Books, And A View Too

From iPod-guided tours to a stately brick facade, Santa Rosa Junior College's new library combines the latest in high-tech gadgets with hallmarks of Ivy League architecture.

When the doors opened this week, students arriving for a new school year were greeted by hundreds of computer terminals, overstuffed chairs and sweeping views of Santa Rosa and the surrounding foothills.

"We wanted it to be very traditional on the outside but very contemporary on the inside," said Will Baty, the learning resources dean. "It's the landmark building for the campus."

On Thursday, students flocked to the computer stations and relaxed in spacious study areas with floor-to-ceiling windows on the perimeter of all four floors.

"It's beautiful. I like how everything is spread out," said Michael De Toffoli of Santa Rosa, who praised the architecture. "It looks like a prestigious college."

"It's pretty impressive," said Remy Martin of Healdsburg.

The library, financed in part with bonds approved by voters in 2002, is the first of a dozen projects in an ambitious 10-year, $260million building program for the college.

The library is the junior college's largest building, at 145,000 square feet; its most expensive, at $45million with furnishings; and will be its most used, with 500,000 students, faculty, staff and public visitors expected this year.

The building opened Monday, and 2,000 students traipsed through in the first two hours.

The facility is named for Frank P. Doyle, the Exchange Bank founder and SRJC benefactor. When Doyle died in 1948, he left to the college 50.4 percent of Exchange Bank's stock, which since has produced dividends of $65million, used for scholarships.

Baty said the library was designed around how students and faculty access and use information, rather than around its collection of 123,400 books and periodicals, 10,500 DVDs, CDs and tapes and 26 databases.

It has 282 computer workstations, some that allow a person to sit, some on raised desks for standing and others with bigger monitors and wider desks that accommodate side-by-side chairs for two people. There are even overstuffed chairs with trays for students with laptops.

There are wireless Internet connections throughout, and students can borrow an iPod loaded with a library tour.

There are computer stations designated for multimedia lessons, two classrooms to broadcast and receive online courses, six teleconferencing facilities and a TV production facility.

In a lesson learned from Barnes and Noble, there is a small cafe in the front of the building.

"People like to do their research and have a cup of coffee or tea," Baty said.

Books and other material are available for public use, but only SRJC students have borrowing privileges.

The interior is painted in the colors of Sonoma County's landscape - red for the adobe soil, gray for the serpentine rock outcroppings and a yellow-gold for dry grassy hillsides.

It includes the campus tutorial center and will be the new home of the SRJC museum.

And it is spacious - three times the size of the old Plover Library, which opened in 1971.

That building is scheduled for a $10million renovation to turn it into a student services center. It is set for completion at the end of 2007.

The other building projects under way or under consideration include a 5½-story parking structure on Mendocino Avenue, a student center, a laboratory, science and mathematics buildings and a remodeling of the historic Tauzer gym, one of the oldest buildings on the Santa Rosa campus. Work also is about to begin on facilities that will triple the size of the Petaluma campus.

The expansion is driven by enrollment, which at 28,885 is up 6percent from last year and has overtaxed current buildings while creating a demand for even more space.

"With our open-door admissions policy, as the county grows, we grow," said Curt Groninga, the college's vice president for administrative services.