July 11, 2003
Work Begins on Top Three Floors of USM's Portland Campus
Library
Thanks to funds donated by friends, alumni and businesses,
work began Monday, July 7, to complete USM's Albert Brenner
Glickman Family Library in Portland. The top three floors
of the seven-story building have remained unfinished since
the library's opening in the fall of 1993. Completion of the
top three floors will add 26,500 square feet of additional
space to the current 36,000. Construction will be completed
in April of 2004.
The project, which cost over $3.3 million, was made possible
through the fund raising conducted during the "21st Century
Campaign for Excellence" that ended late 2002. The Campaign
raised more than $22 million provide endowed scholarships,
build the capacity of academic programs, expand instructional
technology, and complete the top three floors of the Glickman
Library.
Suzi Osher of Portland, a lifelong Maine resident, donated
the final pledge of $500,000 to the library in memory of her
husband, Alfred, allowing work to begin. The library's top
floor will be named the Alfred and Suzi Osher University Pavilion,
and will house the UnumProvident Great Reading Room and the
University Room for Special Events. Her gift will provide
Thomas Moser furniture for the UnumProvident Great Reading
Room, as well as for the Mildred Brenner Glickman Special
Collection Area on the sixth floor. The Special Collection
Area will contain the collections of the Jean Byers Sampson
Center for Diversity and the Bernard and Shirley Kazon Collection,
and provide exhibition space for the collections. The fifth
floor will hold an Information Literacy Center--a state-of-the-art
computer facility for training in the access of electronic
information--group study rooms, and a cafˇ.
The architectural firm of SMRT of Portland and Sarasota,
Fla., designed the top three floors. SMRT was founded in 1883
by architect John Calvin Stevens. Lead architect for this
project is Scott Benson. He will be assisted by library building
consultant, Jay Lucker, former director of libraries at MIT
who has designed library projects at MIT, Princeton, and other
universities. Wright-Ryan Construction Inc. of Portland won
the bid for the construction.
The 1919 building, originally a commercial bakery, began
its transformation into a university library with a $3.9 million
construction budget funded by a publicly approved bond in
1988. USM bought the building in 1990. JSA, Inc. of Portsmouth,
N.H., was the architectural firm that designed the award-winning
Kalwall paneled exterior, and first four floors containing
book stacks, advanced fiber optic computer technology, reference
materials, periodicals, archives and office and conference
areas.
The first floor of the Glickman Library also houses USM's
Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education,
which opened in 1994. The cartographic collections were formed
from the major gifts of Harold L. and Peggy L. Osher and the
late Lawrence M.C. and Eleanor Houston Smith. The collections
date back to 1475 and are considered among the finest historical
cartographic collections.
In October of 1997, the Portland Campus Library was renamed
the Albert Brenner Glickman Family Library in recognition
of the donation of $1 million by Albert B. and Judith L. Glickman
of Cape Elizabeth for completion of the library and expansion
of library holdings.
Editor's Note: For more information on the library and
its history, contact Bob Caswell or Judie O'Malley at the
numbers at the top of this release.
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