Improving the Cohen

The long-awaited £2M redevelopment of the Harold Cohen Library is now well under way. The project is a scaled down version of the original plan, but will still provide a significant upgrade to the facilities offered by the Library.

The major work involves the two wings at either end of the building. The North Wing (nearest to the Medical School) will be extended towards the Crown Street car park to match the South Wing in length. A new entrance, with a passenger lift, will provide much more convenient access to the building for disabled library users, and an additional floor will be built on top of each wing. The extra space will house around 250 learning resource places, each of which will be capable of being equipped with a networked computer.

The main part of the building will not be substantially redeveloped during the present project, although a new staircase to serve the South Wing will be built through the Catalogue Hall and South Reading Room. The Stack Floors at the rear of the building will be refurbished and new toilets will be built on some of them. None of the current work will preclude a more major redevelopment from taking place later if funding becomes available.

In addition to providing extra space, the project will allow a number of improvements to the library service to be made. The bookstock is already rearranged into a single sequence on the first floor level. All the Library's books are now held in the North, South and Main Reading Rooms and on Stack Floor 5. All the current journals (which are kept in three sequences at present) will be transferred into a single sequence in the former Engineering Reading Room, and there will be an open access store for older, less used materials which are being brought back from the Sydney Jones Library.

Inevitably, with a project of this size, from time to time there will be some disruption to the smooth running of the Library, but library staff, and the contractors, will make every effort to keep this to a minimum.

Library users will be kept fully informed about the redevelopment with a series of building bulletins about the progress of the work. A notice board in the Entrance Hall will carry information about work taking place that day. Also in the Entrance Hall there is an exhibition of plans showing the various elements of the project. If you have any questions or comments please contact one of the members of the Publicity Team Katy Woolfenden tel: ext 5409, email: qlis25, Geoff Smith tel: ext 5407, email: q123 or Clair Sharpe tel: ext 5410, email: csharpe.