The Hopkinton High School Library will be relocated and remodeled during the summer of 1998. The Building Committee went to bat for us, and when the bond issue was passed in March of 1997 we began months of planning and preparation for the new facility. Here are some of the results of that work.

The library will move to an almost H-shaped space in the middle of the oldest part of the building (an area now filled by four high school classrooms, a hallway, and the nurse's office.) This is a bird's eye view of how we think everything will go together:

The new library will have a lot to offer -- much more than it makes sense to list on a web page. Here are the highlights.

In planning how best to lay out this new space, we worked to improve both the amount and the arrangement of student seating, with these results:

• The room will seat 38 students at tables & chairs and carrels.
• An additional 14 students can be accommodated in "special" seating at computers, video machines, microfiche readers, etc.
• A full class can be seated on one side of the room, leaving two tables on the other side for students from study halls.
• That class seating area has a natural focal point at its north end, along with electricity and a nearby network connection so that it can be used for demonstration and instruction.
• For the first time since 1976, we have space for 2 or 3 comfy chairs.
• The plan doubles (from 4 to 8) the number of all-purpose student computer seats.
• It also provides electricity and network connections (under 2 of the tables, and near one of the comfy chairs) for students who arrive with notebook computers.
• The librarian's desk has a small conference table attached, removing the need to "steal" a student table for small meetings and work sessions.

We also worked to improve the amount and arrangement of shelving and storage:

• The new shelving scheme lets us get all of the materials onto shelves -- no more books on top of bookcases and countertops, no more magazines on top of 7-shelf book stacks, and no more videos in boxes on the floor!
• There will also be shelf space for growth, allowing us to cap the collection at 15,000 volumes plus a 5-year back file of magazines and a 2000-item video and cd collection.
• There is convenient, secure storage for high-theft items.
• Cabinetry and counters in the Work Room will accommodate supplies, the library cd-rom and catalog servers, and room to process new materials for loan. Again, librarians won't have to co-opt space from students when they need to spread out a large job.

Finally, we tried to make the layout flexible enough to meet our needs into the next century:

• We anticipate continued growth of cd-rom and/or internet reference materials, and have provided space and wiring for two more computers in the reference area
• The microfiche table has a network connection nearby so that the two fiche readers can also replaced by computers.
• Space near the elevator and the A-V Room has been designed to accommodate a small video-editing and digital multimedia work area, if we ever relocate our "rolling stock" of television carts.
• One corner of the A-V Room has been set up to become the head-end for a distributed video network.

There are trade-offs in any project, and we do lose a few things in the move:

• The elevator that makes it so easy to move the video carts from floor to floor brings with it a host of security problems. The only handicapped access to the auditorium is through the library.
• The library will be somewhat isolated from the classrooms it supports, sharing the floor as it does with just the auditorium and the music rooms.
• The arrangement of the two doors and the amount of glass surrounding them present the library as a hallway. The isolation factor helps a bit in this case, but it will take some creative decorating and concerted effort to preserve our businesslike, academic atmosphere.
• The large built-in display case was not replaced in the new location. While there are opportunities for counter-top and small window displays, we won't be able to offer the locked case that many of our past efforts required.
• And because we are moving from slab-on-grade to an upper floor which required extensive structural work to support the weight of the book collection, the bookcases can never be rearranged.

That's it, in a rather large nutshell; remember that the Librarian welcomes your suggestions.

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