CONTACT: Diane Pineiro-Zucker, 845-437-7404, [email protected]. Photos are available upon request and can be supplied electronically or on 35mm transparency.
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://mediacloisters.vassar.edu/flash/ or www.vassar.edu
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. (May 7, 2001) -- To climb the steps and open the doors to the memorial hall under the massive Gothic tower of the Vassar College library is to feel you're entering a cathedral of learning. Looking down from above is the glowing stained glass figure of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia receiving her doctorate from the University of Padua in 1678 -- the first ever awarded to a woman. It is an inspiring and even reverent space where, since 1905, Vassar students have read and written and searched through the stacks, fulfilling the Vassar tradition of finding their answers in sources rather than textbooks.
Elizabeth Daniels, Vassar class of 1941, Professor Emeritus of English and Vassar Historian, remembers once standing on chairs to reach her "sources": the bundles of dusty journals and obscure monographs shelved just under the swinging light bulbs in an "undeveloped area" of the library basement. "I felt like a real pioneer in research . . . The joy of the open shelf library which Vassar has always had was that it led you to examine books next to the one you had been intending to find and often they might be even more enlightening to you. That was and is the serendipity of the library."
But the sources have expanded, and so now have the Vassar Libraries. And, according to Director of Libraries Sabrina Pape, Vassar has found a way to reorganize and augment library facilities (by some 25,000 square feet) without destroying the architectural sanctity of the building.
It was Hugh Hardy of Hardy Holzman Pfeifer Associates -- working with Pape, President Frances Fergusson, and campus advisory committees -- who came up with a design bridging the tradition of book and print-based culture with that of digital technology, while providing abundant gathering places for socializing, teaching, and discussion. With the three-year, $20 million renovation and construction completed, Pape says the Vassar Libraries can "continue to blossom as the intellectual center of the campus."
Munish Dabas, Vassar class of 2002, agrees. He sits with the other students in his group at a computer in the Media Cloisters, a sophisticated technology center designed for collaborative work at the heart of the newly renovated library. The group is working on a project for a Classics course on the history and culture of the ancient Mediterranean. It was in the library -- and on the Web -- that the students found what they needed: images, data, and analysis about artifacts in a major Greek burial site. Librarians and information technology specialists were available throughout to provide assistance.
"There's powerful imaging and layout and design software I don't have back in my dorm, much faster machines, and more room to work with other members of my group," says Dabas. When his paper is finished, it will be published on the Web by his professor and presented in class online rather than printed out. "I like doing Web work and design. Doing it this way was more exciting than just handing it in on boring white paper."
Veronika Ruff, an international studies major from the Vassar class of 2001, has a different take on the library. She's in the microfilm room doing research for her senior thesis on the media in Germany. "I was reading through a book in the stacks when I found references to two articles highlighting cases I wanted to discuss in my thesis. I tracked down both primary sources without having to leave the library --- an 1800's New York Times article here in microfilm, and a recent issue of Der Spiegel in the periodical room."
"I can't even count the number of checked-out library books littering the floor of my dorm room right now," Ruff adds. So there remain (and perhaps always will remain) many Vassar students who sit in reading rooms and pour over irreplaceable archives and check out piles of books. But there are now many, like Dabas, who rarely turn to bound sources. "I'm a computer science major, and I've borrowed only a few books from the library since coming here. Most of the cutting edge concepts I need to study are published in articles on the Web."
Other institutions of higher learning may be moving towards distance education. The Vassar Libraries are a place where students, faculty, librarians, and information technology specialists meet and extend --- rather than isolate -- the college classroom.
There's a unique story in the way the Vassar Libraries have evolved to serve both the traditional and digital needs of liberal arts students, while remaining the center of intellectual discovery on an elite college campus.
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