A campus of 4,400 students had a library with seating for only 160.Ī new main library was finally authorized in 1938, and it was constructed along with ten other buildings using state and federal Depression-agency funding. By 1930, 120,000 volumes were jammed in, and growth was absorbed by the four subject branch libraries. Budgets remained anemic over the next thirty years while enrollments grew, and a graduate school was added. This promising start could not be sustained. The previous librarian, Helen Bradley, became Runkle’s assistant. The president felt such an imposing new library needed the supervision of a man and he appointed philosophy department head Erwin Runkle as head librarian. It had a capacity of 50,000 volumes, and its stacks and seminar rooms surrounded a central sky-lit reading room. Atherton of a guaranteed annual book budget instead. This proved impossible to secure and by 1903, Carnegie agreed to a promise from then-President George W. In 1899, Carnegie offered to build a library for Penn State if the legislature would establish a continuing appropriation for books. That description certainly fit Penn State at the time. By then the great universities had well equipped libraries, and so he focused on smaller struggling colleges, educating the children of farmers and the working class. However, it was not until the turn of the century that this philanthropy included college libraries. Andrew Carnegie’s term as a Penn State trustee began in 1886, the same year he began to donate public libraries to communities across the United States.
It was only with the construction of the Carnegie Library in 1904 (today, the home of the Bellisario College of Communications), that library services took a major step forward. Two student literary societies met the popular reading tastes of students by maintaining libraries with general books, newspapers, and magazines. It was housed in two rooms in Old Main, overseen part-time by a faculty member, with its small budget spent mostly on technical literature. Penn State’s library was neglected for most of its first fifty years. Thus, their libraries had to meet both needs.
Land-grant colleges were a new departure in American higher education in the mid-nineteenth century, and they wrestled with their curricular identity between the basic arts and sciences and the technology of agriculture and engineering. Today, it is a resource for Penn State faculty and students, as well as Centre County and – through its campus libraries – all Pennsylvanians. Since 1993, the Pattee and Paterno Libraries have been reconstructed, with open spaces filled in, older spaces remodeled, and modern technology installed. Existing directional signs and room identification signs were upgraded using the existing color scheme (green for Paterno and purple for Pattee).Ī key part of the system was identifying the preferred public pathways through the two main libraries, which only connect on the first floor.The Carnegie Library opened in 1904 with the stacks and seminar rooms surrounding a central reading room. The sign types include main building and floor directories, stack maps, and information display elements. A unique custom ring sign identifying the circulation desk is suspended from the vaulted ceiling by aircraft cables.
When the $34.4 million Paterno Library was completed in 2000, the attached libraries needed a comprehensive wayfinding system to guide students and researchers through the 490,000 square feet of space to the information they sought.Ĭorbin was already familiar with Penn State, having developed exterior wayfinding systems for the main campus at University Park and at other university campuses.įor the libraries, Corbin designed an elegant system using oak trim and veneers that match the furniture and interior finishes. The crown jewels of Penn State’s library system, Pattee Library and Paterno Library house nine subject libraries and millions of books and periodicals.
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