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Structural Concerns Close Salem State College LibrarySalem (Mass.) State College President Patricia Maguire Meservey ordered the emergency closing October 15 of the campus library until further notice due to concerns about the 38-year-old building’s structural integrity. “Our top priority is the safety of our students, faculty, and staff, as well as visitors to our campus,” Meservey stated October 16, acknowledging that although the closure “will significantly impact our entire campus community,” it was unavoidable. She advised SSC library users that the state Board of Higher Education was negotiating access to physical collections at other Greater Boston colleges and universities. What prompted the sudden action, which the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management recommended, was an October 15 engineering report prepared as part of the initial planning for a major library renovation. The report alerted officials to load-bearing strains on all four floors of the facility—in particular the 4th-floor overhang, which holds desks and fully stocked shelving. “It’s just that the use of the building [is now] in excess of what it was originally designed for,” SSC spokesperson Karen Cady said in the October 16 Salem News, also citing the 90 offices located in spaces that were originally designed for study nooks, as well as the unforeseen weight of numerous workstations in the instructional media area and the foot traffic of 3,000 library users each day. An October 17 News editorial mentioned that skeptics might view the timing as curious considering that a week earlier, Gov. Deval L. Patrick had proposed to the state legislature a $41-million expenditure for the renovation as part of a $2-billion higher-education bond issue. The newspaper published that same day an interview with the 1966–74 chair of the library construction committee, who said that a three-year, multimillion-dollar reinforcement of the library’s concrete flooring to correct a design flaw had made each story capable of withstanding some 150 pounds per square inch of pressure. “You could drive a truck on those floors and they wouldn’t buckle,” Neil Olson told the News. Posted October 19, 2007. |
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