One for the Books : Ceremony Will Mark Reopening of CSUN’s Oviatt Library

Less than eight months after Cal State Northridge’s Oviatt Library was severely damaged by the Jan. 17 earthquake, workers were installing handrails, washing windows and checking the book-return drop slot Thursday in anticipation of Monday’s official reopening of the facility’s main section.

At 4 p.m. today, CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson and local public officials are scheduled to formally celebrate the reopening of the library, which is featured on the school’s emblem and considered by many to be the heart and soul of the campus.

“The library is very important,” Wilson said in an interview. “Students need a place to study and to be able to use the time between classes constructively.”

“Without a library you are not a university,” said Nancy Owens, professor of family environmental sciences and faculty president. “It is the nerve center of the campus.”

Following the temblor, which caused an estimated $350 million in damage to the campus, students were forced to use two makeshift libraries that opened on campus in May or take an hourlong shuttle ride to the UCLA library. Officials estimate that about 3,000 students made the trek to the Westwood campus each week.

School officials had originally decided to build a $4-million warehouse-type, tilt-up concrete structure as a temporary library that would have held only about one-quarter of Oviatt’s 1.1 million volumes. But after students and faculty complained, administrators decided to reopen at least the center portion of the five-level library at a cost of about $17 million.

Engineers discovered that most of the damage was done to the library’s two steel-frame wings, which were added in 1991. The main portion of the library, which was built in 1973 with concrete, contains 130,000 square feet of the structure’s 220,000 total square footage. Engineers said that the main section suffered less damage because it is actually separate from the two wings.

Construction crews worked around the clock during the summer so that the core of the library could open Monday, the first day of classes for the fall semester. The work included repairing a section of the roof overhang that collapsed, removing asbestos shaken loose by the quake, replacing ceiling tiles, installing new carpet and repainting the interior.

It will be about two years before the entire library is usable, officials said.

Meanwhile, about 2,400 study spaces will be available, including 1,600 at Oviatt and 800 at the two library annexes. That is about 1,000 fewer than were accessible before the quake.

The two annexes include a 15,000-square-foot hall known as the North Annex and a 13,000-square-foot dome known as LALA, for Lindley Avenue Library Annex.

All 1.1 million volumes in the library’s collection will be available, according to library director Sue Curzon. She said about 600,000 volumes were tossed to the floor by the quake. About 10,000 were damaged but not a single volume was lost. The other 500,000 volumes were secure in bins in the library’s automatic storage-and-retrieval system.

“We have moved some services, but it will be easy for the students to reorient themselves,” Curzon said. Among the changes are moving periodicals from the Oviatt’s west wing to the second floor and relocating microfilm to the Lindley Avenue annex.