Booked solid

What building has become one of the most popular places on campus? The answer might surprise you!

Which campus hangout comes to mind when you read the following? It's open 24/5 and will probably go 24/7 this fall; it offers grab-and-go food and drinks; and, in one 24-hour period this past spring, nearly 8,000 students gathered there.Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center? Good guess, but that's not it. Grand Marketplace? Nope.

OK, here's your give-away hint: It has 3.5 million books.

That's right, the Thomas Cooper Library is now open around the clock, can serve up something to eat with a side order of books or other research materials, and is in the process of remaking itself from the inside out.

“Ten or 12 years ago when the Web and electronic databases came on the scene, everyone thought libraries—at least the physical structures—were dead, but that's just not so. We have adapted, we've become more user friendly, and we're seeing more students here than ever before,” said Tom McNally, interim dean of libraries at Carolina and long-time director of the Thomas Cooper Library.

It's not like Carolina's library ever was a ghost town. Even with the campus' wireless network, which makes it possible to research and write a paper from a laptop on the Horseshoe, students have always gravitated to the library. But now they're coming in droves as Thomas Cooper has become much more accommodating.

Walk inside and you'll see what McNally means about adapting. “Food and Drink Prohibited” signs have gone the way of hand-typed card catalogs. In the past few months, vending machines and a coffee shop have sprouted. Large sections of the 300,000-square-foot library have been opened up to create seating areas for small and large groups of students.

“We're getting rid of the private study carrels because no one was using them anymore; students want to be out in the open to study with other people,” he said. “So we're creating seating areas that can accommodate an individual, a large group, or anything in between.”

Have the new seating arrangements made the library a noisier place? Well, it's still a library, so the decibel level will always be pretty tame. But on Reading Day this past spring about 7,900 students huddled inside the building to study for finals—nearly double the number from last year.

“We bought a thousand sets of disposable ear plugs for students who wanted to study in complete silence, and all of them were used by the time finals were over,” McNally said. “So, yes, we have lightened up on our tolerance for noise, but this is still the place to go if you need to concentrate, and it's a great place to study with others, too.”

With its central location on campus, the library is also becoming a great place to house more than books. Thomas Cooper Library is now home of the new Center for Teaching Excellence and the Student Success Center. What better location than the library for centers that emphasize earning, right?

“We've also created an academic study area for student athletes that will be in place until the athletics department builds its own Academic Enrichment Center,” McNally said.

But even more change is on the horizon. McNally envisions the installation of motorized, compact shelving, which reduces the need for book shelving space and increases room for desks, couches, and other student study areas.

“We've got a plan for a complete renovation of the library that would cost $30 million,” he said. “That probably won't happen all at once, but we're going to start chipping away at it.”

What will happen soon is construction of a 50,000-square-foot wing on the rear of the building to house the library's burgeoning special collections, rare books, and political collections. The design calls for a large open space leading into the addition with room for—you guessed it—more seating to accommodate students and other library visitors.

“Our ultimate goal is to integrate where people study with the library's resources because that's where scholarship takes place,” McNally said. “The library is still about books. We just want to accommodate more people, too.”