The History of Library Spaces

President Allen saw the library as the “exciting” geographic and ideological center of the university. With no art gallery or museum on campus, the library filled in with regular exhibitions and special events. Allen envisioned a library with open stacks and easy browsing like a supermarket. At five stories tall, it was the campus’s highest structure, to “symbolize it as the heart of the campus.” 

With a small staff, it took a full eight months to move into the $1.5-million library building in 1960-61. The library opened in April 1961 with a concert and art exhibit attended by 1,300. A year later, the Special Collections Room opened in honor of National Library Week. The library’s rare books, Florida collection, and USF’s fledgling archive were housed there. All academic departments sent their minutes and notes to the library to be preserved in the university archives.  

In 1966, Library Director Elliot Hardaway sought a new building as enrollment reached 10,000, the number of students the original library had been designed for. Mary Lou Harkness became the library’s second director in 1967 and continued the quest for a new graduate research library.  Librarians created a course called “How to Use the USF Library,” the first of its kind, and enrolled students to help teach classes. 

The library expanded in 1970, but could not keep pace with the growing student body. In 1972, administration slashed the library budget by more than ten percent, forcing a reduction of hours. No wonder students cited the library as one of their top concerns in surveys at the time. The building became extremely crowded by the mid-1970s, prompting an official to joke that they’d have to place new bookshelves in the restrooms. There was no remaining space for students to study, and use of the library dropped.  

Construction Begins

Work began on the new library building in December 1972. With construction well underway, President Mackey ordered an additional two floors to be added to the structure, for a total of seven, including the basement. In retrospect, the added floors were a wise move, and added space for another quarter-million volumes, bringing total capacity to more than a million. 

Crews completed the present-day library in April 1975, but no funds remained to move the books and equipment. The new library building remained empty while the staff awaited the new fiscal year in their cramped quarters. USF hired a moving company that was soon overwhelmed with the responsibility of actually moving the books in order. Librarians, resourceful as they are, devised a decidedly low-tech method for organizing the books while moving. They took a piece of string with a knot at either end that measured eighteen inches. Librarians measured out eighteen inches on each range and marked the increments with an IBM card, which at the time were used to keep track of circulation. The movers then removed that portion of books to be neatly stacked on large book trucks. Movers pushed the loaded trucks up ramps, out the windows, and onto an improvised elevator, or “buck hoist,” on the outside of the building, to waiting moving vans.   

“Every piece had a tag on it, saying exactly where it was going to go,” Camp says, including books, furniture and waste baskets. Vastine remembers with pride, “[W]e were able to move from that building to this building, lock stock and barrel, in one month. 450,000 volumes.” Thirty to fifty people worked on the transfer at a given time, and the shelves themselves weighed 310,000 pounds. Rowe called the move “absolute insanity,” while Paul Camp called it “a nameless horror.”