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The Grainger Engineering Library Information Center
Location	1301 West Springfield Avenue, Urbana, Illinois 61801 United States
Established	October 14, 1994
Other information
Director	William H. Mischo
Website	www.library.uiuc.edu/grainger

Grainger Engineering Library

The Grainger Engineering Library is a library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Engineering dedicated to all disciplines of engineering at the University. It is situated on the north side of the Bardeen Quad on the engineering campus along Springfield Avenue.

History

The Grainger Engineering Library Information Center has been called “the model for all future academic technical libraries.” This project was made possible by a man named William Wallace Grainger, a University of Illinois electrical engineering graduate, class of 1919. He made his riches by launching a small mail-order electrical supplies and components business that eventually grew into a Fortune 500 industrial supply company. William Grainger felt a professional commitment to make technology accessible to everyone and it was in that same spirit that his son David donated over 18 million dollars to fund the construction of the Grainger Engineering Library Information Center. In recognition to his contribution, a bas-relief of William Wallace Grainger was placed in the first floor lobby of the Grainger Engineering Library.

The Grainger Engineering Library was dedicated on the 59th anniversary of the University of Illinois Foundation, October 14, 1994. The dedication proceedings, entitled a “Gateway to a New Era”, established the largest engineering library in the country, with over 92,000 square feet holding more than 300,000 volumes. In keeping with the building’s cutting edge technical advancements, the ribbon cutting ceremony was a purely digital affair. President Stanley Ikenberry, Chancellor Michael Aiken, and David Grainger, representing his father, William Wallace Grainger, pressed assigned areas on a computer touch screen to change a computerized red ribbon into a visual explosion of fireworks. In 1995 Grainger library took home the prize of “Project of the Year” as awarded by the Illinois Engineering Council. It also received the decoration of “Excellence in Masonry Design, Honorable Mention Award” from the Illinois/Indiana Masonry Council in 1996. It is widely accepted as one of the most technologically advanced information management centers in the nation with as many as 1,000 available computer hookups, at nearly every table, carrel, and desk.

Overview

The Grainger Library contains a two-story Main Reading Gallery, which can seat 1,254 people, and two smaller, two-story pavilion reading galleries, which can each accommodate approximately 60 people. The galleries are also used for special events and dinners. In addition, the facility contains three large seminar rooms (seating 30 to 50 people) and four smaller conference rooms. The building has 60 networked computers, 100 terminals, 7 information kiosks, and 6 servers. The building offers group study rooms, individual study carrels, faculty and scholar studies and conference rooms. In fact, it was so technically advanced that the furniture had to be custom designed because no one had ever had data and power connected to every seat on this scale before.

Computing and Technologies

The Grainger Engineering Library Information Center provides state-of-the-art computing and information technologies to assist students in research and instruction and to provide patrons access to information resources both held locally and available. The computing facilities include:

• Two computer and multi-media labs with 80 high-end engineering workstations, which are used for CAD, numerical analysis and modeling, and software development.
• A digital imaging lab housing the Digital Library Initiative Projects, which provides access to 62,000 full-text journal articles; an information retrieval laboratory for visitors and researchers utilizing Grainger and campus resources.
• Two instructional services labs, which serve as high-tech classrooms for information literacy instruction and presentations.

In addition, public-use terminals have been placed throughout the building that provide access to a statewide online catalog, Compendex, INSPEC, Aerospace Database, National Technical Information Service (NTIS), 1,000 full-text journals, and a wealth of local information resources.With more than 1.5 million people using the building in 2000, it is currently the second most visited study area on campus, second only to the Illini Union. The Grainger Engineering Library Information Center is dedicated to providing tools to assist people in their pursuit of knowledge and to serve as a showcase for the applications of information technologies.

Social and Financial Resources

A big social resource that drove this project was the need for a new library for the engineering department. The college of engineering had almost 5000 students but the current library only had 120 seats and could only house 50,000 books. Grainger Engineering Library was a major improvement over the previous library. The Grainger Engineering Library Information Center opened to the public in March 1994. A $34 million multifunctional facility, Grainger Engineering Library was primarily funded by a gift of $18.7 million from the Grainger Foundation Inc., which is headquartered in Skokie, Illinois. An additional $11 million of State and gift funds was expended on the project for the rerouting of steam, electrical, and telecommunications lines, the demolition of several buildings, and the construction of the new Engineering Quad (which had been under consideration since at least 1926).

Construction

Safety and Precautionary Steps

In building the library, the Construction Management and Design Team were asked to make estimates of the construction costs, the schedule of the project and the environmental impact on the surrounding areas. The environmental factors includes, but were not limited to noise, dust, water and debris control. In addition, contractors needed to control the amount of pollution they were ejecting into the atmosphere. For that matter, the amount of dust and debris produced were controlled by requiring the contractors to provide proper dust control materials. The noise and dust risks were minimized through the use of muffled hammers and exhausts. The contractors were also required to control the surface water in order to minimize damage to the project and adjacent buildings. They needed to provide and operate hydraulic equipment of adequate capacity to control the surface water.

Issues Affecting the Cost and Schedule

A big disaster happened during the construction phase of the project. The university was hit by the greatest flood ever recorded in the past one hundred years. The project was on track and two months away from completion when the flood brought 7 to 8 feet of water into the basement. The water flushed through the steam tunnels and eventually made its way to Grainger’s basement. There was worry that the waters weight could have strained the building structural integrity but since the stress was spread so evenly, this was not seen as a big concern. Nevertheless the basement had to be redone and the project was delayed 3 months.

Also, the initial plan in the construction of Grainger did not include a north entrance. It was deemed as an expensive plan to have a second entrance because of the security risk. In addition to metal detectors and such, both doors must be worked during operating hours of the library. Even so, due to the number of request from faculties and students coming in from the north side, a second entrance was built. Due to the above issues, the project was over budget and was behind schedule by approximately two months.

Personnel Involved

Some consultants hired on the project were an acoustician and a lighting specialist. The lighting specialist was Bill Lam. Apart from that, there were 3 University clients: Capital Programs, Operation and Maintenance, and the Engineering school. The project was done with a construction manager, P.K. DeMars. In addition, there were 28 subcontractor contracts (not including the 20 or so for furniture).

• Architect

Woollen Molzan and Partners

• Structural Engineer

Lemessurier Consultants

• Mechanical – Electrical Engineer

Henneman, Raufeisen & Associates

• University's Project Manager

Tim Kerestes