The Richard E. Bjork Library is set to undergo a huge renovation in the upcoming months. The library will be closed down until 2026 to give way to the new Learning Commons Plans that have been in the making since 2022. To celebrate the occasion, a Library Renovation Party was held on the afternoon of Thursday, April 18 to commemorate the old library with faculty and students. Good food, Polaroid pictures, and great conversations were shared on this nostalgic day. The pictures were stored in a time capsule Stockton plans to dig out after the library renovations are complete, or pasted in a memory book where students and faculty wrote goodbyes to the library and signed their names.

The State granted Stockton over $19.5 million to perform a complete overhaul of the library. Instead of the small Learning Commons we know today, there will be large spaces for students to study together, or study quietly. The Library will consist of three floors, providing many amenities and services to Stockton’s faculty and students, including a radio station, a green room, and a TV production room, as well as new classrooms and offices. Once the library reopens, Stockton plans to hold a celebration for students, faculty, and alumni.

Dr. Marissa Levy, Interim Provost of Stockton University and a 2000 graduate, expressed great excitement about the renovations, having spent years in the library as both a student and staff member. She was especially excited for the library to facilitate tutoring between professors and students with new spaces available for private study sessions. “We can have a nice, new library for our students to enjoy [and] for our faculty to tutor— I saw a student-faculty member sitting outside with a sign and a table card for his students to meet with him; we’ll have nice library space where they can do that inside instead of at the café,” Levy remarked in her speech to the attendees.

Pat Thatcher, the Associate Provost of the Library and Learning Commons, is one of the heads of this huge project. While she is disappointed that a two-year closing of the library is necessary for the renovations, she is excited for the result. Everything will be completely redone, including the electrical and H-VAC systems, which are quite outdated. During this overhaul, library operations will be located in C/D/ Atrium, where 20,000 books will be circulating frequently, and the other 150,000 volumes will be in a special storage unit in Massachusetts, which will make the Interlibrary Loan quite popular among students. “We will still have everything we have electronically,” Thatcher reassured. For every four electronic items, the library has one physical item, so students can still access the files they need. The librarians will be located in H-Wing, but can be contacted online, and the tech and administrative staff will be in Pomona House on the edge of campus. “We will be all over the place,” Thatcher remarked. “We’re excited for the new library, but, boy, is there a lot of work.”

Thatcher and the rest of the library staff are working with National Library Relocation, the only company in the United States that moves libraries, who will arrive next week to start taking measurements in the library. “The result is going to be wonderful,” Thatcher said. “We will have a library that is zoned efficiently in terms of heating and cooling, and we will have lots of spaces for students, [which] will be open longer than the library. So the library will have what is a real Learning Commons.”

Many students were disappointed that the library won’t be done until after their graduation, but they plan to come and visit as alumni when it is finished. “I’m excited to see what happens,” Caeli Barbour, a Speech Therapy major graduating in December 2024, expressed. “It’ll be nice to see a newer space.” She and her friend, Isabelle Ewell, a Biology major graduating in the Spring of 2025, joked, “We can come back and say, ‘In our day, it didn’t look like this! It wasn’t this nice! It’s good that they’re revamping the library, because I know some of it is really old,” Ewell commented.

While there are many students happy that the library will have a new look, there was a great amount of other students who were very unhappy, not because of its closing, but because Stockton prioritized the library over other projects the campus desperately needs. Most students thought a new parking garage and Housing I renovations were much more important than the library. A parking garage or an extra parking lot is something students have asked about for years, yet the school doesn’t seem to be planning on adding new parking anytime soon. Many were very upset that the school decided on the library instead of parking. The problem has gotten to the point that many students arrive over 30 minutes late to their classes because of how long it takes to find a parking space.

Even the shuttle services are deemed unreliable by students, especially those living in the Atlantic City or Chris Gaupp apartment complexes. Isabella Trimble, a graduating Social Work student, commented, “The school should prioritize parking because we have more students that commute than students who live in. Second, they should provide more food options because most of the food here isn’t great.”

Many complained about insect and spider infestations in Housings I, IV, and V that have not been properly dealt with. One apartment in Housing V had to deal with an ant infestation in their kitchen. While they sent a work order in, it was not answered until a week later, after the ants had all died thanks to the students’ efforts to keep the ants away from their food. A student residing in Housing I was very upset that housing payments were so high while the quality of housing was so low. “It’s absolutely ridiculous that we still have bugs, leaking sinks that still leak after they ‘fix’ them, and the mold problem that has made so many of us sick.”

Housing I and the Freshman housing needs so much renovation, and they’re ignoring it,” the student said. The student felt unheard by staff, having sent work orders and complaints about the issues mentioned, but never received adequate assistance. After hearing about the $19.5 million grant given to the library, the student was outraged that the money wasn’t put towards making more comfortable and healthy spaces for students to live in. Housing I itself is very old, being the first housing built on campus in the 70s, and is often uncomfortable for students with the lack of windows, small bathrooms for multiple people, and steep stairs students have to haul their belongings up instead of a convenient elevator. Students also have to walk a long way to the laundry room if they don’t live close enough to E court, which is uncomfortable and even dangerous in stormy or cold weather.

Despite the ‘what-ifs’ surrounding how the money could have been spent, the renovations to the library are long overdue and are bound to bring promise to the future of Stockton.