As the library on the new campus reaches completion, preparations are already well underway to guarantee the smooth and safe relocation of the region's largest English-language research collection in Egypt.
AUC's entire downtown main library is moving between June 3 and June 30.
Its resources and services, with the exception of reserve, reference and document delivery, will not be available to the university community from June 3 until the opening day of classes on the new campus in September 2008.
The library's new five-story home, positioned in the center of the new campus, overlooks Bartlett Plaza and the park. The 20,550 square-meter space will house the university's nearly 375,000 books and periodicals, (including e-books), nearly 1,700 current periodical subscriptions, 2,526 media items and 119 databases, as well as the 30,000 rare books, photographs, slides and maps from the Rare Books and Special Collections Library, currently located in the downtown Mansour Street building.
The garden level of the new library will provide a media room with audio and video equipment for teaching, learning and research as well as the Serenity Room, an indoor reading room overlooking the park. In addition, there will be an outdoor reading space in the garden with a coffee shop where users will be able to read library books without having to check them out.
The plaza level will feature the new Learning Commons, a unique feature to the AUC library that integrates independent study, interactive learning, multimedia and technology rooms, copy and writing centers, and a library help desk. There will also be plenty of casual seating at this level, as well as group study rooms and three well-equipped presentation practice rooms.
The next two floors of the library will house the university's current volumes, with room for expansion, as well as open reading spaces, closed carrels for independent study, two large study rooms for graduate students and more than 10 group-study rooms.
The Rare Books and Special Collection Library will occupy the entire top floor of the building. It will have a rooftop garden, a reading room, recently named after John D. Gerhart, and will also feature a preservation lab on the second floor for the conservation of its most valuable books.
The $20 million library was planned and designed by US-based architects Pfeiffer Partners. The mashrabiya-like screens on the outer southern, eastern and western walls not only wrap and protect its large windows from the sun but also create wide shaded arcades. The building's exterior is made mainly of glass, concrete and sandstone from Aswan.
March 16, 2008
