During my campus tour on the third day of New Student Orientation, I was curious why the Orientation Advisors were so quick to impart the idea that Lauinger Library (Lau) is ugly onto new first-years. As I explored the library later that night, I found that I didn’t care about Lau’s brutalist exterior; I was more concerned about whether it was an environment where I could concentrate on my work. I’ve come to understand that when we overemphasize Lau’s exterior, we overlook its true role: to create an atmosphere for learning and working. Once we move past its appearance to the purpose it serves, we can focus on how it can be improved.
Since its inauguration on April 6, 1970, Lau was meant to foster learning and work towards learning by including study spaces. With 1500 seats, Lau was built to be, in the words of then-University President Gerald Campbell, S.J., “an important avenue of access to the general reservoir of ideas…the scholars’ workshop.” But between fiscal years 2022 and 2023 alone, visits to both Lauinger and Blommer libraries increased by 11.8% to 806,000 visits a year, straining the libraries’ facilities and thus demanding their, especially Lau’s, modernization. To look into this possibility, I met with Harriette Hemmasi, dean of the library, and Beth Marhanka, head of outreach and engagement, to discuss existing plans to renovate Lau.
Dean Hemmasi was very enthusiastic about “reimagining” Lau and its role on campus, by learning from our experiences and concerns. While the library staff can look at studies or try to guess what we students need from our libraries, the most useful information comes directly from students, who can reach out to the library through the official feedback portal or via the Student Library Council (SLC). The latter is an official committee selected through an application process and acts as an official messenger of student feedback and ideas. Both Dean Hemmasi and Marhanka emphasized how much they value student input from all sources (Marhanka described the SLC as “brutally honest”), and how receptive they are to it.
As I write this, I understand those who might be thinking that the currently planned renovations won’t address or change Lau’s “ugly” brutalism. They have a point: we’re stuck with the library’s architecture.
However, this narrow focus limits how we think about improving Lau. Instead, we could contemplate how the library might provide services beyond its traditional role. Marhanka described how a student interested in high-quality photographs for their class asked if the library could acquire DSLR cameras (which cost $600). Presented with this request to help students learn, the library was able to procure several cameras, which Marhanka says now see hundreds of checkouts per year.
By shifting our focus to the interior of Lau, we can think about other valuable changes we want to see. In my meeting, I asked about how we can increase the workspace for undergraduate students on the fourth and fifth floors, since they frequently become cramped with an influx of students. In response, Dean Hammasi shared their solution: Moving more books off-site and replace their stacks with a modern workspace, since the demand for physical books is low. According to Marhanka, only about 42,000 of the 2.3 million books in Georgetown’s collection were checked out last year.
These renovations have already begun, with preliminary work for expanding the Pierce Reading Room on the third floor underway. The Reading Room will be closed for the entirety of 2025 to be completely redone. While this might be inconvenient, the renovations show library staff and administrators are aware of our challenges and are willing to address them.
We should get involved with the library and give meaningful critiques of its failures as a workspace instead of fixating on Lau’s “ugly” exterior. Personally, I’ve found the chairs in the quiet study areas to be very creaky and very distracting when trying to lock in. But more importantly: What do you need to work in Lau? More space, better organization, moving things around? If there’s a way that the library can make your experience better, you should tell them — they are all ears.
Thomas Hampton is a first-year in the School of Foreign Service.