By: David Hiscoe

Friends of the Library enjoy the sunset on the Skyline Terrace.

The annual Friends of the Library Spring Meeting is always a pleasure: a couple of minutes choosing new Board members and then a chance to hear a great speaker like Lee Smith, William Friday, or Haven Kimmel and spend a pleasant hour or so catching up with like-minded friends who love the NCSU Libraries.

This year the meeting reached new heights though–quite literally so, since most attendees ended the night eighty feet up in the air at the top of the Hunt Library, watching the sun set over Lake Raleigh from the Skyline Terrace.

Though we are still eight months away from opening, the Libraries was able to wrangle permission to hold what Chancellor Randy Woodson announced was the first official function to be hosted in the space.

It could not be more proper, he began the meeting by saying, that the first large group to meet in the building was the Friends of the Library: “you,” he told the audience, “decided–often decades ago–that NC State needed great libraries and then did the dreaming and the hard and persistent work to make it happen.  This is what you have created, and I hope you are proud of it.  You should be.”

After remarks from the Chancellor, Susan Nutter, and Craig Dykers, principal at Snøhetta, guests enjoyed hors d’oeuvres and drinks and were led on tours by architects from Snøhetta and Pearce Brinkley Cease + Lee, the building’s executive architects.

On the Fourth Floor, overlooking the Library Grand Entrance Hall and Rain Garden Reading Lounge

Guests enjoy the open, light-filled areas of the Second Floor, still under construction.

Friends returning from a tour, descending the Monumental Stairs with Roman Seating in the foreground.

By: David Hiscoe

We’re still under construction, of course–still eight months to go before opening day.

But the Hunt Library has already made a substantial contribution to giving NC State students an education they could not get at any other university in the world.

This semester a combined group from the College of Design and the Department of Computer Science was turned loose to work with a digital palette the size of which they could only have dreamed of in the past, a prototype of the 21-foot-wide, high-definition video wall that will be the centerpiece of the Hunt Library’s Gaming Lab.

One group of students scoped, planned, and delivered a video game based on the essence of the Hunt Library experience.  NOL, a collaborative pursuit game, is designed to use real-time data delivered from the NCSU Libraries’ databases to allow a group of players to work together to guard the Vault of Knowledge, the mystical storage site in which the collected wisdom and secrets gained from the innate human capacity for curiosity and thirst for understanding are under attack.

Rendering of the Hunt Library's game-changing Gaming Lab

Another group of budding designers approached the Hunt Library as an unprecedented library space—one where the robotic bookBot book delivery system minimizes the need for book shelves, where large video walls and other technologies dominate space in a way that patrons have never experienced before, and where digital, virtual, and physical environments merge in unique ways. Using the newest strategies in graphic and interaction design and working with complex systems of information, the students developed strategies for how to orient users to the new environment.

The result, according to Professor Scott Townsend from the College of Design: “The experience provided a huge competitive advantage for my students. Anyone can future-cast and blue-sky scenarios for new hypothetical technologies and spaces.  But these NC State students now actually have real-life experience in developing for demanding and complex real-life opportunities. It will be a huge proof point of excellence on a resume.”

Walking into the Hunt Library for the first time, early in the class, senior design student Mandi Gelselman put it quite simply: “I feel like I’ve been handed the keys to the spaceship.”

The  Research Triangle Park is currently the East Coast hub of the video games industry in the United States,  supporting 1300 highly paid jobs in the area, many of them filled by NC State graduates.

Read the whole story at http://news.lib.ncsu.edu/2012/04/25/handing-out-the-keys-to-the-spaceship-changing-the-game-at-nc-state-university.

By: David Hiscoe

Every year the Spring Meeting of the Friends of the Library offers up something special—last year, for instance, it was a chance to hear William Friday talk with our then newly-minted chancellor, Randy Woodson.

The bookBot won'be loaded yet, but it's impressive nonetheless!

This year, it’s the chance to see a dream in the process of transforming into a physical reality.

This year’s Spring Meeting will actually be held in the James B. Hunt Jr. Library, still under construction but close enough to completion that you’ll be able to get a real sense of why this building will soon be an iconic place at NC State.

The keynote speaker will be Craig Dykers, principal with Snøhetta, one of the hottest design firms in the world.  Snøhetta is the lead designer of the Hunt Library and is responsible, for example, for the National Opera House in Oslo, the redesign currently underway of New York’s Times Square, and the National September 11th Memorial Museum Pavilion at the World Trade Center site.  Designers and architects from Snøhetta and pearce brinkley cease + lee–the project’s executive architects–will lead optional tours of the building.

The evening will also include cocktails and heavy hors d’oeuvres.

The program will take place April 20 in the Hunt Library on NC State’s Centennial Campus.  Remarks will start at 6:00 p.m., and cocktails and heavy hors d’oeuvres will begin at 6:45 p.m. Tickets are $45 each for Friends members and guests and $70 for the general public.  NC State students are entitled to a Friends membership at no charge.

Please call 919-515-2841 for reservations by April 16–or email us at friends_of_the_library@ncsu.edu.

By: David Hiscoe

We’ve known from the beginning the Hunt Library would be:

• an iconic space
• a transformative space for NC State University
• a library filled with technology-enriched spaces
• nothing less than the best learning and collaborative space in the country.

But, if I can trust my obsessive Google-watching sources, you’ve only recently been able to actually see (as on the right) Hunt Library from space itself, as photographed from low-earth orbit by Google Maps.

Here on the the left (again from Google Maps),  you can clearly see Hunt Library anchoring Centennial Campus’ academic oval. That’s Lake Raleigh shimmering gloriously just below the new library.

And to the right below, the building shapes up as we get closer to the ground. 

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Below, just because it is a huge and wonderful space itself, here’s a bonus shot of the bookBot, in place now and ready to be loaded.

By: David Hiscoe

The inside of the Hunt Library is starting to look like–well, the inside of the Hunt Library we’ve been imagining for the last several years. The renderings that we’ve all looked at dozens of times are coming to life.   There’s heat in the building; some of the inside walls are starting to get a coat of paint; the bookBot infrastructure is almost fully in place; and Hunt Library is beginning to look less like a construction site and more like the space we’ve all had to just dream about in the past.

It’s also becoming safe enough to take a few students into the building and get their first impressions.  In the spirit of “everything you can imagine .  .  . and more,” we will be rolling out a series of short videos of their reactions, as they see the space for the first time and can really begin to imagine the transformational impact this building will have on their time at NC State and the careers that follow.

Here’s the first of these videos, as junior Matt Whitley reacts to the 100 bookable group study rooms that will, at last, give him and his colleagues the collaborative spaces where they can work together and bring out in themselves, as he says, “the stuff of genius.”

Space for collaboration, space for imagination: 100 bookable group study rooms in the Hunt Library

By: David Hiscoe

Speaking at the launch of the our Everything you can imagine . . . and more fundraising initiative for the Hunt Library, Dean Marvin Malecha of the College of Design recently made some fascinating observations about how Thomas Jefferson envisioned the architecture of the library at the University of Virginia as a very concrete and real symbol of democracy at work in the United States.

According to Dean Malecha, the Hunt Library promises to embody the same message. As the heart of a productive research campus, this iconic space will be both an enabler of and a monument to the centrality of research and learning as generators of wealth and opportunity for the people of North Carolina and for the future of NC State University.

By: David Hiscoe

We’ve known from the beginning that the Hunt Library was going to be huge.  And not just because it puts over 222,000 square feet under its roof (approximately 87,000 net square feet exclusively for the Libraries).  It’s also grand because it will be a great beacon for everything NC State aspires to be in this century.

Crew begins building out the bookBot

As the construction moves ahead and the building shapes up to become what we once could only have imagined, I thought you might enjoy a photo that captures both its sheer physical size and the contagious sense of magnificence that everyone who walks into it will feel.

Here’s the robot-driven bookBot automated book delivery system with the crew beginning to build out its internal structure.  Imagine it filled with up to two million books, ready for delivery in five minutes once the user makes a choice in the virtual catalog.

The two huge openings in the back of the photo frame Robot Alley, where these windows will allow visitors to watch the bookBot in action as four robots dart over fifty feet up and down the building to pinpoint and retrieve materials.

The space is gigantic, but it is space well used. It holds nine times the amount of material of traditional shelving, allowing us to redirect budget to Hunt Library’s great technology and inspiring study and research spaces instead.

Naming opportunities for the bookBot and for several of its robots are still available.

By: David Hiscoe

One of the speakers at the recent “Everything you can imagine . . . and more” launch was Craig Dykers, a principal at Snøhetta, our lead designers for the Hunt Library.  Snøhetta is working with North Carolina executive architects Pearce Brinkley Cease + Lee to bring us this great building.  Craig framed his comments about the Hunt Library with a story about the Library of Alexandria, lost to fire 2,000 years ago. Snøhetta was the key architect for the recent re-imagining and rebuilding of this ancient center of learning in the cradle of civilization.

We are all now caught up in the details of getting the Hunt Library finished and up and running.  But Craig’s comments offer a great way to pause and think for just a minute about the larger purpose of what we are pulling together to do for NC State and for the people of North Carolina:

The Library of Alexandria

We were also the architects to rebuild and revive the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt. We started that project in 1989, and it was an amazing experience.  We worked on that library for 13 years, really every day, weekends and so forth. It was an enormous adventure. . . .

Well, a few months ago, as you recall, there was a tremendous uprising, a political uprising in Egypt. . . . My first thought was “they’re going to burn the library down!” . . . We spoke with friends in Egypt to see if the library had been damaged.

The response was incredible. Essentially the citizens of Alexandria, both pro and anti-government groups, formed a human chain around the library to protect it.

They protected this building because to them the library represented the place where they knew their culture could be protected and could grow. It really tells you something about the value of a library and what it does. . . .  It’s not just about holding books. In fact, the books, the computers, and all those things, they’re not that important unless people activate them. We love to say that a library isn’t a resource for technology; it isn’t a depository for books; it isn’t giving you access to computers.

What it’s giving you is a place for people to come together and share their  thoughts and grow, grow technology, grow ideas, grow philosophy through a place where those things, those books, are just simply a manifestation of the tools that we require to move our civilization forward.

These people in Alexandria, under tremendous stress, recognized this as a very, very important issue.

By: David Hiscoe

The James B. Hunt Jr. Library is no longer just something we thought we could make happen if we kept at it with enough persistence.  It’s there. The outside is very close to completion, and this new spectacular library will be open in early 2013.

We are outfitting this incredible building during an extremely demanding economic environment, however.  So the  NCSU Libraries has launched a $10,000,000 initiative to ensure that this iconic building can become nothing less than the best learning and collaborative space in the country. Funds from the Everything you can imagine . . . and more initiative will be used to help enhance its inspiring spaces and help supply the technology that will make this signature building a competitive edge for NC State. You can read more about Everything you can imagine . . . and more at http://news.lib.ncsu.edu/2011/09/13/creating-the-best-learning-and-collaborative-space-in-the-country/.

The NCSU Libraries has never needed your support more than we do now.  Some of your friends and colleagues explain why in this short video:

Please see http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/huntlibrary/helpsupporthunt.html to find out more about how you can help. Or you can contact our Director of Development Dwain Teague (919-513-7315 or dwain_teague@ncsu.edu) if you’d like to learn more about ways to support the Hunt Library.

By: David Hiscoe

Yes, those are solar panels on the roof of the Hunt Library (and you’ll also notice that the building is now closed in–progress!!).

Hunt Library solar panels (photo courtesy of Skanska)

Twelve solar panels, in fact (top right of the photo)–each over 32 square feet in size and capable of collecting over 34 kBTUs on a clear day. Those of you who took physics at NC State will remember, of course, that a British Thermal Unit is the amount of energy it takes to heat one pound of water from 39 to 40 degrees F–or to lift that pound 778 feet up into the air.  Which happens to be 252 calories.

Well, enough of that!

At Hunt, the solar panels will be powering the hot water system for the building, part of the strategy of smart energy use that will earn this building at least a LEED Silver rating. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council to give an internationally recognized way of rating just how efficiently a building uses energy and impacts the environment around it.  LEED will be a huge part of how NC State both builds its buildings and helps to arm our economy for the future.

Hunt also features a highly efficient chilled-beam and radiant-panel heating and air conditioning system, as well as efficient plumbing fixtures for energy and water savings.  The fins that you’ll soon see going up on the outside of the building are incredibly clever, custom solar shades that help to keep heat out of the building in the summer while still letting in huge amounts of natural daylight (and not obstructing the great views). Hunt’s Rain Garden and its green roof will absorb heat when it’s hot, as well as helping to control storm water runoff (and provide a home to whatever tiny things choose to live there).

The bottom line:  one more reason why the Hunt Library will soon become THE face of NC State in the 21st century.