"Mammoth Cave."
That's how Pat Schneck describes the large hole that set the foundation for the Alexander M. Bracken Library three decades ago in a grassy field between Ball State University's Architecture Building and John R. Emens Auditorium.
An old newspaper clip in Schneck's office last week displayed a hand-colored postcard of the library's former home at North Quad - a library much smaller than the one celebrating its 30th anniversary this month.
"They needed more room," Schneck said. "The library at North Quad was always filled to capacity, bursting to the seams."
The $14.9 million Bracken Library had its ground breaking on May 26, 1972, and opened on Sept. 9, 1975. About 2,000 students visited the 321,800-square-foot building on its opening day.
Before Bracken Library, the university library was located in the Administration Building and then in North Quad. The board of trustees in 1968, under new President John Pruis, approved the construction of Bracken Library and named it in honor of the board's president, Alexander M. Bracken. A formal event will take place in March in conjunction with the 30th anniversary.
Schneck, who has been at the university since 1967, works as a government publications assistant on the building's first floor. She is one of six people who were employed 30 years ago and are still with University Libraries. The other employees include Ming-Ming Kuo, Annie Gholar, Kathy Reed, Becky Sheffield and Dan Taylor.
Schneck remembers when a large stretch of McKinley Avenue's east side did not even have university buildings, and the west side included mostly residential properties, she said.
"When I went to school here in 1953, this whole area - see, the architecture building wasn't here either - the whole area, even where Emens was, it was like a field, and students just pulled into this big field and parked," Schneck said.
She said she was glad to see Bracken Library go up after three and a half years of construction, but she recalls a fire that started in the library's "Penthouse" in 1977, frightening several employees and causing the dean to run out to the street for help.
"I'm not sure what caught on fire, but you could see smoke coming out," Schneck said. "I think it did some damage, but I don't think it did a lot."
Schneck said she also remembers hearing sirens and seeing ambulances after a worker fell to his death from the building during construction.
"I just thought, 'Oh boy, that just didn't look good,'" she said. "And I think that was the only mishap, but I can remember that."
When Schneck first climbed the library's curved center staircase, she had to adjust to the larger, darker building with bare cement floors. She especially remembers helping to move the library's half million books to the new building on McKinley Avenue. The process was like an assembly line at the library's back door, and sometimes the book trucks were so huge they would topple over because the books on the carts were not balanced.
"You'd hear a horrible noise," Schneck said. "And then there would be silence and then there would be laughter."
Dan Taylor, who graduated from Ball State in 1969 and works as a periodicals assistant, said he enjoys working at the library more today than he did when it was housed in North Quad. Bracken Library's size and the availability of so many materials make it a great resource for students and community residents, he said.
"It's easier to find things here than it was in the old library because the old library was so broken up, different sections," Taylor said. "It was hard to tell where something was. Now I tell people that [North Quad] used to be the library, and it's hard for them to comprehend."
At North Quad, the library housed a maximum of 300,000 books in 1967 and cost an initial $250,000 to build, John Straw, director for archives and special collections research, said.
Although the former library focused on books, periodicals and study carrels, today's library houses 1.5 million print volumes, more than 2,900 periodical subscriptions, 1 million microforms, about 98,000 government publications and 155 academic databases.
Ball State University libraries celebrated more than 1 million visits at the end of April and Bracken Library continues to see an average of 4,300 people per day during the academic semester, Dean Arthur Hafner said.
"We're really trying to expand the library as a learning center for research and study, making it more comfortable, bringing in more technology and helping our students to be more successful on their terms, and by that I mean providing them with the services they need and the hours they need," Hafner said.
Schneck looks forward to the remainder of her time working with students at Bracken Library, she said.
"It doesn't seem like we've been here for 30 years," Schneck said. "Time flies when you're having fun, as they say."
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