Cannon Library: Campus Hub for 46 Years

FROM THE ARCHIVES

IN THE fall of 1972, students, teachers, and parents were in awe of the newly opened Learning Center—home to the Upper School’s Cannon Library upstairs and the Elizabeth Reddig Lower School Library below. In addition to offering students vibrant new research and classroom space, the modern facility “completed the buildings encircling the Lineberger Quadrangle and gave the campus a ‘finished’ look,” as stated in The First Fifty Years, by retired English teacher Julia Britt. At the time, Country Day had been on the Carmel Road campus for 12 years and the opening of the Learning Center was another major step forward in Country Day’s continuous campus improvement. Additionally, the facility better accommodated student-directed learning, a concept that was progressive for the time.

Even before the new Learning Center was built, the Cannon family avidly supported the school’s library. According to the 1957-67 Decade Report, “School funds supplemented by the Cannon Family Library Endowment income and other memorial gifts have permitted our Library growth from a small collection of ‘hand-medowns’ to a ten thousand volume collection of teacher and student selected books, rich in its value for general reading and course extensions. The value of a good library lies in its use, and ours is a much mined lode of good metal.”

Former first-grade teacher and Lower School Head Peggy Otey works in the library with Samuel Ramsey, Parke Montague, Alison Wing, and Justin Hinote, on a project she developed to introduce her students to the Internet. (Source: Perspectives, Winter 1995/96)

The Learning Center received an upgrade in 1995, as Country Day was on the forefront of technological innovation in secondary schools. As reported in the 1996 issue of Perspectives, the card catalog was replaced with an electronic search function, 50 computers were available for “ready access to the World Wide Web,” and students could “enter the Net just be clicking on an icon on their computer screens.”

The delivery of information is instantaneous. One optical disc can scan 100 indices in less than two seconds!”

--Librarian Carol Pharr

In the 2000s, as our Upper School population continued to grow, Cannon Library was renovated again to create more classroom space and computer labs—which were then converted again as our 1:1 computing program was implemented. In recent years, Cannon Library had also become a sometimes noisy hub of activity, reflecting both a need for more gathering spaces for students, as well as a more collaborative approach to teaching and learning.

Currently, as part of the second phase of a multiyear campus construction plan, the Learning Center is being renovated into the Dowd Student Center, which will include two spacious dining halls.

We will be forever grateful to the Cannon family for their vision and generosity in the development of Country Day in its early years.