I recently met with Phil Arndt, Associate Dean and Library Director of Lincoln Land Community College Library. The library is in the middle of a remodeling project that is expected to be completed in July. Phil has been temporarily displaced from his office, but is accepting the challenges amicably. The library has not been shut down even a day during the remodeling process.

Ryan Roberts, Professor and Librarian and member of the newest Synergy class, was also displaced and his desk was just to the left of Phil’s desk. Ryan and Tammy Schnell, Director of Technical Services and 2004 Synergy participant, are the only library staff members at Lincoln Land Community College Library that were originally at the library for my first site visit in 2001.  

The brand-new ADA compliant Circulation Desk was in place, but was not yet in use, so there was a temporary circulation/reference desk set up on the South wall of the library with Amanda Logsdon and Scott Ebbing manning the desk.

There was construction work going on back in the office area behind the new circulation desk including the Technical Services section. The Tech Services folks were temporarily in the Northeast corner of the North end of the library in a conference room. The computer lab was being used as a temporary storage room. Attractive new industrial strength carpet squares now cover the entire floor, which had previously been so badly damaged that masking tape had been used to help prevent students from tripping in places where the old carpeting had been ripped and torn.

The shelving had all been replaced with eight double facing compact shelving units. It was impressive how much more floor space was available as the result of the new compact shelving.

There were ten public access computers available for student use, and they were all in use. Phil indicated that they would be getting 15 additional computer workstations before the remodeling was completed, as well as 11 laptop / checkout computers for use with their wireless network. Phil indicated that they had done a study with four of their cohorts and determined that the library had less student study space than any of the other members of the cohort, so that many of the changes were designed to increase the available space for students and decrease the space used by books.