Robarts Library

View of the Robarts Library

The Robarts Library ( officially: John P. Robarts Research Library ) is a library was opened in 1973 in Toronto, Canada. She specializes in the areas of Humanities and Social Sciences and part of belonging to the University of Toronto University of Toronto Libraries network. Named after the former Prime Minister of Ontario John Robarts Library has more than 4.8 million books, 4.1 million microfilms and 740,000 other media. The library building is associated with the architectural style of Brutalism and is one of the most important examples in North America.

Location

The Robarts Library is located in the northwest of the 71 -acre campus of the University of Toronto, about 2 kilometers north of the Financial District. It is located west of Massey College and the back campus and south of the Bata Shoe Museum. The building complex of the library is on a nearly rectangular, wooded land, which is bounded on all four sides by streets.

Description

Inventory and usage

The library was originally available only postgraduate available. However, it was made available for all students then after protests from basic students. Planning before saw, set up a special transport system for books that would have helped the library staff to guide books to borrow switch. Once the library is open to all students saw themselves forced to abandon the establishment of this system. The partially completed tracks for the conveyor belts can still be seen today above the bookshelves.

The Robarts Library housed on the eighth floor of the Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library which holds over 400,000 media in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages ​​. The stock of the Asian Library to the year in 1933, its stock was originally listed in Beijing and came only in June 1935 to Toronto. In addition, located in the library, the project Dictionary of Old English, which defines the vocabulary of the first six centuries. It supplements the standard works of Middle English Dictionary, which covers the range of 1100 to 1500, as well as the Oxford English Dictionary. All three works completely describe the vocabulary of the English language. On the first floor the Robarts Library houses a collection of maps with a total of over 125,000 maps and 67,000 aerial photographs.

In addition to a rich collection, the library during term time on weekdays a 24 -hour open reading room. A special computer room on the first floor offers students apart from the internet access and the ability to access printers, scanners and other audiovisual equipment. On the seventh floor is the center for text digitization, which prepared the contributions of the University for the online archive; It is also affiliated to the project of Internet Archive.

In one part of the tripartite Library Building, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is established, which is the largest collection of rare books and manuscripts publicly available. The collection includes, among others, the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 Shakespeare Folio of 1623, Newton's Principia Mathematica of 1687 and 36 ancient Egyptian fragmentary papyrus manuscripts. Since 1997, the Rare Book Library houses a collection of private papers, photographs and manuscripts of the writer Lewis Carroll.

Building Description and Architecture

The building of the Robarts Library is divided into three units. From the middle of the south-facing and north side there are two additions, where the Rare Book Library and the School of Library Science is. The construction consists of reinforced concrete, 14 storeys high, has two basement levels and a triangular basic shape. The edge length of the equilateral triangles measuring 100.6 meters. The house has a total of 96 244 square meters of floor space, of which 6503 square meters on the Thomas Fischer Rare Books Library, 9476 square feet on the Information Science Building, and 80 265 square feet to the Robarts Library itself for the building was mainly reinforced concrete - a total of 76 450 cubic meters - used. The walls of the massive building are about 30 inches thick.

In the basements located next to equipment rooms also books archive, which can accommodate up to two million volumes. On the first floor, a card room, a large reading room and some work niches, of which there are distributed throughout the building next to the reception area is nearly 1000. The entrance is on the second floor where there is also a cafeteria, administrative offices, exhibition space and a cloakroom are located. On the third floor are more labor niches housed, and the reading room of the Archives microfilm and photocopying services. The escalator only goes to the fourth floor where there is the main catalogs and a reading room for periodicals in addition to the rental store. From here you have a mezzanine, a direct connection to the Rare Book Library. State publications are out on the fifth floor. In the sixth and seventh and eighth in the east wing of the upper floor are the administrative offices, labor and equipment rooms. The floors 9 to 13 are only available to entitle a group of people on lifts from the fourth floor. Each floor has shelves for up to 400,000 books.

The building was designed by New York architect Warner, Burns, Toan & Lunde, together with the Canadian office Mathers & Haldenby. The first designs date back to the year 1960. After the construction was approved in 1966, the work took them four years and nine months. In July 1973, the work was completed and the end of the month the building of its provision was passed. The cost to the emergence of the library amounted to approximately 41.7 million Canadian dollars, which is the equivalent of approximately 185.9 million corresponded to 2006.

The library building is characterized in that it has no curves and no right angles to the outside. The partial multiple interconnecting dark lines and cantilevered elements make the building look like a turkey depending on the viewing angle. It is with its typical architectural concrete facade as one of the most important buildings of the Brutalist in North America. The first two floors have almost no windows. The light is directed into the building through skylights and narrow vertical window. The dominant feature is not without controversy and the acting for some as massive concrete block comes after a survey even at a third of architecture students to rejection. The Canadian architect Ronald Thom described the building even as " arrogant and wrong." The massive, almost fortress-like construction brought the library hence the nickname " Fort Book " field.

Media and Culture

The Robarts Library appeared in the episode The One Where Joey Speaks French the sitcom Friends in appearance. The outside of the library is shown in a scene shortly and should represent, where Rachel is a New York hospital - played by Jennifer Aniston - visits her father. The building was seen as a huge prison building in the episode El Sid the science fiction series Sliders - The gate into a strange dimension, which takes place in an alternate San Francisco.

Umberto Eco spent in the creation of his novel The Name of the Rose much of his time in the Robarts Library. Because of strong similarities, the library in Toronto was apparently partly as a model for the stairwell of the secret library in the novel.