Robarts Library is the main humanities and social sciences library of the University of Toronto. Opened in 1973, it is currently the largest book repository in Canada with 9.6 million items. Robarts Library is the heart of the University of Toronto library system, which is the third largest academic library system in North America, after that of Harvard and Yale. As of April, 2005, the library system as a whole held 10.3 million bookform items, 5.3 million microform items, and 1.8 million other items in its collections. Of these, 4.8 million bookform items, 4.1 million microform items, and 740 thousand other items were housed in Robarts Library.

On February 28, 2008, the Toronto Star and the University of Toronto announced that Robarts would be receiving a significant upgrade. The plans include 2,752 new study spaces and a new outdoor amphitheatre-like area. Some of the concrete walls will be replaced with glass to allow sunlight into the stacks on the 9th-13th floors. No completion date was included in the articles.

Naming

The library is named after former Ontario Premier John Robarts. The library has also acquired many informal nicknames including The Barts, Robes, Fort Barts, Fort Book, Jail, the Bunker, Hotel Robarts, Robots, the Toilet, the Death Star, Rofarts and the Turkey. Some of these names refer to its blocky shape which renders a rather stoic appearance.

Architecture

The library's main building is a large brutalist/futurist concrete structure which to some people looks like a giant peacock when viewed from the south (see top picture) with the small tower in front representing the peacock's neck and beak, while the library stacks in the background are thought to look like its extended tail. It has also been speculated that the unusual shape of the building might be a reference to the dragon slain by Saint George, given the library's location on St. George Street.

Its design was conceived in the 1960s by Toronto architects Mathers and Haldenby, in collaboration with the New York architecture firm Warner Burns Toan & Lunde, who specialized in precast concrete buildings. Construction of the 14-story library was completed in 1973. The structure boundary forms an equilateral triangle. Each side of the triangle is 330 feet long or the length of a Canadian football field. It can accommodate 4,000 persons at any given time.

Uses

The library was initially intended for use by graduate students only, but following an illegal student occupation of the building, undergraduate students were also granted access. The library's initial design was for a mechanical book conveyor belt system to allow for faster collection by library staff, who would then send books downstairs for pickup. After Robarts was opened to all students, the conveyor system was discarded, although the tracks used by the conveyor system are still visible above the shelves.

Robarts Library is home to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, which contains a priceless collection of manuscripts and first editions.

It is also the home of Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library, which holds a collections of over 380,000 volumes of materials in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and of the Old English Dictionary Project.

In addition to a rich collection of texts, "Robarts" (as the University of Toronto community calls it) contains several other useful services for students. 24-hour quiet reading rooms are open when the university is in session, with the exception of weekends. As well, the Information Commons, a large bank of computers connected to the Internet on the first floor, allows all University of Toronto students access to computers, printers, scanners, and audiovisual equipment. Additionally, the university's Accessibility Services and its test/exam site are located in this floor.

A book-scanning centre on the seventh floor is the University's contribution to the Internet Archive's text digitization project.

In television and literature

The library was featured in the episode, The One Where Joey Speaks French, of the popular television series Friends. Robarts Library is shown briefly during a scene transition and is implied to be the outdoor view of an unknown New York hospital where actress Jennifer Aniston's character Rachel visits her father, who has just suffered a heart attack.

The library was also shown in an episode of Sliders, called "El Sid." It is shown briefly as a still visual after a commercial break, in an episode where the story takes place in an alternate San Francisco that has become a giant prison.

It was also seen during a slide transition during the season finale of The Amazing Race 8: Family Edition. The Bransen Family were running past it after finishing a Detour (a game task) at the nearby Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.

Most interestingly, it is thought to be the model for the secret library in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Eco spent much of the time writing the novel at the University of Toronto, and the stairwell of the secret library bears a particularly strong resemblance to that in Robarts.

References

External links

• Robarts Library at the University of Toronto