In March 2006, we unveiled the newly renovated Bentley Library. The goal of this $17M project was to offer services and resources befitting Bentley’s business university mission. The project was driven by a desire to address the demands of both an increasingly high caliber student body as well as the significant research efforts of our faculty around business practice.

Over the past two years, we engaged the Bentley community extensively to inform and guide this design. We created a Library Advisory Committee, met with the Student Government Association, the Graduate Student Association, conducted faculty and student online surveys, focus groups, and even had several class projects analyze and recommend ways to improve the library. The following is a summary of some of the salient issues, and the ways in which they were addressed:

Our more academically-oriented student body and research-focused faculty expressed a desire for more places for quiet contemplation, reflection, and study. Thus, we enclosed the porch areas to enable total usable study seating to increase from 396 to 697.

Focus groups and class research projects indicated a strong desire to be able to buy good quality coffee and light snacks while studying in the library, so we enclosed the porch on the Smith/Jennison/Lindsay side of the building and installed a cybercafé. A new entrance was added from this high-traffic area.

The high-tech collaborative workspaces found in our accounting lab and the Center for Marketing Technology have proven very popular, so we added 19 large-screen flat panel LCDs with PCs and laptop connections to our collaborative study rooms. Collaborative/social study space grew by nine (to 24 total), all of which feature electronic reservation screens.

Many students like to work on research projects and write papers with reference librarians on hand who understand how to locate and evaluate information within the extensive collection of databases and other library resources. Therefore, the number of research/work PCs has been increased from 32 to 120. Students with laptops can use the wireless network or will find data ports and power jacks at 99 percent of study seats.

To reflect the growing importance of the arts at Bentley, a beautiful new Vitale, Caturano & Company Art Gallery has been prominently situated in the main lobby.

To provide a “one stop shopping” experience for assistance with both research and technical issues - rather than requiring patrons to work on their laptops/papers in one building but walk to another to receive technical assistance - the Client Services Help Desk and Computer Resource Center has been moved into the lower level, adjacent to a 38-seat PC lab.

Laser-equipped electronic compact stacks and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) collection management system with student/faculty self-checkout capability.

State-of-the-art online databases have been complemented by a dynamic book collection, with book storage capacity increasing by 54 percent (to 200,000 volumes).

Graduate (and potential PhD) student study carrels have been increased from 22 to 56, including four dedicated PhD "suites."

So that students can receive assistance with writing papers, the Writing Center and English for Speakers of Other Languages tutorial assistance are located on the lower level.

While we currently strive to offer the best online research resources of any business school, we are thrilled that faculty and students are benefiting from a physical environment so conducive to quiet reflection and collaboration.  In fact, comparing pre-and post-renovation gate counts of traffic into the building provides a glimpse of the newfound popularity of the Bentley library.  From Sept. – Dec. 2004, we had 136,599 faculty and students enter the building; from Sept. – Dec. 2006, there were 640, 095 - an increase of gate count by 470%!  (This excludes traffic into the café.)