After the Council of State designated $109 million in funds towards the construction of the James B. Hunt Library, plans for the new library to be located on Centennial Campus have been completed.

Dr. Larry Nielsen, provost and executive vice chancellor, said that the library will be a fantastic addition to N.C. State.

“It will house lots of electronic resources, lots of collaborative space, those things which are really valuable,” Nielsen said. “Besides that it will have amazing architecture and structure.”

Carolyn Axtman, architect and project manager, said the new building will give Centennial Campus a focal point.

“It will provide a meeting place and a heart for Centennial Campus,” Axtman said. “It will [also] improve seating that we desperately need.”

The estimated construction costs are about $78 million, according to Axtman, but the estimates may change.

“We are not building it today, we are building it a couple years from now and prices escalate,” Axtman said.

The infrastructure and parking for the building was taken into consideration for the budget as well, Axtman said.

“Some of the $109 million available will go towards supporting a parking deck,” Axtman said. “Another chunk is to extend the infrastructure to support the Hunt Library.”

The project is scheduled to being early next summer, Axtman said.

“We are trying to pick up some time on this project by issuing early packages,” Axtman said.

“We will start working on the site early next summer, just cutting down trees and clearing shrubs.”

According to Axtman, actual site construction will not begin until early 2010 and bulding construction won’t begin until the summer of 2010.

Axtman said that the University opened up and advertised this significant project internationally and chose one of the top design firms in the country, Snohetta.

“We actually had…two days of firms designing imaginary solutions so we could look at the designs before deciding which one fit us best,” Axtman said.

The Hunt Library is just one more addition to the fast growing Centennial Campus, Axtman said.

“We are planning on having a coffee shop on the oval level and there has been discussion of other food levels,” Axtman said. “There are other buildings being planned on Centennial Campus offering food service located near the library.”

Axtman said she expects the library would be put to use by everyone.

“I honestly think a lot of students will use this library,” Axtman said. “So many students live south of Western, so it will actually be closer to them than D.H. Hill.”

Axtman said another benefit of the Hunt Library will be the elimination of book stacks.

“Rather than having stacks like in D.H. Hill, we have researched and implemented an automatic retrieval system,” she said.

The library staff has toured a number of libraries that have this system are thrilled to use it, Axtman said.

“If you can imagine a space that is 50 feet tall, that has metal racks that goes all the way from the lab up to the ceiling and on those racks are big Tupperware like bins,” Axtman said. “On the racks is a mechanism that runs on a track back and forth that retrieves the bin from the rack and takes it to the service desk where a person can pick up a book.”

Caroline Baldwin, a sophomore in parks, recreation and tourism management, said she was excited about the new library.

“It sounds like it will be more user friendly,” said Baldwin. “It will be beneficial for future generations.

Students would be able to order books from anywhere on campus and pick it up at the service desk, according to Axtman.

“The person can ask the machine for the book and all of the books will be scanned so the machine will know which bin to look for the book in,” Axtman said. “Book retrieval time is estimated to 10-15 minutes and you no longer have to walk the stacks looking for something.”