RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC/CNS) – When Virginia Commonwealth University opened Cabell Library in 1970, enrollment was about 17,000 students. Forty-five years later, enrollment had doubled at the university – but the library was still the same size. As a result, VCU had less library space per student than any other university in the state.
That changed Tuesday, when VCU President Michael Rao, Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton, University Librarian John Ulmschneider and others formally presented the newly completed, $50.8 million Cabell renovation.
“Every decision about this new building has been made with students first,” said Sue Robinson, public affairs specialist for VCU Libraries. “We’ve held student forums. They voted on furniture, were polled on types of workspaces they liked. We knew they were desperate for more study rooms for collaborative work.”
Robinson said the changes include an innovative media new workshop in the library basement, with 3-D printers and other cool tools. The workshop is free and open to all students and faculty.
The Cabell renovation-construction project, which started in December 2013, added 93,000 square feet to the facility and improved 63,000 square feet of previously existing space. The library features an expanded 3,400-square-foot Starbucks, 3,000 student seats (double the previous number) and 175 more silent study seats.
“What we really are celebrating is the future,” Rao said during the opening ceremony of the library. “I still think of libraries as medicine for the soul.”
To make the project happen, the university used $50.8 million in state funds and $6 million in private funds from the library’s endowment. No student tuition money was used.
To help fund furnishings and other items not covered by the state, the Cabell Foundation, a philanthropic organization in Richmond, awarded a $1 million challenge grant to VCU Libraries. The library system will get the money if it raises $1 million in new gifts and pledges by June 30, 2017.
In his speech at the opening ceremony, Ulmschneider indicated that more funds would be divided up. Half would go into the library’s endowment, and half would go to building stations for nursing mothers, providing accommodations for deaf people and creating an interfaith meditation area.
“VCU has created one of the country’s most outstanding academic libraries,” Ulmschneider said.
Robinson said the library’s busiest study months are October and April. Last October, more than 63,000 people visited Cabell in one week.
Cabell Library is located in the physical center of VCU’s Monroe Park Campus. Over the past decade, use of the library has doubled to more than 2 million visitors a year. That is 500,000 more visits than the Library of Congress gets.
Cabell was already the busiest academic library in Virginia, but according to Ulmschneider, use of the facility has increased by 30 percent since the new addition opened to students at the start of the academic year.
Robinson said that according to preliminary projections, the expanded and improved Cabell Library may receive as many as 2.5 million visitors in 2016.
“Most important thing of all is the students love it. It’s not me, it’s the students that matter, ” Ulmschneider said. “And they are filling this place like you uncorked a bottle in the water.”
Capital News Service is a student-operated news reporting program sponsored by the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture at Virginia Commonwealth University.
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