Columbus State University Libraries in the Spotlight!

The Simon Schwob Memorial Library at Columbus State University was opened on the main campus in March 1975 and the Music Library was established on the RiverPark Campus in 2001. The look of Simon Schwob Memorial Library has changed over the years in keeping with its mission to provide library and information resources, instruction and other services that promote and enrich intellectual and personal growth and scholarship.  These changes include a 2012 $1.3 million renovation of the first floor to expand student seating and collaborative space by moving technical services, government depository processing and administrative offices to the lower level of the building in a space previously used for university storage.  The project also included the purchase of fun, flexible seating that expanded capacity on the first floor from 115 to 300. With increased traffic of over 22% since the renovation, the library expanded its weekday hours to 7am to 2am Monday thru Thursday. Columbus State met late-hour transportation needs by extending the shuttle service between the main and downtown campuses.

In the spirit of flexible collaboration, CSU Libraries now offers the checkout of 34 Google ChromeBooks and 26 laptops for mobile computing, in addition to 38 traditional lab stations, including 13 dual-monitors.  Wireless is available throughout the building.  The lab stations are surrounded on one end by a gallery housing student and faculty art and on the other by an Einstein’s Café serving coffee and snacks to sustain diligent students into the night hours.  Mobile white boards are dispersed among the clusters of booth seating. The periodicals lounging area, with an attractive display of current popular magazines and newspapers, is directly across from the forum space used for study, faculty research presentations, and events, including this year’s popular Vietnam Lecture Series.

All student service points were moved to the front of the library to increase accessibility, including new reference and circulation desks and a new office suite for the Systems, ILL and Reference and Instruction departments.  Access to reference services will be expanded in March 2013 with the implementation of Text-a-Librarian, an integrated platform for chat, email and text reference.  In Fall 2013 the library and campus writing center will be collaborating to offer writing assistance from the library, experimenting with a learning commons model.

CSU Libraries houses a collection of over 450,000 items, including over 35,000 ebooks, over 150 manuscript collections in the CSU Archives (located on the 3rd floor of Schwob Memorial Library), and over 9400 CD’s and LP’s plus 700 pieces of sheet music at the Music Library. The Music Library recently received a large gift of flute and guitar scores, and in 2013 the CSU Archives will be the recipient of the historical Spencer Maps Collection.


To learn more about Columbus State University Libraries, please visit http://library.columbusstate.edu/