Campus’ Tiny Library to Get 4 More Floors in Expansion : Renovation: Cal State Fullerton students will be able to use interactive videos and CD-ROMs, and see the outside world from glass walls by 1996.

For Cal State Fullerton students, finals are a time to dread entering the university library.

Only 649 out of 25,000 students can use cubicles with terminals and computerized library catalogues at any one time. Many students sit on the floor. No outside light penetrates the tiny windows of the two-story building.

“It was awful,” said Patricia Bril, acting associate university librarian. “Within the CSU system, ours was the most deficient in library space.”

School officials hope the worst is behind them.

On Friday, administrators held a ground-breaking ceremony to mark the construction of the nearly $30-million expansion expected to add four more floors to the university library by 1996.

The expansion will bring $4.6 million in new computer technology, updating the library’s computer system and audio-visual equipment, from CD-ROMs to interactive videos and more computer stations.

New technology will allow students to send digital images and data throughout the campus via computer, said Jean Dippel, the university’s associate vice president for information and telecommunications. “Technology has advanced so much--it’s going to be very aggressive out there,” she said.

Not only will there be more access to CD-ROMs--computer programs that turn a terminal into a mock TV screen--and more sophisticated on-line catalogues, there also will be more space for students to use them.

The new floors, designed by Albert C. Martin & Associates of Irvine, will include a wall of glass on the north side, offering what students never had in the library before--a view of Memorial Grove, a park area.

“Unlike the typical architecture on campus, this will have a major amount of glass . . . allowing light to come in and people to study in an open environment,” said campus spokesman Jerry Keating.

The construction project is the result of an ongoing campaign to secure state money to upgrade the library.

It took years to get there. Administrators and faculty members had been talking about the need to expand the 28-year-old structure when Bril began working there 23 years ago, she said. The existing library building wasn’t built in anticipation of the information age, with all its electronics, computers and heavy wiring.

State legislators agreed in 1992 to let the university use $25 million in revenue bonds to pay for the expansion. Another $4.6 million in bonds was made available for the new technology.