Halfway along the road from library to learning commons

As the new students at Bishop’s University settle into their first full week of classes and start to get to know their surroundings, some of them are no doubt taking the first of many future trips that standby of academic life: the school library. This year, however, the library is not looking the way people familiar with the school might expect.
Identified as the next big priority in the school’s ongoing battle with crumbling infrastructure, the John Bassett Memorial Library is in the middle of a massive transformation that began last year and is expected to continue through next summer. By the time the work is finished, the building will have changed from an often crowded and sometimes inefficient library with a tendency to show its age into a polished, modern “learning commons,” at a cost of roughly $17 million, if all goes according to plan.