Message from the University Librarian:
Celebrating Library Service to the Sciences
10th Anniversary of the Science Library

This year we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Science Library. With over 130,000 square feet of space, collections of over 550,000 volumes, and a staff of 106 providing services 128 hours a week, the Science Library has come to play a central role in the academic life of faculty and students. People enter the Science Library nearly 1 million times each year to obtain personalized assistance from library staff, use collections for research and class assignments, take classes, study, use sophisticated and specialized computers, and pursue personal explorations and interests.

In the summer of 1994 the Libraries’ science and medicine collections were gathered from the overcrowded Main Library (now Langson Library) and smaller facilities in the College of Medicine and the Schools of Biological and Physical Sciences, and integrated in a beautiful new library designed by acclaimed British architect, James Sterling. The new building provided ample space for growth of the collections and also offered UCI’s first state-of-the-art computer labs and technology-enhanced classrooms. The placement and design of the Science Library provides convenient access as people travel between Biological and Physical Sciences buildings, the College of Medicine, and now the Research Park also.

The first decade of the Science Library has coincided with the phenomenal growth of electronic scholarly resources. In addition to print collections, we now provide digital full-text to thousands of scientific journals, databases, and reference tools, some in science disciplines that didn’t exist ten years ago. As UCI’s academic departments have expanded cutting-edge research and teaching into new areas, science librarians have collaborated by developing collections in a wide range of emerging disciplines including nanotechnology, neurosciences, biomedical engineering, cosmology, and more. Now we offer desktop delivery of print materials via the web as well as online access to electronic resources.

The Science Library has served the campus well for the past ten years, but patterns in how the building is used have changed as communication technology, research methodologies, and staffing patterns have evolved. We are currently planning how to best reconfigure space in the Science and Langson libraries to provide the most effective library services and will keep you informed of our progress. We will build on the many strengths of the Science Library and ensure that it continues to serve the campus well.

Gerald J. Munoff
University Librarian