New Free-Standing Campus Music Library Opens Today
Tuesday, July 6, 2004
Category: News
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Comments (UC Berkeley's first independently standing music library opens today after two years of construction.
The new three-story, 28,500 square-foot Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library, located on the North Field, will be home to 50,000 video and sound recordings, in addition to 180,000 books and printed compositions, ranging from world music to popular music.
A $4 million donation from UC Berkeley class of 1935 alumna and concert pianist Jean Gray Hargrove, after whom the library is named, helped cover a large portion of the library's $13 million price tag.
Hargrove's donation was "a crucial step in the fund raising," said John Roberts, head of the music library.
Approximately $11 million of the library's budget came from private donations, with only $2 million coming in campus nonstate funds, according to UC's 2002-03 to 2006-07 Non-State Capital Program report.
The library was moved from its original home in Morrison Hall because of spatial restraints and the need for technological and security updates, Roberts said.
"The old library was conceived before the days of the computer," Roberts said. "It was not designed for the preservation of manuscripts."
Library staff began moving the entire collection three weeks before today's opening.
Roberts said there has been talk of expanding the music library ever since he came to the library in 1987, but it was considered more efficient to build a separate building than to remodel the current Morrison Hall library.
After completion of the new building, Morrison Hall will be renovated and its facilities for teaching, research and performance programs will be expanded.
When architects were looking for a site on which to build the new library, the eastern side of the North Field was chosen for its close proximity to Morrison Hall. The new library rests just south of Morrison.
"It serves the teaching needs of the faculty and students and makes it very easy to go back and forth," said Christine Shaff, Communications Manager of Capital Projects.
UC Berkeley's original Music Library was founded in 1947 as part of the UC Berkeley Library system and was moved to Morrison Hall in 1957.
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