I would like to thank Kent Meiswinkel for his thoughtful comments about the noise level in the Hunt Library.  The N.C. State Libraries takes very seriously its mandate to serve the needs of students and researchers at the university, and we depend on honest, penetrating feedback to make sure that we are doing our best.

We will be addressing several of Mr. Meiswinkel’s suggestions immediately.  First of all, we will redouble our efforts to keep the sound level from the public tours to a minimum, re-emphasizing the reminders at the start of each tour that everyone be careful not to be disruptive.  It won’t be easy to control the noise completely, though; people tend to get excited about the building. But we will redouble our efforts.

And we plan to increase signage in the spaces of the building—the large Quiet Reading Room on the second floor, for instance—that are designated as completely silent spaces.  We will be putting reminders outside the Graduate Student Commons to request that everyone keep the level of activity in this area under control.  And of course, our staff is always ready and willing to step in with an old-fashioned “shh” to stop disruptive “horseplay.”

We hope that these actions will ensure that students who need a quiet place to work can easily find it.  

But at the same time, the Hunt Library is quite proudly not meant to be just a traditional, quiet library. Students, professors and researchers told us very early in the design process that they expected a library that would also be an energetic place where they could collaborate in small groups, where the give and take of a good discussion would be key to their learning and teaching. So a certain amount of conversation—even heated debate—in appropriate places in the building is, we think, a sign of the bold mandate the library has to support NC State’s leadership in how learning and research happen in this century. 

Mr. Meiswinkel asks, above all, that he be able to work in an environment that balances the need for quiet with the need for spaces as full of life as those where Plato once held his Symposia.  We thank him for reminding us that this balance is difficult to keep and that we need to keep our eye firmly fixed on it.

Susan K. Nutter

Vice Provost and Director of the N.C. State Libraries