National Library Week Medallion Hunt

To start your quest, find the reference desk!

In honor of National Library Week, the library is hosting a medallion hunt. From April 11th-13th, stop by the reference desk for a clue to send you off on the hunt. Prizes for our winners!

A Place for Learning and Living: The Gustavus Library

Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library is one of the busiest places on the campus of Gustavus Adolphus College. Students use the space for many purposes including group meetings, classes, projects, quiet and noisy studying, research, casual dating, and socializing. In part, we aim to make the library a common space where students feel welcome, but our primary goal is the promotion of learning. This has been a constant since at least the 1950s. We strive to make changes that address student concerns so that the library remains, as one faculty member from the music department stated, “the biggest classroom on campus” and, in my opinion, the most enjoyable.

A century ago students lacked the robust and vibrant learning library of today. In those days, the facility was crammed onto the 2nd floor of Old Main, and students only had access to the following resources.

While most readers of this blog know of no other Gustavus library, aside from the one previously mentioned, there were several earlier facilities where learning and student centeredness were not always the primary goals because of either philosophy or space limitations. The following is a reverse chronology of libraries on our current campus.

2nd Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library, 1972-ongoing. Construction costs totaled $2.8 million. The walkway connecting the library to the Student Union was built during 1981.

1st Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library, 1948-1972. When built, the facility had capacity for slightly more than 100,000 volumes. Study spaces included amazing views of St. Peter and the Minnesota River Valley. Even though the facility seemed impressive, planners failed to anticipate one monumental problem. It opened during a period of massive collection development when both book and periodical collections grew at previously unprecedented rates. In a period of less than 25 years, the building became obsolete. Overcrowding necessitated the building of the 2nd Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library. Today, the building is named the A.H. Anderson Social Science Center and seems rather odd since most of the offices and classrooms are in spaces created for the storage of books and journals.

 

Commerce Hall, 1889-1897 and 1920-1948. This building housed the school’s commerce department and was located just south of Old Main. It was built in 1887 and demolished circa 1960. Shortly after being erected, plans were developed for an expansion to the building’s rear for the inclusion of a library. The addition was built and the library moved into the space, but overcrowding remained a problem.

Old Main, 1876-1889 and 1897-1920. The library was located on the 2nd floor during the 1897-1920 period.

To see additional pictures of past library facilities, please view the following link - http://tinyurl.com/5tsp6kb.

Library Design Contest!

Creative? Looking for a fun challenge? Enter the Library Design Contest! We're looking for a creative design to represent the Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library. Intrigued? Here's the scoop:

• Submissions will be accepted March 1-April 1, 2011. Winners will be announced during National Library Week, April 10-16, 2011. Contest is open to all current students.
• We encourage creative designs that inspire good thoughts about the library and reflect the library’s mission and vision:

Mission - The library advances the teaching mission and intellectual life of the College by selecting and facilitating access to information and by instructing in its use, interpretation, and evaluation.

Vision - The library will play an essential role in engaging students in critical inquiry and developing the skills and dispositions of life-long learners, prepared for lives of leadership and service in a diverse and fast-changing world. To do this, the library will support the curriculum with materials and opportunities for course-related and independent learning; will provide leadership in fostering information literacy across the curriculum; will inform the community of emerging issues in information policy and trends; and will support the intellectual and cultural life of the college by developing programs, collections, and an engaging physical and virtual space for exploration.

• Entries should be submitted in .jpg format to opcommittee@gustavus.edu by the contest deadline of April 1, 2010 11:59pm. Please do not exceed 4MB per entry.
• If you wish, include an explanation of your submitted design.
• Entries must not incorporate copyrighted material. There are no color requirements, but preference is given to entries equally appealing in color, black and white, and grayscale format and work well with the Gustavus logo.
  
• Criteria for judging include creativity, originality and relevance to the library.
• All entries will be licensed under Creative Commons 3.0; Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library will be free to use the winning design in library-related marketing, including print, web and social networking media.
• The winning design will receive a small prize, a lifetime of fame and glory and our endless appreciation.

Have questions? Email us!

Happy National Library Week

To celebrate, we're picking your brain. There's a very short survey for students available in the library - or you might catch someone tabling for the survey near the Marketplace. Or you can even take it online. Just click Here to take the survey. Whatever your preference - we want to know what you think about the library.

Meanwhile, to indulge in a bit of library-mania, Curious Expeditions has collected "a compendium of beautiful libraries." Or you could mull over their metaphysical aspects by reading Jorge Luis Borges's story "The Library of Babel."