A New York-area community college adds new zest to its library

Libraries remain one of the typologies that colleges and universities continue to invest in avidly. And most new construction and renovation seems to focus on creating spaces where students and even faculty can collaborate.

A recent example is the $15 million, 21,000-sf expansion of LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, N.Y., which debuted May 12. This library, with more than 650,000 visitors annually, is one of the campus’s most heavily used spaces, and its expansion “is long overdue,” says the college’s president Gail O. Mellow.