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Press Release
July 11, 2003
Work Begins on Top Three Floors of USM's Portland Campus Library
Thanks to funds donated by friends, alumni and businesses, work began Monday, July 7, to complete USM's Albert Brenner Glickman Family Library in Portland. The top three floors of the seven-story building have remained unfinished since the library's opening in the fall of 1993. Completion of the top three floors will add 26,500 square feet of additional space to the current 36,000. Construction will be completed in April of 2004.
The project, which cost over $3.3 million, was made possible through the fund raising conducted during the "21st Century Campaign for Excellence" that ended late 2002. The Campaign raised more than $22 million provide endowed scholarships, build the capacity of academic programs, expand instructional technology, and complete the top three floors of the Glickman Library.
Suzi Osher of Portland, a lifelong Maine resident, donated the final pledge of $500,000 to the library in memory of her husband, Alfred, allowing work to begin. The library's top floor will be named the Alfred and Suzi Osher University Pavilion, and will house the UnumProvident Great Reading Room and the University Room for Special Events. Her gift will provide Thomas Moser furniture for the UnumProvident Great Reading Room, as well as for the Mildred Brenner Glickman Special Collection Area on the sixth floor. The Special Collection Area will contain the collections of the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity and the Bernard and Shirley Kazon Collection, and provide exhibition space for the collections. The fifth floor will hold an Information Literacy Center--a state-of-the-art computer facility for training in the access of electronic information--group study rooms, and a cafŽ.
The architectural firm of SMRT of Portland and Sarasota, Fla., designed the top three floors. SMRT was founded in 1883 by architect John Calvin Stevens. Lead architect for this project is Scott Benson. He will be assisted by library building consultant, Jay Lucker, former director of libraries at MIT who has designed library projects at MIT, Princeton, and other universities. Wright-Ryan Construction Inc. of Portland won the bid for the construction.
The 1919 building, originally a commercial bakery, began its transformation into a university library with a $3.9 million construction budget funded by a publicly approved bond in 1988. USM bought the building in 1990. JSA, Inc. of Portsmouth, N.H., was the architectural firm that designed the award-winning Kalwall paneled exterior, and first four floors containing book stacks, advanced fiber optic computer technology, reference materials, periodicals, archives and office and conference areas.
The first floor of the Glickman Library also houses USM's Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, which opened in 1994. The cartographic collections were formed from the major gifts of Harold L. and Peggy L. Osher and the late Lawrence M.C. and Eleanor Houston Smith. The collections date back to 1475 and are considered among the finest historical cartographic collections.
In October of 1997, the Portland Campus Library was renamed the Albert Brenner Glickman Family Library in recognition of the donation of $1 million by Albert B. and Judith L. Glickman of Cape Elizabeth for completion of the library and expansion of library holdings.
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