THE
NEW LIBRARY 2
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On any given morning, a dozen students are waiting at the door to the Munday Library when it opens at 7:30 a.m. They find their favorite study space — whether in the bustling, computer-filled commons or in a quiet zone near the stacks — and settle in. Throughout the day, students will type papers, send emails, hold videoconferences, develop group presentations, and yes, even check out a book or two. The morning sun will pour in from the east, spilling across the wood floors of the periodicals area. In the evening, full-length windows on the west wall will showcase the bustle of South Congress Avenue as the setting sun casts the scene in orange, then pink, then violet. “The students came to love this space very fast,” says library director Pongracz Sennyey. “They discovered it, and made it their own. That was gratifying to see. The old library was 30 years old, and it needed a refresh. This was a terrific refresh.” The photos on the following pages offer a snapshot of the intellectual efforts happening throughout the building on a Wednesday in March. As midterms approached, students focused their attention on study sheets and research papers — and the occasional glance at the campus squirrels’ Instagram feed.
1 Lauren Ayoub ’17 drafts a talk for her presentational speaking class, which is held in one of the library’s digital classrooms. With three monitors on each end of the room, “you can look straight ahead at your PowerPoint instead of turning around and getting distracted,” she says. “We use the cameras to record our speeches so that we can critique them later.” 26
2 The library offers 17 Nook ereaders that students can check out to download any of the nearly 300,000 ebooks in the library’s collection. The ebooks can also be accessed on a student’s personal laptop or tablet.
ST. EDWARD’S UNIVERSITY
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5/15/14 6:46 AM