Library Renovation to be Completed by February 2010

This semester the Sewanee community expects the opening of a long-awaited campus improvement: The William Ralston Listening Library. The project has occupied a large amount of the second floor of DuPont Library for most of the 2009 – 2010 academic year. The Listening Library will house the University's music collection including the late Father Ralston's extensive collection of classical music, complete with extra study space and listening equipment for use by classes and individuals.

The main feature of the facility is the large Listening Room, which will be acoustically designed with wood interior paneling and outfitted with some of the most advanced audio technology in the world. This room will serve primarily for classroom use and will be separated from the rest of the Ralston Library by a key-card lock. The other main component of the space includes two additional rooms, one suited especially for group study, and the other for individual study. All three rooms will have shelf space to hold a total of 29,000 audio recordings (mostly vinyl albums and CD's), of which some belonged to the University before Rev. Ralston's gift; only 4,000 will be available for circulation.

Sewanee has lacked an audio facility for academic purposes since 1995, when an outdated listening room was removed from the library's ground floor. This space became the ATC Lab in 2000, the last time the library underwent a renovation of scale comparable to that of the Ralston Room.

In 2005, two years after the passing of Reverend Ralston, official planning began for a University space appropriate to house his music collection. In subsequent years, the Library made space by moving the government documents to compact shelving and by moving its special collection to the former Kappa Sigma house. A critical component to the project is the support of Ralston's personal friend Dr. Thomas Carlson, who has been especially helpful in soliciting donations to fund the project.

As of November, the project was on schedule, though certain details about the interior and technologies of the facility had not yet been decided. Currently, the project is slightly behind but should be completed by the end of February at the latest.

Still to be decided is the extent to which the audio collection will be digitized or made available online, which will depend upon copyright laws. "I see so many positive things coming from this [project]," says University Librarian Vicki Sells. The new facility will no doubt be a great asset to the University.