Library
begins $15 million renovation
Photo by Jon Cook/Daily Forty Niner
Construction
and renovations to improve the University
Library will begin this summer.
By
Sean Orfila
On-line Forty-Niner
Thanks
to Proposition 47, which was moved into
action by voters in 2002, Cal State Long
Beach will have a giant robot in its library.
The robot, also named ORCA for online remote
collections access, is part of a larger
renovations plan and may not be as safe
and cheap as planned.
Henry
Dubois, associate dean of CSULB Library
Services, said a four-story building will
be built this summer that will house the
Automatic Storage and Retrieval System.
ORCA is part of a renovations plan that
includes an Internet café, more wireless
access points, new tiles in the lobby and
other improvements to the Library.
“ORCA
is, of course, a strategy for increasing
the Library’s capacity without building
a new building or addition. It is extremely
efficient in achieving these objectives.
The library needed to address the capacity
issue, and we knew that this approach would
be one that would appeal to our funding
authorities, especially the department of
finance,” Dubois wrote.
Dubois
said ORCA will house materials that are
in low demand and susceptible to theft or
damage. The system will provide space for
new books in the main Library and stop future
growth of the buildings.
According
to the Library remodeling Web site, ORCA
will be constructed on the south side of
the existing Library in an area near the
Multimedia Building. At the moment, a giant
satellite dish is waiting to be scrapped
for ORCA.
“ORCA
slides into that space — it will be
a tight squeeze, but it fits,” said
Susan Brown, director of physical planning
at CSULB.
Overall,
the Library has been approved to spend $19
million on renovations and remodeling. The
money comes from a bond for $13.5 billion,
approved by the voters as Prop. 47. According
to the official summary for the proposition,
taxpayers will eventually owe $26.2 billion
to pay off both the principal and the interest
for the bond. The interest, $13.2 billion,
is almost as much as the initial bond itself.
“We
are required to complete it within three
years of passage of the bond,” Dubois
said. “The bond money was approved
in the November 2002 election, so it looks
like we have until November 2005 to be finished.”
The
project is funded primarily by Prop. 47,
Dubois said, although some of the equipment
and furniture funding will be provided by
last November’s education construction
bond.
Brown
said the total cost for Library renovations
is about $14.9 million. The construction
and renovations include building a satellite
library for the music and dance departments
and laying down new tiling in the Library
lobby. The plan also includes updates to
the elevator system and better access for
students who use wheelchairs.
Brown
also said the renovations will take about
22 months to complete, and that they plan
on doing the loudest construction during
summer. However, the construction will be
ongoing during much of the fall semester
and classes in the LA buildings are the
most likely to be disturbed by the construction.
Dubois
said their goal was to “have a library
that will serve the needs of the campus
community for many years into the future.”
ORCA
is already in place and working at UNLV
and Cal State Northridge. However, CSUN
has already experienced some expensive problems
with their version of ORCA.
According
to an article published in the Daily Sundial,
an opening in the roof of the Automated
Storage and Retrieval System at CSUN exposed
500,000 publications to water. The article
also said about 3,000 books and 3,000 periodicals
were damaged and that the cost to repair
or replace the books approached $250,000.
The
article reported that mold was growing in
the building from the water leakage and
threatening books.
Another
article in the Daily Sundial later reported
that BMS Cat left books out of order in
the bins. The out-of-order books delayed
service for students and staff and cost
the university another $25,000 to repair.
Many students became frustrated when the
robot was bringing the wrong books to them
over and over again.
HK
Systems, who built the CSUN version of ORCA,
may provide service for CSULB.
“HK
Systems is one of at least three companies
that produce an automated storage and retrieval
system for libraries; they are by far the
most experienced company, with several U.S.
installations, but we can’t be certain
at this point that they will be awarded
the contract,” DuBois wrote in a statement.
HK
Systems, who also built the world’s
largest freezer for a dairy in Iowa, is
an engineering company that designs Automated
Retrieval Systems and other services for
private and public sector. The Web site
for HK Systems includes contracts for similar
storage facilities with Philip Morris and
Anheuser-Busch. Both companies are one of
the largest manufacturers of their product,
cigarettes and beer, in the world. The company
also builds storage systems for military
and other large institutions.
Although
the company has plenty of experience, HK
Systems was involved in a safety issue that
left a 22-year-old dead. According to an
Associated Press article in 2002, a company
in Wisconsin, Quad/Graphics, was contracting
two companies — one of them HK Systems
— to build a racking system. The companies
had been fixing problems with welds in the
automated storage racking system when in
the days leading up to a collapse and resulting
fire at the Quad/Graphics facility, no one
involved in the repairs indicated to Quad/Graphics’
officials that the system should not be
used.
According
to the article, a portion of the concrete
wall of the facility fell on a nearby parked
car, killing 22-year-old Keith Freiberg
of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, who had just
finished his shift cleaning the plant and
was a passenger in the car.
None
of the CSULB officials interviewed for this
story knew about the leaking roofs and $250,000
damages, or any of the fire and safety concerns
regarding HK Systems. The construction of
ORCA begins this summer at CSULB. It is
still unknown who will receive the contract.
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