This $5 million updating project will strengthen the well-used BHSU Library as the university moves forward into the 21st Century.  BHSU librarians envision transforming the 1972 building into a more welcoming student-focused building. Numerous gifts or one $2 million gift will trigger $3 million in funds from the South Dakota Board of Regents to make this vision become reality. 

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This $5 million updating project will strengthen the well-used BHSU Library as the university moves forward into the Information Age of the 21st Century.  The 1972 building with few windows was designed to house shelving for more that 135,000 books, supported by a lobby with reference and circulation desks; a card catalog; staff offices; and limited study areas.  Over nearly half a century student enrollment at BHSU has doubled. The library has evolved to become a favorite quiet retreat for individuals and groups of students to study and work collaboratively.  More and more people, who still seek access to books but not necessarily between hard covers, are invading the space designed to shelve all of those hard cover volumes.

 

Faced with this change the BHSU librarians envision a more welcoming student-focused building.  They envision numerous quiet study areas flooded with light and furnished with comfortable chairs and tables, group study rooms for collaborative endeavors, and workstations and workrooms for dealing with digital media of various kinds.  With banks of windows facing east to Lookout Mountain, solar panels on the roof and LED lighting the Library will be state-of-the-art in environmental sustainability as well as in supporting scholarly work by hundreds of students and professors.

 

To make that vision become a reality $3 million from the South Dakota Board of Regents Higher Education Facilities Fund can be utilized.  However, in order to receive the $3 million BHSU must secure $2 million in private gifts from individuals and/or corporations.  A gift of the entire $2 million dollars, which would trigger $3 million dollars from the Board of Regents, will mean that the beautifully renewed BHSU Library will be named for that remarkably generous donor.