New library will more than double capacity and add 47,000 square feet of space
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01/14/09
The new library building offers new shelf space, study space, and natural light
Fuller Seminary marked the beginning of Winter Quarter with the opening of the first phase of its long-awaited David Allan Hubbard Library. The new facility was designed by renowned green architect William McDonough and Partners and sits adjacent to the McAlister Library building, which is now under renovation.
“The team that planned, designed, and built the David Allan Hubbard Library have worked very hard to make the new library the finest place for students on campus,” says Fuller’s Executive Vice President for Administration Howard Wilson. “It will be a wonderful place for them to study and access learning resources.”
The entire Hubbard Library construction and renovation project, with a second phase set to be completed by May 2009, includes the addition of 47,000 square feet to the original library’s 38,000. This new space will increase the library’s capacity to over one million items, more than doubling its previous holdings. One of the key priorities for the library’s growth is to document the history of evangelicalism, with an emphasis on the growing evangelical movement in the Two-Thirds World. “We want the David Allan Hubbard Library to be a ‘library of the future,’” says President Richard J. Mouw, “a center that offers a way of connecting us with the global Christian community, and of connecting the global Christian community to us.”
And with its comfortable seating and panoramic windows, the Hubbard Library will provide much more than shelf space: it will serve as a point of connection within the Fuller community and between the seminary and the city of Pasadena. Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard has expressed appreciation for the ways Fuller has worked with the city in the development of the library plans and campus master plan, noting Fuller’s commitment to “working within the community, being part of the community, and enhancing the community.”
The beautiful new structure sits in the southwest corner of campus on E. Union Street and offers students a welcoming place to read, write, and research through its lobby seating, new reading room, and individual and group study areas. For those who prefer to study outdoors, there’s even a third-floor balcony.
As the second and final phase of the project, which is currently underway, the existing McAlister library building will receive needed renovations over the next few months: new ceilings and new flooring, an improved fire safety system, enhanced wireless data network, new computer lab, and other improvements. It will reopen in May, and the two buildings together will be known as the David Allan Hubbard Library.
David Allan Hubbard served as Fuller’s president from 1963 to 1993. During his presidency, the seminary grew from a few hundred to more than 4,000 students and added the School of Intercultural Studies, the School of Psychology, and far-reaching extension and distance education programs.
“One of our trustees has said that David Allan Hubbard was a man of unlimited peripheral vision,” says Associate Provost for Library Services David Bundy, and the new library is designed to express his character in both its form and function: a place of openness and natural light, of intellectual engagement and global consciousness.