VIDEO: MUW’s Fant Memorial Library’s Makeover Is Complete

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – The revamped library is the most important academic building on the Mississippi University for Women campus.

Once all of the technology gets installed, it will be the smartest building on campus.

Campus leaders want the state of the art library to be a place where students want to be, come to collaborate, and study.

The Fant Memorial Library is now a place where students can pick up a book, work on projects, and even get a caffeine pick me up.

“It has a coffee shop. It has terrific furniture for studying. It’s got space for collaborations on class projects and group projects. It’s got a multi-purpose meeting room here. It was designed to be the hub of activity, both academic and co-curricular on the campus,” says Mississippi University for Women President, Dr. Jim Borsig.

The library showcases what learning looks like in the 21st century.

“Today’s kids have grown up with a Barnes & Noble experience, where they’re drinking coffee and they’re relaxing and they’ve got comfortable chairs, and so we wanted to create that kind of space here,” says  Mississippi University for Women Senior Vice President for Administration and  Chief Financial Officer, Nora Miller.

Miller has been a part of the decade long planning process from day one.

More space, meeting the needs of today’s students, and positioning the university for the future, are some reasons behind the library’s makeover.

“We were almost to the point where we were retro. It was almost what we had, was almost cool again, but not quite, you know? So, it was very important to all of our academic programs to have a library that they could be proud of and that their students would want to be in.”

All of the resources MUW students need are now right at their fingertips.

Student Aron Bowers says the library brings bragging rights for students, especially since they have a two-story automated storage and retrieval system named Athena, that’s one of a kind in the state.

“Students are in here all of the time you know, just hanging out, talking. Study rooms, which is a huge benefit, because it’s hard to find a place where you can go with a group of people and have an outlet in the center of the table and hang out and study and not be bothered.”

The last phase of the library project took place over the past year and a half.

The library never closed its door during reconstruction.