Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/93354
in CMU's 120-year history origin destroyed the building on Dec. 7, 1925, along with its 30,000-volume library. "I shall never forget the all-gone feeling I had inside me standing two or three hundred feet from the fiercely blazing structure, " " Anna Barnard, then head of the foreign language department, wrote of the fire. "I all at once realized that I was looking straight through and seeing the woods beyond. The only books to survive were those checked out by faculty and students. But the library, as with the school itself, aggressively moved forward and evolved to fit the needs of the students. Instrumental to student learning from 1892 to 2012, the library has continued to expand and evolve, moving from Warriner Hall to Ronan Hall and in 1969 to its current location in the Charles V. Park Library. Strength It is named in honor of a Central librarian who served students from 1931 to 1956. The current library is actually the second Park Library on its site since a building constructed during the late 1960s was gutted, expanded and reconstructed 60 percent larger. It contains more than one million books and 33 miles of compact shelving to meet the needs of more than 20,000 students. "The library commits to digital resources, providing materials online 24/7," Boles says. "Everyone benefits from the change of a 'book warehouse' to an actively engaging resource, providing a range of services onsite and online. " And the library continues supporting and shaping CMU's student learning today and will do so decades into the future. • A fire in 1925 destroys Central Michigan Normal School's Old Main building, which included the school's library.