Central Library may be some students’ favorite place to study for finals, but many find Central less than appealing.

“I hate going there. I usually just grab books and leave,” said junior Ellington Griffin. “… It’s not a pleasant place to stay.”

That’s starting to change.

In the spring, the library, with the support of Provost Richard McCarty and his staff, will begin eighth floor renovations that will hopefully be completed by summer. Among the changes will be a large, carpeted room for studying. Better lighting and more comfortable, inviting furniture for the space are also part of the plans.

Library staff, many of whom will be displaced as part of the project, have been preparing tens of thousands of books to go to storage, including an annex added this year, in order to create room. Additionally, faculty carrels that line the walls will be removed, and installed in their place will be a large conference room and offices with partial glass paneling to allow more natural light to stream in.

A comfortable study space with better lighting is something many students want, including a group of student leaders who met on Friday afternoon as part of a focus group for the library renovations.

“When you study you are supposed to be able to curl up,” said junior Christen Parzych, who said she wanted to see changes to make the library study area more like Sarratt’s Baseball Glove Lounge. “The entire time I’m in Central I’m thinking about how I want to get out of there because of the fluorescent lighting and wooden chairs. It’s not somewhere where I want to spend the whole day.”

The move to renovate Central and make it more student-friendly is part of an effort spearheaded by Dean Connie Vinita Dowell to get more students studying and enjoying their library.

“I would love to see within a couple years all of Central Library transform,” Dowell said. “That’s why I came here, to have this kind of impact.”

Dowell, a 1979 Peabody alumna who most recently served as dean of the library and information access at San Diego State University before arriving at Vanderbilt in 2009, has worked with a team of architects who also did the second-floor remodel of the Divinity Library. They along with other library staff have tentative plans for further renovations, although they have not been presented to the Board of Trust and lack funding. She wants to see changes made to the fourth floor (the main level) as well, including taking out offices to allow light from the windows to shine into the lobby, merging all the help desks into one information center, adding conference rooms and inviting study space, as well as possibly adding an indoor/outdoor cafe and social study area.

Dowell hopes in the future Central Library will serve not only as a source for academic materials but also as a facility where scholars can and want to interact and learn.

"In short, I want our libraries to be the intellectual heart of the campus and create a sense of community connecting scholars of all ages from across our campus,” Dowell wrote in an e-mail Sunday evening. “Students are important to me and I want them to know that their libraries have a commitment to support them."
 

—Joslin Woods contributed reporting to this story.