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Visions of Excellence
Campaign Launch

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Campus Campaign

Groundbreaking
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In January 2006, at a convocation on campus, Iona President James A. Liguori, CFC announced, “The time has come for a face-lift for the entrance of Ryan Library. A building expansion is also needed in order to keep pace with the research and study needs of our students and the faculty.” To that end, a new $10 million campaign, Visions of Excellence, was launched.

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A live view of Ryan Library

Iona College is seeking to expand and renovate Ryan Library, a 56-year-old 60,000 sq. ft. building that houses the majority of Iona’s electronic and print resources. In addition to renovating the existing Georgian Colonial structure, Iona proposes to build a two-story, 14,000 sq. ft. addition. Once completed, the library will house an expanded print collection, a multimedia seminar room, an enlarged reading room, six group meeting rooms, increased individual study space, a technology resource center and a two-story atrium to welcome and provide direction for visitors.

These changes will benefit members of the Iona community and be available to the surrounding residential and business community, as well as other academic institutions.

In addition to providing much needed shelf and individual study space, major changes must be made in the library’s infrastructure to support student and faculty learning in an era characterized by the growth of electronic media and the advent of computer-assisted learning.

The days when libraries were seen as warehouses for books are long gone. Increasingly, librarians are called upon to teach students how to access, filter and evaluate the information that is so readily available.

To do this, libraries must be centers that showcase emerging information retrieval, storage and presentation technologies. They must also provide meeting space to facilitate discussion and team-centered learning.

Implicit in our planning for the Ryan Library upgrade are the following assumptions:

We believe that libraries are more than just repositories for books. They are vital community institutions that help facilitate the dissemination of ideas, information and culture.

We believe that libraries are gathering places where groups of people come together to share insights and learn from each other. Talking and collaboration should be encouraged.

We believe that libraries play a unique and important role in helping people to access and evaluate information. This is especially important in the age of do-it-yourself publishing.

We believe that libraries should showcase the best of current technology and make a special effort to market their services to those who have not previously had access to state-of-the-art resources.

We believe that reliance on electronic media will grow and that computer-assisted learning will profoundly change current research and teaching methods.