Forbes Memorial Library Nearly Ready For Use

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29224, 7 June 1960, Page 14

Forbes Memorial Library Nearly Ready For Use

About the beginning of next week students at Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln, will begin to use the new George Forbes Memorial Library. It will not be officially opened until about the end of July or beginning of August on a date to be named by the Governor-General, Viscount Cobham, when he returns from Britain.

Airy, well lighted, fresh and spacious, the new building is a far cry from its predecessor—a poky little place measuring 30ft by 10ft with a capacity of about 2500 volumes and seating for five, including three members of the library staff. The remainder of the college's book stock of some 7000 volumes has had to be housed, perforce, at some 15 scattered points around the college —chiefly in rooms of members of the teaching staff. Dr. I. D. Blair’s book, “Life and Work at Canterbury Agricultural College,” described the old library in these words: “There can be no more revealing example of inadequacy within the bounds of any academic institution." The new library occupies a central position at the college, standing directly in front of and facing Ivey Hall, the oldest building of the institution and still its heart. The library turns its back to travellers along the main road past the college and the view from that aspect hardly does it justice. The building is U shaped with the two wings and the generously glazed entrance hall enclosing a grassed courtyard in which stands a memorial stone, recording that the building commemorates the services to New Zealand agriculture of Mr George Forbes, who was Prime Minister from 1930 to 1935. and that its foundation stone was laid on November 5, 1957, by another Prime Minister, Mr Holyoake. The courtyard is a central feature of the building and can be seen through wide expanses of glass from all of the main sections of the library. Round reinforced concrete nillars which support the roof—the walls are non-load bearing —are a prominent feature both inside and outside and tend to emphasise the memorial nature of the building. Where not glazed the outside walls are faced in brick to harmonise with the other buildings on the campus.

Main Rooms The main rooms of the library which open off the entrance hall, are the reading room and the senior library or stock room. Each of these occupy an area of about 1300 square feet. In the main reading room, where the bulk of the text books and essential reference books will be housed in grey steel shelving around the perimeter with space for about 3000 to 5000 volumes, there will be seating accommodation in the central area around plastic topped tables for some 63 students.

On the other side of the building in the other wing there is the senior library or stock room for use of advanced students. Here in rows of free-standing slotted shelves, which can b** manipulated to alter shelf spacings. there is room for 25,000 volumes. Files of technical periodicals and research bulletins will be found here. Fluorescent bar lighting rests on the top of the shelves. Along one side of this room there are a series of 10 study desks partly shielded and each with its overlight, bookshelf and drawers.

A study’ room for advanced students opens off the senior library. A place for quiet study or for use of members of the teaching staff with small groups, it will have three tables and 12 chairs.

A periodicals reading room with shelving for 300 to 350 journals is readily accessible from the main entrance hall, where a range of 30 to 40 periodicals will also be displayed. In the entrance area there will also be catalogue and satchel racks and an inquiry and issue desk. This is the only part of the building where students will be able to smoke.

A microfilm reading room, a typing room, the librarian’s room and two workrooms for library staff are also included in the library space. Floors have a cork covering over pumice and concrete and parts of the inside walls are attractively covered in varnished plywood. Heater units which can introduce either warm air or cold air are finished in grey tonings and merge in well with the grey shelvings of the library. The stock of the library will be devoted almost entirely to subjects of an agricultural nature and in it provision has to be made for readers ranging from junior students through to senior students working on theses, and staff members with demands for both teaching and research. Proper Display The librarian, Mr John Frampton, says that it is intended to expand the library as quickly as financial resources permit now that adequate accommodation is available. Books, he says, do not receive their fullest use unless they can be properly displayed and made known to potential readers, a condition that the new building will fulfil.

“It is now possible as never before for the college to provide one of the essentials of university education—the means by which students may have the opportunity to acquire the habit of seeking out and assessing information for themselves . . .

“Agriculture is a practical subject. but in the technical and fast-changing era in which we live that man is the most practical who takes advantage of the experience of others as well as his own . . . Some experience may be gleaned from one’s immediate neighbours in day-to-day contacts, but there is a vast range of experience of others that is available only through the printed word. The ability to assess this latter critically can only be acquired by practice and this is where the library is involved in the formal training of those who intend to follow a career in agriculture. It provides the opportunity for such practice in assessment as well as being the storehouse of factual information ■ . •

“If the library, or rather its services, succeed in impressing this vital fact on those who pass through Lincoln College the investment in a new building will bring ample returns. It may be impossible, as with most educational investments by the community, to show these returns on any account’s balance sheet, but they will be there nonetheless” The library was designed by Messrs Jones, Adams, Kingston and Reynolds, of Auckland, who were winners of a national competition for architectural designs for the library. The builder was the Fletcher Construction Company.