The SciTech Library

The Dar­ling­ton side of main cam­pus of the Uni­ver­sity of Sydney was a renovator’s dream. Its end­less array of con­crete slabs might lay claim to coher­ence in some kind of bru­tal­ist archi­tec­ture, but I sus­pect the uni­ver­sity pretty much built the Engin­eer­ing and Archi­tec­ture fac­ulties out of whatever spare cash they could find at the time.

The USyd Cent­ral build­ing adja­cent to the Union’s Wentworth build­ing is part of the Cam­pus 2010 plan to reverse the years of neg­lect that have rendered other uni­ver­sit­ies with sub­stan­tially more attract­ive (and mar­ket­able) cam­puses. The first part of the USyd Cent­ral to open, the SciTech Lib­rary, has now been delivered, and it sure was a deliv­ery from heaven.

When you first walk into SciTech, the thing that strikes you is how dif­fer­ent it is from any other lib­rary that you’ve been to. With your first steps past the styl­ishly glassy entrance, you are presen­ted with a large, wel­com­ing atrium that envel­ops you and draws you in; the splend­our and the inter­est­ing topo­logy of the lib­rary makes you feel like you are view­ing spec­tac­u­lar scenery from the top of a moun­tain. To the right is a lounge-​​like area, with play­ful, lime-​​green chairs that wouldn’t look out of place in an Ikea store. To the left are the book stands, and in front is a sunken val­ley of study cubicles. At night, the entrance area is taste­fully lit up with small spot­lights that cast small pools of light on the soft car­pet, and dur­ing the day, there is ample nat­ural sun­light from the wall of glass.

As I intim­ated above, the fur­niture is one thing that sets SciTech apart from any other lib­rary I’ve seen. Col­our­ful, dis­tinct­ive, mod­ern and def­in­itely play­ful – as I write, some people are stack­ing up the lime-​​green chairs in vari­ous con­fig­ur­a­tions, pos­sible as the chairs are made up of three con­joined cyl­in­ders – the fur­niture is fit­ting for a sci­ence and tech­no­logy lib­rary. From the jelly-​​coloured red and orange stools to the Ikea-​​like chairs, they are all invit­ing and very comfortable.

The lib­rary, from the ground up, has been designed to be more than just a repos­it­ory of books. It appears to have been designed for stu­dents to learn, to study and to col­lab­or­ate. The “study val­ley” that I alluded to before encases you as a cocoon encases a cater­pil­lar, draw­ing you away from the hustle and bustle of the out­side world into a study world of your own. The hours melt away as you study in one of the the plush, mul­ti­col­oured pods, or the seats that line the green river-​​like divider that sep­ar­ates the study val­ley from one of the com­puter access areas. As you meander between the mellow-​​coloured book­shelves, you come across islands of tran­quil­lity, where you can sit down and enjoy a book or two. If you prefer elec­tronic learn­ing, power points are abund­ant, and there are mul­tiple com­puter rooms, with desktop com­puters and laptops – now that is some­thing I haven’t seen before any­where in the uni­ver­sity. The only minor com­plaint is that the wire­less con­nec­tion here isn’t as stable as it could be.

Ulti­mately, a lib­rary isn’t much of a lib­rary unless it stores books. Although I find it dis­ap­point­ing that in the move to the new lib­rary, a large por­tion of the Engin­eer­ing col­lec­tion was moved into archival stor­age, because there just isn’t room at SciTech, there is some­thing that they have done that is quite inter­est­ing; some shelves hold the book so that the front is dis­played, much like spe­cial book dis­plays at book stores.

If the rest of the Cam­pus 2010 improve­ments are of the qual­ity and thought­ful­ness of the SciTech Lib­rary, the uni­ver­sity is onto a win­ner. The design of the SciTech lib­rary shows a thought­ful­ness to the needs of stu­dents and staff at the uni­ver­sity. I look for­ward to the new law lib­rary with much anti­cip­a­tion – and to spend­ing many days and nights at SciTech.

More pho­tos here.

The SciTech Lib­rary: Level 1, Jane Foss Rus­sell Build­ing, on City Road

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