Renovations Update: July 9, 2020

After months of work assessing our print collection and working with faculty in all departments across the university, we have completed the rightsizing portion of the renovation project! 

What’s rightsizing again? 

  • To make space for a new reading room and better study spaces, we needed to decrease the number of bookshelves we have on the 3rd floor of building 6. 

  • We also needed to make sure we have room on our bookshelves to continue to add more titles. There’s a surprising amount of measuring and math involved! 

  • In order to accommodate the Alberta College Campus Library’s move to John L. Haar Library, we had to make space for all their physical items as well.  

  • Librarians and library staff also review our collections regularly to make sure we have materials that are timely and relevant for all MacEwan’s programs. 

Steps we’ve completed so far: 

  1. Subject Librarians reviewed our entire collection and identified titles for removal. These were mostly out-of-date, damaged, or duplicate items.  

  1. Faculty were given lists of titles from their subject areas to review and identify if there were any titles that should be kept.  

  1. Library staff did the hard work of removing all identified titles to make space for renovations and the addition of the Alberta College Campus Library collection.  

  1. Removed items were donated to Better World Books (BWB) or, if not accepted by BWB, disposed of using environmentally friendly options. 

Next steps: 

Now that rightsizing is complete, the library is shifting books around on the shelves so that we are making the most use of the bookshelf space we have available. 

Picture of a library bookshelf that has been shifted so there is space to add more books in the future

The photo above shows a shelf that has been shifted so there is enough space for Alberta College Campus Library materials and for an additional five years of growth.