News: UT Austin Fine Arts Library Renovation

The UT renovation project featured in this article appears in the April 2006 facilities showcase issue of American Libraries. View a scan of the page.

Since 1979 the Fine Arts Library has served as an important source for information on music, the visual arts, theatre and dance for the University of Texas and local communities. It now has a new look and is providing new services thanks to a collaborative initiative between the University of Texas Libraries and the College of Fine Arts.

Located in the Doty Fine Arts Building across 23rd Street from the D.K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, the renovated Fine Arts Library's main level is conceived as a collaborative learning and creative environment with moveable furniture, chairs with tablet arms for laptops, and an additional group study room. Elegant metro shades now filter the sun. The inspirational views of surrounding live oaks, Memorial Stadium and the Tower remain.

The new hardware and software for learning and creating include:

12 Mac and PC multimedia workstations with software for image manipulation, video editing and sound editing.
viewing stations for videos, DVDs, or laserdiscs.
24 Internet-accessible stations, offer access to hundreds of licensed online full-text databases, millions of pages of online scholarly journal articles, and more than 70,000 ebooks. The stations are also equipped with Microsoft Office.
40 laptops, digital cameras and CD players are available for checkout and for hands-on classes.
viewing/listening rooms with a variety of media equipment for group study.