Meg Kulikowski’21

November 22, 2024

Future Facing

After a $10 million renovation, Morse Library opened for business this fall. The library is decked out in new lighting, carpeting, furniture, windows, heating and cooling, roofing — you name it, it’s probably been touched by the capable architects at Angus-Young Associates. Students have been interacting with the space for a few months and have already started to make it feel more like home.

Morse Library, Now

Photos by Ted Johnson.

A view of the renovated second floor of the library from the third floor.

A view from above. Floor-to-ceiling windows along with a lighter color palette and updated LED lighting combine to brighten spaces, making them more inviting.

Professor Sylvia López with her students in a new library classroom.

Teaching and Learning. Professor Sylvia López is with her students in a new library classroom. López is also the director of Community Connections for Impact Beloit, the program whose new home is next to the library entrance on the lower level.

A student navigates ADA-accessible stacks.

Walking the walk. Improving the library's accessibility was a priority. The entire building is ADA-accessible, with shorter shelves and wider aisles in the stacks, as well as smooth concrete walkways to every public-facing entrance.

Students sitting with each other in the Impact Beloit area of the library.

Booths are back. LITS staff asked students for help with features they wanted in the new space, resulting in booth seating, which is popular at Hamiltons. Study spaces as well as cozy reading nooks can still be found throughout the library.

A student studies alone in a booth table.

Students study together in booth tables.

Morse Library, Then

Photos from the Beloit College Archives.

Students in the Beloit College Carnegie Library, now the World Affairs Center.

A college legacy. The first college library was located on the third floor of its oldest building, Middle College. Professor Joseph Emerson served as the first librarian and his tenure lasted nearly 50 years, until 1895. To expand its growing collection, the library moved to Memorial Hall (now part of the Logan Museum) in the late 1860s, and then in the 1890s to the Carnegie Library (above), now the World Affairs Center, where it remained until Morse Library was built.

Students reading in the original 1960s iteration of the Morse Library.

A groovey new library. Complete with floor plants, mid-century modern couches, and its signature wall of windows, the first iteration of Morse Library was completed in 1961.

Jim Wetzel and Chris Nelson talking at the Morse Library information desk in 1990.

Its flower-power reference desk sign directed visitors to library staff, including Jim Wetzel and Chris Nelson, in 1990, a year before its ‘90s renovation.

Students studying in the third iteration of the Morse Library done in the 1990s.

Decor galore. In 1991, mushroom lamps, a “putting green” carpet, chunky furniture, large computer CD-ROM and laptop workstations, and concrete ceiling details were some of the “modern” updates. Now, the workstations are gone, but the widely beloved carpet remains on the top floor.
Credit: Greg Anderson

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Future Facing

Morse Library, Now

Morse Library, Then

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