be acceptable. They also looked at fabrics and selected a fabric pallet. This fabric will go on the chairs that go around the refurbished tables. The other fabrics will be on lounge chairs and easy chairs. Please feel free after the meeting to come up and look at the samples that the students have chosen. I hope that by the time we are back in October for our next meeting all our new furniture in the reading room and public areas completed. After that we will move on to other areas, such as the furniture in the Browsing Room, which was made from Moser and Company in Lynchburg from the walnut grown here on the plantation.”
Mr. Jaffe stated that in February the Board of Directors approved the reconstitution of the library planning task force to review the work that was done in the mid 1990s. In 1993 you probably recall that there was a library programming planning task force that worked for two years that included students, faculty, board members, staff, alumnae, as well as well as library staff. This group prepared a Library Program, which is actually a description of the facilities that would be needed to carry the library forward into the future. Since then costs have obviously escalated and there have been a variety of other things that have happened at the college. We have raised just over seven million dollars towards new library facilities and at this point are moving forward and reconstituting a program planning committee. It is charged with studying the library instructional and technology needs of the college building based on the 1995 self-study and they will make recommendations to the educational program committee as to the best options for long term renovations of the library facilities in support of Sweet Briar College. Recommendation will take into consideration current needs and projected developments in scholarly communication and instructional technology. The Committee will be chaired by Jonathan Green our Dean and has faculty, staff, administration, student and board representation and should take about 15 months for this study. They will receive an interim report in November and then a final report in April. The members of that committee will be Jonathan Green, myself, Lisa Johnston, Associate Director of the Library, two faculty members - Rebecca Ambers and Eric Casey. The two student representatives are Brandon Agnew and Courtney Cunningham who are both quite extraordinary students and have talked to a number of other students. Paul Davies, Vice-President for Finance, Steve Bailey, Director of Physical Plant, and a board member representative complete the committee roster. At some point in the process, the Development Office will be brought in, final plans approved and we will move forward. We are looking at a number of issues: the whole state of scholarly communication; publishing changes; projected enrollments and changes as the college increases enrollment; issues of green buildings; and issues of changing media for information and technology issues. This should be a rather exciting committee and has a good base to build on from the work that was done ten years ago. After the planning process, we get down to the fun things – raising needed funds and actually building the facility. If, in your travels, you happen to visit library facilities that you consider extraordinary or see features that you like we would be happy to hear about them. I was in Henrico Regional Library on Wednesday of last week. Henrico is a public library that has incredible use of space in terms of sight lines and how people could see where everything was and orient themselves.
Overall I think the library is good shape and the students appreciate the renovations we have made. I actually have a delegation of students coming in on Tuesday requesting that the library be kept open until 3 AM or 24 hours a day. They are proposing themselves as volunteer workers. I welcome the interest in student use of the library and longer hours on the part of our students.
A Friend asked whether the library was going to be a renovation or an entirely new library. Mr. Jaffe stated that we are welcome to read the 1995 study. What happened in the 1995 study was that they examined the program and presented several scenarios for achieving it. They included an entirely new building. There were one or two sites for a possible new building or extensions or renovations on this building by going out front, underground, or back. All of them had the same dollar amount and at that point he informed the then President of the College that Sweet Briar had not done a campus wide planning process in a number of years and that it would probably be a good idea to have some planning done before we made any decision whether to build a separate structure or add to the historic library. He recommended this because there were obviously other issues of instructional facilities needs, physical education needs, student center needs, all of which were on the table at that time, none of which had come to fruition. They have moved forward on planning and other facilities and now we are actually moving forward for the library plans. Though where and what is still open, we have a fairly good handle on the size of the facility might need to be, what kinds of spaces are needed, and considerations of issues to examine when reviewing addition or new building. It will be much more a student centered, person centered building the way most libraries are these days. But at the same time, until last year the number of publications throughout the world had increased every year so technology has not done away with books. Technology has changed the kinds of things libraries do and the way we get the information so we are factoring all those things in, but we have not made any decisions on how this will be done. The Sasaki Report tended towards the belief that what we would do was add on to this facility and retain this facility and that is the most likely scenario but nothing has been ruled out at this point. When dealing with issues such as we have this historic structure, the original Cochran Library, if we try and repurpose it for any other purpose on campus it would probably be both very difficult and would cut into the historical nature of the building. If we can work with that structure and maintain the library on this site and expanding out on either side then that is the desired outcome. Of course, if it turns out that that is not fiscally or environmentally feasible we have not closed any other options.
After some discussion it was noted that whichever way we build the addition the original library would have to be made handicap accessible as well as the new addition. Simply meeting the requirements ADA rules regarding library stacks, the space between library stacks and the spaces at the end of each stack and the stairwells necessitate almost doubling the size of the current building.
Mrs. Reams recognized Dean Green and thanked him for attending our Friends meeting. The Friends are always delighted to have the chance to meet and chat with the Dean.
Mrs. Reams also recognized the library staff as one of the hardest working staff she has ever seen. The library staff is wonderful and all of us who come here as volunteers so appreciate the extra effort made by the staff to help us in anyway they can.
Mrs. Reams announced that immediately following the business meeting we would be having individual committee meetings.
Mrs. Reams announced that both Helen Lewis and Laura Goley send their regrets and hope to be here for the fall meeting.
Mr. Jaffe announced the schedule for the rest of the evening: cocktails in the Art Gallery, dinner at the conference center, Boxwood Room, and then immediately following dinner, the Director of the VA Fine Arts Museum, Alexander Lee Nyerges will be speaking.
The meeting was adjourned. |
