“It’s amazing how many corners a round building has,” says Dianne Keeping, Mount Allison’s chief librarian.
She is of course talking about the Ralph Pickard Bell Library, one of Mount Allison’s more iconic buildings, with its octagonal shape.
Keeping is especially concerned with the size, shape and nooks and crannies of the RP Bell this year, as the project to revitalize the 50-year-old library continues to make progress.
CHMA spoke with Keeping to find out where things stand with the future remake of the RP Bell.
Hear this story as reported on Tantramar Report.
“So basically, we’re into the functional space programming phase,” says Keeping. Functional space programming is the process to determine exactly what will happen in the new library, and how much space will be dedicated to each of those things. Keeping says the process will include more focus group meetings, and, “having real conversations about what types of work have to be done in this space.”
The planning for the library remake has been a long time coming. Things started back in 2017 with the library’s vision 2025 committee. “They did a series of information sessions and an online survey and several focus groups to get feedback from the community,” says Keeping, including students and other stakeholders. “They did all of this work, and they put together a document which is posted on the website,” says Keeping. “They developed the guiding principles for the project going forward.”
The Vision 2025 committee settled on 11 guiding principles, the first of which is:
The re-imagined Library will be unique to Mount Allison. It will be a dynamic learning hub while retaining strong attributes of a traditional library. Books will have a physical place in a Library that has diverse, multi-use spaces and is well-suited to our increasingly digital world.
In January of last year, a new committee was struck to carry things forward: a president’s advisory committee on the library. But of course, as with many things in 2020, the pandemic caused delays, or as Keeping says: “we’ve had our attention distracted by a few things here and there.”
In late 2020 the committee held meetings with student and community members to help generate ideas for a more detailed version of what the new library might look like.
Read more about the December community consultation here:
The vision has always involved keeping the current building, but doing a major renovation.
Dr. Andrew Wilson is associate professor of Western Religions at Mount Allison and also a member of the current library advisory committee.
“The potential is for the whole interior of [the current library] building to be completely gutted, to be completely removed and built from the inside out,” said Wilson. “I think it’s probably good to think of it as quite radical.”
When asked if the new library might reach past its current footprint, Mount Allison Vice President of Finance and Administration Robert Inglis told the community members present that, “if it gets a little bit bigger on our way to meeting the goals, then at least as the person in charge of facilities, finances and whatnot, I’m fine with that.”
“That’s one of the challenges right now,” says Keeping, “because we still don’t have anything pinned down in terms of what the footprint will be going forward.”
Keeping says that there is a distinct possibility of extending into the breezeway space connecting the library to the Crabtree building. “If we can take in that space, there’s some interesting possibilities there.”
In terms of the functional purposes of the revitalized library, there are new demands, and even new standards to be met. Things like event spaces and specialized labs focussing on things like data visualization are becoming de rigeur for libraries.
“These are standard things that you see in libraries these days,” says Keeping, referring specifically to a data visualization lab. “That’s something that we have to be able to fit into this library to be on par with other academic libraries.
Before Keeping moved to Sackville in 2019 to take over the top job at the RP Bell, she was working at the library at Mount Royal University in Calgary. A year after she started there, the library moved into a new building, which transformed the campus.
It was an “amazing” building, says Keeping, with “really interesting new spaces, like the maker spaces, and the 360 visualization lab, virtual reality and augmented reality labs, and community spaces.”
A community space called the Ideas Lounge was home to a giant touchscreen which could be used for events or just disseminating information to the community, says Keeping.
THE LIBRARY AS HUB
Keeping says it’s actually quite fitting that the RP Bell is shaped like an octagonal hub, because the library should and could be a central spot on campus.
“Most libraries, even if they’re not shaped like a hub cap, are usually referred to as the hub of campus or the heart of the university,” says Keeping, “just because they are such a central part of the university life. Whether they’re physically located at the centre of the university or off on the periphery, they’re, still very much a focal point,” says Keeping. Because of the importance of the library, Keeping says the Ralph Pickard Bell project needs to be aspirational.
“Your library really does define what what it is you’re aiming for, what you’re aspiring to be as an institution,” says Keeping. “So you want your library to really be something important and significant.”
NEXT STEPS
Right now, Keeping says architects are working on sketches that could help further the functional design process based on numbers she is providing. She’s spending a lot of time number crunching, she says, perhaps even enough to make use of one of the data visualization labs that might be part of the new library.
“We’re looking at gross square footage, net square footage, how much space do you need to be able to do this function in the library? How much space do you need for the physical collection? If we put so much of the collection in compact shelving, how much space would that save us?”
“I didn’t know how to calculate net assignable square feet a year ago,” says Keeping. Inventory has also taken up a lot of her time.
“Basically, we’re just trying to figure out what’s in the building now?” says Keeping. “And how much how much of this do we actually need, and how much of it can actually be discarded or shifted around or modified in some way. So that’s been the challenge.”
Keeping says anyone who’s moved out of a home can relate to the accumulation that can occur over time. “Well, in this building, it’s had 50 years of accumulation. So there’s a lot here to go through,” she says.
Once sketches are available, Keeping expects another round of focus groups and consultations before functional plans are finalized.
For the full conversation with Dianne Keeping, check out the March 18 episode of CHMA Talks.
