Monmouth College’s Hewes Library is putting on a new face in the form of 32 new windows and an eastside entrance during its current $6.5 million renovation, but it’s what’s on the inside that counts, said President Richard Giese.

“Every day, we’re getting closer to realizing our goal of providing future Monmouth College students with a library that is second to none,” said Giese of the project that began last May and is expected to conclude with a grand re-opening in the fall of 2002. “The renovations being made inside Hewes Library will provide our students access to the most advanced learning tools possible.”

The role of the Monmouth College library has evolved over the past two decades, and the redesign will establish Hewes Library as the academic heart of the campus, said Giese. The renovated facility will simultaneously function as a library, gallery, museum, cafe and technology center, while reflecting the many facets of study in a true liberal arts curriculum. 

The renovation will make Hewes Library an inviting and user-friendly place for learning and research. The library currently has a traditional design, as it was built before the advent of electronically-stored information. The renovation will make the building more accessible to technology, creating a new high-tech electronic classroom with distance-learning capabilities and study areas with Internet connections. 

Rick Sayre, director of Hewes Library, is excited about the changes, both to the building itself and what’s inside it. 

Speaking of the high-tech, 48-seat classroom, he said, “There’ll be network connections at each seat, rear-screen projection and a SmartBoard. Off-campus groups will be able to use it, too, for conferences and training sessions geared for professional development.” 

Another technological feature of the renovation will be the addition of network and/or wireless connections throughout the building. Sayre plans to have laptop computers available for checkout at the desk for in-library use. 

In terms of the physical changes to Hewes Library, Sayre was thinking of ways to improve the facility even before he was hired in 1998. 

“When I applied for my position at Monmouth, I had looked at some photos of the library on the college’s Web site,” he said. “In my interview on the phone, my comment was, ‘It looks like you need to blow a few holes in there.” 

He was referring to the scarcity of windows in the 30-year-old facility, and he’s also pleased that another shortcoming will be addressed, too.  

“Air conditioning is a high priority,” said Sayre, whose office now looks out on Bobby Woll Memorial Field. “It can be miserable here in the summer. We put a high priority on making the library comfortable and making it a nice, inviting place for people to be.” 

The windows, of course, will help in that mission, and so will the addition of a coffee shop in the southwest corner of the main level. 

“I call it the ‘Barnes & Noble-izing’ of the library,” said Sayre, who explained that the college’s food service will run the facility, which will serve packaged food items, coffee and other beverages. 

Moving up a flight, Sayre said the “upstairs has never been completed. It’s way past time to do that. In the 1970s, they had the foresight to build the upper floor, but there wasn’t enough money to finish it, and they didn’t really need it.” 

There is certainly a need now, in part because the college’s substantial collection of government documents is growing all the time. Those documents used to be on the lower level, but the addition of a computer lab years ago forced the documents upstairs. 

“When the upper floor is completed, the circulating collection will be up there,” said Sayre. “That’s pretty much the A-Z collection in the library. We’ll move the government documents to the lower level.” 

Monmouth’s library has been an official depository for federal documents since before the Civil War. The documents are being stored in the neighboring science building for the balance of the renovation, and Sayre shed some light on the size of the 100,000-document collection when he said, “We bought four new, high-quality carts for the move and ruined them in three weeks.” 

He continued, “The main level will have our reference materials, a lounge and the offices of the information services staff, who’ll finally get windows.” 

While members of the community who use Hewes Library will probably access the building through the old west entrance, Sayre and the student body are excited about the east entrance, which is located directly behind Winbigler Hall. 

“When that is ready for use, which could be as early as Homecoming, it will open up the library to the 60-70 percent of the students who live on that side of campus,” he said. 

Once on the main floor, patrons will see “a real showpiece,” said Sayre, who explained that the main level’s collection will be positioned so that the south wall will be visible from the north end.  

As one could imagine, punching those holes in the building that Sayre asked for three years ago is not a quiet job, but the work has been coordinated so it causes the least amount of noise problems. Most of the windows holes were cut over the summer, and now that the students have returned, a typical workday is from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

“People have been very good about understanding,” said Sayre. “Most students are here after 3, except for some classes that come in. I think the area that’s been the most inconvenienced is the archives and not being able to see the Shields collection.” 

Donated by alumnus James C. Shields, the Shields collection contains hundreds of works of art from antiquity. When it re-opens, the collection will be back in style, as new glass walls and entry doors will grace the gallery. The same will be true of the Len G. Everett Gallery and the Beveridge Rare Book Room. 

“The most important thing for us is to be flexible,” Sayre continued. “Sometimes we have to address something that needs to be addressed right away. We also have to be conscious of the fact that the renovation is not an addition, so we have to utilize the space we have in different ways.” 

Sayre encourages the public to see all that is going on at the library, keeping in mind that the facility will remain in a state of flux through next fall. 

“We’ve always been open to the community because we’re a federal depository,” he said. “We like to see ourselves as a community resource. Some of our policies have been changed with the community in mind, such as allowing our educational videos and DVDs to be checked out. 

“We’ve got some really neat things here, like the Canopus Stone and a book that dates back to 1499, within 50 years of the first printing press,” Sayre continued. “We hope the people in the community will enjoy Hewes Library, especially with all the changes that are on the way.”

Released by the Office of College Communications
Barry McNamara, Associate Director of College Communications
Phone: 309-457-2117
Fax: 309-457-2330

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