Few alumni have fond memories of the old Dimond Library. Or so it seems, from a collection of anecdotes received in a recent highly unscientific e-mail poll of UNH alumni. They recall the library as a bleak and noisy place with a "dark, scary stairwell," a.k.a. "the stairway to hell." The infamous striped carpet is "burned into the memory" of one alumna, while another describes it as "someone's bad trip." "The heat would zone me out," complains one graduate, and yet others are even less kind: Dimond was simply "a total disaster" and "a place to be avoided at all costs."

Even the librarians remember it as "hideous" and "a fortress."

So when Dimond Library reopened last Aug. 31 for the first time after a year and a half and $19 million worth of renovations and additions, the new facility was welcomed with open arms.

Gone was the gloomy wormhole entrance, replaced with a soaring atrium. Cramped book stacks and Formica tables gave way to spacious reading rooms with lofty vaulted ceilings and tall windows, and comfy nooks furnished with couches and armchairs.

The new Dimond is "truly, as the ancient Greeks described libraries, 'a cure for the soul,'" says President Joan Leitzel.

Transforming the old library took time and money, as well as 750,000 pounds of steel and 20,000 yards of new carpeting. But it also took something less tangible. For more than three years before the first sledge hammer bit drywall, planning committees of faculty, staff and architects spent hundreds of hours not only poring over blueprints, but also wrestling with the question of how to design a library that would, in the words of architect David Zenk, "acknowledge the aspirations of people."

Some of the planning decisions that emerged in recent conversations included the following considerations:

1. Nothing was sacred

"We had an advantage in that the old library was so hideous," says Deanna Wood, a library associate professor who chaired the 13-member building and renovation committee that labored over the great and small details of the library project. Although cost constraints meant the old library's framework would have to be reused, no one made a case for saving, say, a favorite room, and the architects had a nearly blank slate with which to work. Wood says some people claim they're nostalgic for the old carpet, with its eye-popping stripes of orange and red, and black and brown. "I have a square of the old carpet, and I've offered it to the 20 or so people who say they miss it, but not one of them has taken me up on it," she reports.

Also scrapped was the old library's inconsistent floor plan. The new plan organizes the collection logically, and even puts copy machines and restrooms in the same location on each floor. As a result, "there's not a single book or person in the same place it was before," says University Librarian Claudia Morner. Faculty who complain they can't find their way around are advised to forget all about the old library's layout. Tom Foxall, professor of animal and nutritional sciences, says while finding a book in the old library "was like going on safari," he also got lost in the new library at first.

2. Let the sun shine in

"People like light, books don't," says Morner. Reading rooms and offices were set at the outer edges, where light could stream in through large windows. "The people spaces are like a doughnut, and the doughnut hole is where the books are," explains Zenk, the project captain from Graham Gund Architects, Inc., the Cambridge, Mass., firm that designed the new facility.

Additions on the north and east allowed for high-ceilinged study areas. "This is the 19th-century idea of a reading room," Morner explains as she stands in the rustling hush of students leafing through books and taking notes in the Addison Reading Room. Zenk calls the reading rooms "grand spaces" that help define the hierarchy of the library—people at study first, book stacks second.

3. Keep up with the neighbors

Graham Gund and his architects noticed immediately that the old library looked as if it were sliding into the ravine. To put the new building on a par with Thompson and Murkland halls, Gund placed the additions on the front of the building, and gave the entrance a new facade equal in size and grandeur to its neighbors. As a result, the library now feels like an integral and intimate part of Murkland Courtyard, and by inference, the life of the University, says Zenk. Morner agrees. "It adds to the vitality of the campus," she says. "Students inside have that great view of the courtyard, and from the outside, it looks like a library. You can see students sitting at the tables. It welcomes people, and says, 'Come on in, we're studying.'"

4. The future is wired

Bookbags of today—and even more so in the future—will contain laptops as well as Shakespearean plays. Tables in the new library have more than 200 ports for computer hookups, discreetly tucked out of sight. Replacing the old wooden card catalog file cabinets are 126 terminals (with expansion to 464 planned) for library patrons to log on to the online catalog http://www.library.unh.edu/. The library subscribes to 56 electronic databases and indexes, which can be searched at the Electronic Reference Area, or from one's office or dormitory room, providing access to hundreds of thousands of journals and articles. A new data center offers electronic and statistical data resources, and the multimedia center houses audio and visual materials, with group- and single-listening stations.

"It's a great time to be a student, and a great time to be a librarian," says Morner, referring to the so-called explosion of the electronic age. "The library is more important to students than ever before. But the perception is that the Web makes getting information easy. It's not true. Students now have to learn how to learn."

5. If you build it, they will come

Students who confess they used the old library only under duress now say the new library is their study place of choice, and library staff confirms that the library is much busier than before.

"Normally, I hate libraries, and before I never used it," says Jessica Collins '00, an occupational therapy major who is taking notes at a glossy new maple table in the Hubbard Reading Room on a recent weekday. Late afternoon sunlight angles through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting yellow rays across dozens of bent heads. "Now it's open, and quiet, and user friendly. And bright and sunny—it keeps me awake," she adds.

Diane Wolters '78, who is taking a few nutrition courses to prepare for graduate school, has a favorite niche, one of the couches in the Addison Reading Room. But the couches fill up quickly, so she heads for her second choice, a window seat overlooking Murkland Courtyard. "The new library is so much better, and the staff seems happier," she says.

The influx of students and professors suits Morner just fine. Gregarious, enthusiastic and known to let loose—outside of reading rooms—with a booming, contagious laugh, Morner's description of the new library is "a glorious space that makes those people who are engaged in teaching and learning feel supported."

The renovation and expansion of Dimond Library was funded through a public-private partnership, which included $15.15 million from the state of New Hampshire, $1.1 million from the University's renovation and repair budget and $2.61 million in donations from private individuals. Eight rooms in the new library are named in honor of their benefactors.