by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
If you are a University of Florida law school alumnus, you might want to prepare yourself for a shock the next time you take a “Memory Lane” stroll through campus.
The cramped law library you and your colleagues cursed at and spent three years of your life studying in is gone.
The good news is that the old library has been replaced with the Lawton Chiles Legal Information Center, a stunning $25 million state-of-the-art facility that now makes UF home to the largest law library in the Southeast.
“We have gone from a library at the bottom rung to a library within the top 20 nationwide,” said Patrick Shannon, UF’s associate dean of administrative affairs.
Shannon said he couldn’t be more pleased with the new 100,000 square-foot library and the opportunities it will afford the law school.
“We haven’t yet had a returning student walk in and not say ‘Wow!’” said Shannon.
Though its multiple technological amenities, thousands of new books and truly grand architecture give the library a certain ‘Wow’ factor, Shannon said the new law center was built out of pure necessity. Besides the fact that the library was old and getting older, Shannon said the American Bar Association was threatening to pull the law school’s accreditation due to the shrinking student-to-library floor space ratio.
A far cry from its previous 39,000 square-foot space, the new renovations have boosted the library’s maximum capacity from 700 students to more than 1,300.
“Law students spend multiple hours a day in the library preparing for their courses. Before, we had no adequate space for them. Now, we have exceptional space,” said Shannon.
If not just for the magnitude of the new library, students should be pleased with the convenience of not having to travel off campus to study. During the library’s 22-month construction period, a temporary library was set up at an empty Publix grocery store at Butler Plaza.
Landscaping for the building is still underway but it should be completed by the building’s Sept. 9 dedication, said Shannon, who is working on plans to have Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor attend the ceremony.