photo by Loyd Heath, 1997

Foster Business Library Opens

Gordon Aamot, Foster Business Library

The Foster Business Library opened to the public the first day of Summer Quarter, June 23, 1997. It combines a spacious library environment with a technological infrastructure that permits a wide range of electronic services now, and will allow services to expand and change in the future.

Background

The project was funded by a mix of private and public money. In late 1990, the University of Washington School of Business Administration received a gift of three million dollars from the Foster Foundation to help fund a new business library to be named in honor of Albert O. and Evelyn W. Foster. Albert Foster graduated from the UW Business School in 1928, and founded the investment banking firm of Foster & Marshall in 1938. Evelyn Foster graduated from the UW in 1932. The Business School combined the Foster gift with two others and developed the concept for a complex that would come to include the Seafirst Executive Education Center, the Boeing Auditorium, and the Foster Business Library. Planning for the project began in February 1991. Construction began in March 1995, and continued through June 1997.

The Library

The Foster Business Library is a "below garden" facility. The most striking physical characteristic of the new library is the 800-square-foot skylight located above the reading area. The skylight and twenty-foot ceiling give the space a light, airy feeling. With 19,500 square feet, the library is one and one-half times the size of the old Balmer facility. The lower level contains circulation, reference, the collections, library workstations, and most of the reader seating. The mezzanine level overlooks the main reading area, and contains additional reader seating and group study rooms.

The library offers a variety of study spaces to accommodate different user needs and preferences. One of the biggest differences between the old and new facilities is the addition of seven group study rooms, accommodating six to ten people each. The rooms may be reserved for two-hour periods up to one week in advance. Library seating consists of cherry-stained maple four-person tables or two-person carrels. For individuals who prefer to curl up in a comfortable chair, there are eighteen soft chairs.

The new facility was designed to allow easy access to power and data. There are few spaces, including tables and carrels, within the library not within reach of an outlet or data connection. Students and faculty can bring in their laptop computers, plug into the campus network, and access their uniform access accounts, the Libraries databases or the World Wide Web.

This infrastructure has enabled the library to expand its range of electronic business services. The electronic reference area contains 20 library workstations. Users have access to networked databases, the World Wide Web and CD-ROM databases networked from the Foster Business Library server. UW students and faculty can also access NEXIS and Dow Jones News Retrieval in the new NEXIS/DOW JONES Lab. These sources contain the full texts of thousands of news and business sources.

Business librarians will teach strategies and techniques for using electronic resources in the Library Seminar Room. This space will accommodate up to 12 students and, when not in use for instruction, will function as an open lab. In all, there are more than 30 public workstations available in the Foster Business Library-twice the number in the old library facility. These desktop stations, combined with the laptop access available at the wired reader stations, offer users a rich array of electronic business resources now, and the potential for even more access in the near future as laptop computing is incorporated into the curriculum.

Stop by and visit the Foster Business Library. Hours during Autumn Quarter are:

The Foster Business Library can be contacted at 543-4360 or balib@u.washington.edu.