Celebrating Mulford Library’s 50th Anniversary Year

Celebrating Mulford Library's 50th Anniversary Year

Fifty years ago, the Mulford Library Building was dedicated, becoming the second building constructed on what was then the Medical College of Ohio campus.

On Tuesday, Nov. 4, from 2 to 3 p.m. on the fourth floor of the Mulford Library Building, there will be an open house, with a display of photographs of the building during construction, the dedication and the facility over the years.

Designed by Don A. Hisaka and Associates, the Mulford Library Building's pre-construction cost was estimated to be $6 million. The construction was lauded in the August 1975 issue of the Architectural Record, as coming in under budget: $5.2 million.

The structure was designed as a library, administration and student-faculty building: "three diverse elements that the architects combined into a single composite structure that also serves as a gateway to this new campus."

The article described the uppermost level of the library, "with its ninety-foot clear spans" as the "spatial climax of the building and contains the library's main reading area and stacks."

A description of the Mulford Library Annex's "scale and placement fleetingly (and irreverently) suggesting an infant building in the protective custody of its mother." You may never see the annex in the same way again.

In the engineering issue of Architectural Record, mid-August 1975, the building was praised for lending "glamour to a concrete structure." There were many structural challenges to be met regarding the heavy loads placed on the clear span of the building, as well as protecting the wide glass windows on either end of the fifth floor.

These two articles present library functions that are very different from what library users experience today:

• The focus of the fifth floor reflected independent reading for learning, with print books and journals; students are now learning with online materials. Recent renovations reflect this: all study tables and carrels include electrical outlets.

• On the fourth floor, what is now a computer lab was the reserve reading room (where materials on reserve had to be used within the room).

• Architectural plans included space for the card catalog as well as index tables; library users and staff appreciate that we now have an online catalog and databases such as PubMed and Embase.

For more information about the Mulford Library anniversary, contact Jolene Miller, director of the Mulford Health Science Library, at [email protected].