Stacking up new knowledge

After opening two large grayish-white doors, one enters a large, open room where the temperature falls to a crisp 50 degrees. Thirteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-four aluminum shelves, each extending 30 feet high surround the area of the new Ruth Lilly Auxiliary Library Facility -- a site that could woo any book guru or architectural-savvy individual.\nThe new state-of-the-art facility, which also includes the E. Lingle Craig Preservation Laboratory, was unveiled Thursday afternoon during a ceremony presided over by IU President Myles Brand.\nWith the dedication of the new library facility, IU's extensive collection of books, documents and other research materials has extended beyond the depths of the main library stacks and into this new building off the Highway 45/46 bypass.\nBecause of space constraints at IU's other libraries in the past decade, a severe overcrowding of books has taken place, and the new auxiliary facility aims to store and preserve over 2.7 million overflow volumes.\n"What is unique and innovative about this new facility is its dual purpose. The preservation laboratory is the first of its kind on IU's campus," Brand said. "With its rich collections, IU has never had a genuine preservation laboratory, until now. We will be able to store and restore these treasures of our culture -- resources that are vitally important to the growth of our learning community."\nChancellor Sharon Brehm shared her personal interest in books with the large audience, and made reference to a current favorite of hers: the Harry Potter series.\n"Ever since I first heard my mother read to me, books have been a wondrous passport, opening new worlds, thoughts and possibilities," Brehm said. "As I was thinking about this dedication, my thoughts kept drifting toward the Harry Potter books, which is a world-wide, cross-generational eagerness for volume five to be completed." \nBrehm then made a parallel between Harry Potter's quest and the importance of IU's new facility.\n"Despite all sorts of obstacles and challenges, (Harry) always manages to come to the rescue of his friends and teacher, and the Ruth Lilly Auxiliary facility and preservation laboratory have come to the rescue of the Bloomington campus," Brehm said. "I am so pleased to help celebrate the superb addition to IU's library resources."\nAlso attending the dedication ceremony were two IU trustee members, Frederick F. Eichhorn and Sue H. Talbot, the chair of the Bloomington Faculty Council, Richard A. Carr, and Suzanne Thorin, Ruth Lilly University dean of University libraries.\nThe E. Lingle Craig Preservation Laboratory, named for the longtime IU librarian who left a bequest to the IU Libraries, will provide equipment not only new to IU's campus, but even to all academic research libraries in the country.\nAn automatic box-making machine will create protective enclosures for fragile books, and is the first of its kind at an academic research institute. Only the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, National Archives and the Vatican own this machine.\nAmong other equipment, the laboratory will also house a leaf caster, used to fill holes and replace mission page edges by suctioning paper pulp into the open spaces.\nWith more than six million bound volumes, the IU libraries collection ranks 13th in size among North American academic research libraries, according to the office of external relations and development. \nThe University's collection of books also circulates at a higher rate than those of any other of the top academic libraries in the nation.\nHarriette Hemmasi, associate dean of the IU Libraries, lauds the introduction of the new facility and said she enjoys the personal touch behind the creation of the new library.\n"I enjoy it that the idea for what's behind this building comes not just from a mechanical or administrative approach but from a human approach of looking at the problems and their solutions," Hemmasi said. "The access to these collections will be fairly seamless, and it will benefit students immensely in the present and years from now"