“We students have adopted it as our own.”

–Nancy L. Buc ’65, President, Student Government Association,
Pembroke College, November 1964

 

Since its opening in November 1964, Brown students have embraced the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library. Designed by the architectural firm of Warner, Burns, Toan, and Lunde, the “Rock,” at the time of its opening, was considered a “marvel of modern design and ingenuity” containing “every practical technical advancement…for the advantage of the bibliophile.” Among its state-of-the-art innovations in 1964 were:

Heating coils under the Rock steps to melt snow.

Pneumatic tube system of book request and retrieval.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Custom-built, “wired” card catalog that included phone jacks to enable librarians to answer questions about library holdings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slanted shelving for periodicals and roll-out shelves in the reference stacks.

Today’s Rockefeller Library continues the tradition of providing innovative, state-of-the-art services to meet the needs of 21st century library users. The Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab on the first floor of the Rock, with its 7´ x 16´ high-definition “video wall,” offers students and faculty a technology-rich environment for discovery, analysis, and collaboration. Hi-tech collaboration spaces in the Sorensen Family Reading Room facilitate group work by allowing a number of students to display and share their work on large computer screens. Group study rooms in the Laura and David Finn Reading Room and the Sorensen Family Reading Room provide students with spaces to work together in small groups or on team projects. And the Digital Studio, an upcoming renovation planned for summer 2015, will create a unique space on campus, offering a range of high-end collaborative environments with the latest interactive technologies, that will enable innovation in the humanities and interdisciplinary scholarship across the campus community.