Bata Library reopens after 18-month reno
Grand reopening ceremony planned for Nov. 16 at Trent
The Bata Library at Trent University reopened Monday following a renovation that took about 18 months and cost $18 million.
“It’s really quite spectacular,” said university librarian Robert Clarke. “I love it.”
Although a grand reopening is taking place Nov. 16, the library was open for the first time on Monday since the end of April 2017.
The building was designed by renowned Canadian architect Ron Thom and was opened in 1969.
Trent received $8.1 million in federal and provincial funding, along with donations, for the $18-million transformation of the Bata Library.
The architectural firm Perkins + Will designed the renovation.
The idea was to modernize the library: there are now new labs where students can access technology such as 3-D printers or sound and video-editing equipment, for example.
The building also has new climate control and lighting and there’s a living wall covered in plants.
Clarke also said the original modernist furniture in the library has been restored and new furniture has been added.
On Monday the library was particularly busy, Clarke said, and many students who’d never been inside before were impressed.
Longer-term students recall what it looked like earlier, Clarke said.
Those students are saying “it looks like Bata – but it doesn’t look like Bata,” Clarke said.
A large whiteboard in the library was crammed with “positive” messages from students regarding the renovations on Monday, he added.
Meanwhile there’s a lot more space in the building since half the books were not returned to the stacks.
Bata Library was designed to hold 300,000 books, Clarke said in September, yet by the time the renovation began it had 500,000.
Librarians took a year to evaluate each book to decide which would be returned and which would not, Clarke said, to reduce the collection by half.
Books that made the cut were rare or unique to Trent, for example.
Few rejected books were put in recycling bins, Clarke said – most were given to Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based digital library.