UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28490, 21 January 1958, Page 10

UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Delay In Move

To New Rooms

The renovated and enlarged University of Canterbury library, which for seven months has been undergoing extension into the former School of Art building at the south-west corner of the university block, will not be ready when the 1958 session begins on March 4.

The university, with the architects, J. G. Collins and Son, and the contractor, Mr J. B. McCormick, had hoped to have the work finished before the start of the academic year, but certain arrangements for work following the general contract have extended the time for completion.

This means that the new entrance which has been built in the cloisters at the west end of the library will not be in use, and the former main entrance, now destined to be a freight entrance, will serve staff and students at least for a few more weeks.

It also means that the library must close for more than a week during the first term, probably at the end of March or the beginning of April. The librarian, Mr C. W. Collins, said yesterday that during this time only the most urgent requirements would be met and the library staff, with the help of a number of students engaged for the task, would shift books on to the steel shelves in the new reoms.

Books will be brought in from many quarters where they have been stored over the years of space shortage in the library. They will come from the new university site at Ham, from houses which the university uses near the Worcester street block, and from all manner of attics, rooms, and basements.

Mr Collins explained that even I after the main shift there would be months of tidying and rearranging. In the end. there would hardly be a book that had not been shifted and this meant far in excess of 100,000 books. Some will be shifted only a short distance in the building, others will be carried by the armful or wheeled on a trolley from the east end of the old library or the basement below it, to the farthest corners of the new rooms.

An indication of the magnitude of such a move is a much smaller shift involving the economics library. At present, several of the staff are working every afternoon to shift it for the second time to permit the repair work in the old Boys’ High School block required by the ravages of dry rot. This departmental library will have to be moved yet again before it returns to its proper shelves.