Santa Rosa Junior College, March 15

SRJC sits in the Northern California wine country.  It serves about 40,000 students.  Part of the campus' unique architecture is that all of the buildings have red brick facades...even the parking structure.  It is a beautiful campus, even in the heavy rain that fell much of that day.

The Frank P. Doyle Library was completed in 2006.  My tour guides were Dean Cherry Li-Bugg and former dean, now library professor, Will Baty, and accompanied by San Jose State library science student Loretta Esparza.

Will was largely responsible for creating the Doyle Library and showed me many unique features, including...

...a tree sculpture in multiple sections on each of the building's four floors.  It was created from a large, beautiful tree that had to be removed to build the structure.  The pieces sit in approximately the place where the trunk once stood.   There are many other fine examples of artwork throughout the structure.

 These shots show a faculty resource area....

 ...tables that can adjusted to a student/faculty user's preferences...

...and an instruction area.  Why did I include a picture of a blank wall here, you ask?  What's unique is that it is made of special screen paint, designed for digital projector images.  If the surface is marred, it's simply painted over.  Much cheaper than electric screens, which can't be repaired once they're marked up.

More whimsical art...

...and shots of the interior.  This last one shows one of the rotundas on each floor (note the naming opportunities!)

 At my hosts' suggestion, I also visited the Herold Mahoney Library at SRJC's Petaluma Campus, dedicated in 2008.  They felt that its scale would be much more in tune with the size of Oxnard's new library, and they were correct.  As shown here, the Mahoney building is also beautiful, functional and filled with great artwork.  Thanks to librarians Molly Matheson and Karen Petersen for taking me around their workplace.

My hosts also suggested that I visit the very newest California community college library at Napa College.  Unfortunately, my travel schedule and heavy rain put the kibosh on that.

Thanks also to Judy Kay, Cherry's administrative assistant, for making all the arrangements.