McNeese library reopens

McNeese State University’s Frazar Memorial Library reopened Monday after a nearly four-year closure and massive renovation.

“It is now a 21st-century facility for 21st-century scholars,” said Debbie Johnson-Houston, library director.

She said the 64,000-square-foot, four-story facility was gutted after it closed at the end of 2012 and that renovations began in 2014.

“There isn’t a part of this facility that was not touched. It is a completely new building,” said Johnson-Houston.

She said the library now has more open space and features “new electrical, new air conditioning and heating, new study rooms, new windows, new doors, new floors, new lights and a new color palette — brighter, lighter and blue.” The facility also meets Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines throughout and offers Wi-Fi, self-checkout kiosks and a “smart” security system.

The self-checkout system, said Johnson-Houston, is all touch screen, offers an option to check out in English, Spanish, French, Polish and three forms of Chinese and can display account status. Students can quickly check out up to 25 books at one time by placing the entire stack on the kiosk platform.

Johnson-Houston said the new radio frequency identification system reads the antennae in the book’s security tag when it is checked out. If a book isn’t properly checked out, panels located at the front of the library will light up and beep.

“We had to put in a new security system because ours was outdated. It was so old that we could not get parts for it anymore,” she said. “We had to put new security tags in over 150,000 books.”

She said the new system also tracks data, such as the number of visitors and checkouts.

The renovation project was the first time the library had undergone a structural renovation since the original building opened to the public in 1961 and the four-story addition was completed in 1974. The last renovation, which mostly involved new offices and some aesthetic changes, was done in 1986.

Johnson-Houston, a 1979 Mc-Neese graduate, said that when she came to work at the university in 2005, she was surprised by how much the library looked the same as it did when she was a student.

“Now it is so very different,” she said.

Johnson-Houston said Monday was a soft opening for the library. And despite it being a rainy day, she said, a record number of visitors came through. “We had over 1,400 people,” she said. “Everyone was very excited to see the new library.”

She said people have commented on the library being a “beautiful place” and that the windows and color scheme have made it brighter and more serene.

Johnson-Houston said that on opening day, the new children’s materials area on the second floor proved to be a popular spot. The collection, which had been previously housed in the College of Education building, Farrar Hall, was relocated to the former student lab space. Johnson-Houston said it was originally developed to support the education of school librarians.

“A lot of students were coming and making videos of what they saw for their peers. And this is one of the areas that made a big splash because it brought back a lot of childhood memories for the students,” she said. “They enjoyed the giant books. They found their favorite childhood books in the collection. And they talked about it on Facebook.”

Johnson-Houston said the staff is still adjusting to the larger and more open space of the new library after spending the last few years in the more “intimate” Parra Ballroom, located in the New Ranch.

That temporary space, she said, was about 9,000 square feet and held a collection of about 8,000 of the library’s most popular titles. The lab space had 14 computers, and a small public space was used for sitting and reading. Items had to be requested online or by filling out a form on-site.

“We served the public on what we called a request-andretrieve system because the public did not have access to our collections,” she said. “The remaining books stayed in storage.”

“We tried to make it as painless as possible for the students and campus. And we were diligent in trying to reopen as soon as we could,” said Johnson-Houston.

The move back took time and began in August, she said. Project managers had to be assigned to different aspects of the move.

“Student workers, volunteers, staff, administrators all worked so hard,” she said. “We didn’t have any type of moving company to move things back or to tag all the books.”

Johnson-Houston said there are still items that the library is waiting to get, such as additional computers, new furniture and a Starbucks, which will be located near the front entrance.

She expects it will all be there by spring, possibly by the time of the library’s grand opening event, the date of which hasn’t yet been set.

“There are still some things we are working on,” she said. “But the great thing about opening now is that it gives us a chance to live with the building and see where we need to make tweaks.”

The final tally on the renovation’s cost is not yet in, but expectations are that it will come in well under the original estimate, which Johnson-Houston said was about $12 million.

The project received $7.3 million in state legislative appropriations for planning and construction, and students voted to use self-assessed fees from the Campus Development Committee and the Technological Advancements for Students Committee to provide furnishings and technological improvements in the new computer lab.

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ONLINE: http://library.mcneese.edu.