Differences In Floor Plans
Let us take a look at Savitz's three floors (Library Records, 2019):
For the purposes of this floor overview, we are discussing only those spaces that service students.
Savitz's first floor, referred to at the time as 'the basement', contained the following: stacks, which is the bookshelves in a library; current periodicals, which is newspapers and journals and the like; microform, a type of medium for storing visual information on small film; and the Stewart Room, where was kept the Stewart Collection.
Savitz's second floor contained the following: a large stacks area (this is the big empty space taking up most of the room); the circulation desk, where one would check out and check in books and request holds; a small stacks area; and the Curriculum Lab, a general-purpose meeting area useful for classes and meetings and conferences.
Savitz's third floor, added in the 70's, contained the following: reading room, where one can sit and study or relax and read (the empty space taking up most of the room); a lecture room available to classes; a typing room that contained typewriters and, later on, access points to electronic databases; a space for assorted documents; and a few group study rooms.
Now, let us take a look at Campbell's four floors (floor maps can be found here):
Campbell's first floor contains the following: a help/service/circulation desk; plural areas for individual study for multiple levels of noise tolerance; six group study rooms; bound periodicals (many volumes of a journal bound together, a year's worth of daily papers from a newspaper bound together, etc) and dissertation space; a computer lab; the writing center, where students can go for assistance for writing papers; and stacks for DVDs and Blu-rays from the library's collection.
Campbell's second floor contains the following: another help/service/circulation desk; three more computer labs; nine group study rooms; space for current periodicals and Children's & Young Adult Literature; atlases and other maps; space for the reference collection; a nook for the library's remaining microfilm & fiche reader; and the Performing Arts Collection, which stores Rowan's collection of music and dance and plays and musicals and operas.
Campbell's third floor contains the following: stacks, with some space for individual or group study; the Digital Scholarship Center, which according to their site aims to "develop and curate innovative digital scholarship projects, educational resources, and collaborative programs" for Rowan students and faculty; and the University Archives, the home of Rowan's special collections and materials regarding a great deal of history (the full list of collections can be found here) available to anyone with an interest.Campbell's fourth floor contains the following: a silent study area along the edges of a stacks space; four group study rooms; and a full-noise study area.
What has changed from Savitz to Campbell?
- Stacks no longer sit right at the entrance; bound periodicals (read: older editions of newspapers and journals) are all that can be found on the first floor regarding research materials. Stacks do not start until the second floor, and only for one genre of books.
- The layout is far more open -- where Savitz is closed-off, compartmentalized, Campbell is open and spreading (Davis, 2019). There are few doors in doorways separating areas of Campbell where Savitz had closed doors.
- A shocking degree of growth in number of dedicated group study rooms. The floor plan for Savitz labels at most 3-5 rooms for group work, Campbell boasts nineteen (19).
- Campbell contains the Performing Arts Collection, which Savitz did not hold.
- The microform area of Savitz dwarfs that in its postdecessor's.
- Where Savitz had typing rooms containing typewriters, Campbell has computer labs.
