Centralight

BY DAN DIGMANN Center Standing on the second floor of Park Library's sun-soaked atrium, Diane Thomas smiles as she makes some comparisons. The building has the same name, but it isn't the same library Thomas used when she studied library science here in the late 1970s. An online computer-based system has supplanted the card catalog fellow students once helped to maintain manually while Thomas checked out books as a student assistant at the circulation desk, nearly 400 computers now are available for public use compared to the handful offered only to 16 centralight spring '12 library staff more than three decades ago, and a bright color-filled openness has replaced the dark and cramped spaces she remembers. "Among the nicest things about this new building are the windows and the brightness of it," says Thomas, a 1977 graduate who today is CMU Libraries access services coordinator. "It's just so welcoming." CMU this year is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Park Library's expansion and renovation – a project that converted the library from a storehouse for printed academic materials to a comprehensive, highly technological information center. The transformation modernized the old library to keep pace with of the university Anniversary marks Libraries' current and future impact the learning and research needs of students and faculty as well as to create an academic, cultural and support hub on campus. "We're not celebrating just the building, but the wonderful resource that Park Library is to our campus and the significance it has in our community and to our students, faculty and staff," CMU President George E. Ross said at a special library staff luncheon Jan. 9, 2012, which marked 10 years to the day that the new library opened. Project for CMU's future The $50 million library project required 2 ½ years of construction before reopening in January 2002. With more than 1.3 million printed volumes of materials housed on 33 miles

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