At Age 20, Kellogg Library Keeps Reinventing Itself to Serve Students

At Age 20, Kellogg Library Keeps Reinventing Itself to Serve Students

By Brian Hiro

Kellogg Library is abuzz with activity throughout most school days. The library averages more than one million visits annually. Photo by Miguel Mota

Brick-and-mortar libraries were dying. So went the conventional wisdom around the turn of millennium, when the rise of the internet and all forms of digital technology threatened to make dusty tomes and the fortresses that housed them obsolete.

Someone must have forgotten to pass that memo to the dozens of people who were eagerly waiting for Kellogg Library to open its doors for the first time on the morning of Jan. 20, 2004. The five-story structure, the largest in the California State University system at that stage, had been anticipated at Cal State San Marcos almost since its founding 15 years earlier, and here it was - finally a reality, a testament to the bold vision and ambition of a young university.

Judith Downie, a former CSUSM student who by then was the first alumnus of the university to become tenure-track faculty (as a humanities librarian), was one of several library employees who were greeting visitors on that day.

"We unlocked the doors," Downie recalled, "and it was like a tidal wave of students who came in to explore this new space just for them."

The opening of Kellogg Library fundamentally shifted the focal point of the campus, which for more than a decade had been the area around University Commons and the Administrative Building (then Craven Hall). It also marked a significant departure from other university libraries and particularly those in the CSU system, many of which had been built in the early-to-mid 20^th century and thus felt like relics from bygone generations.

"We have the enormous benefit of having entered the modern era of university libraries with Kellogg," said Char Booth, the library's interim co-dean for administration and advancement. "That was a really important time. It was a time of reckoning with what academic libraries were going to become, a lot of talk about e-books - are libraries necessary, are they even important anymore? And what you see is that absolutely they are, and we built a building that embodies how important this resource can be to a learning community, a student community."

At 200,000 square feet, Kellogg remains one of the biggest libraries in the 23-campus CSU system. But it's no fortress. Unlike many of its peers, which can feel dark and forbidding, it's veritably bathed in natural light and boasts impressive vistas of the surrounding landscape from its multiple balconies and patios. And unlike many of its peers, it largely eschews long, intimidating stacks of books in favor of open and dedicated spaces designed for student collaboration.

Across its five floors, Kellogg features 1,443 seats that can be used for studying. To facilitate the numerous collective projects at CSUSM, the library has 43 group study rooms with a combined capacity of 289 seats, and that doesn't include the intimate Reading Room, a fifth-floor events venue that doubles as a study nook.

Kellogg has shown a capacity to evolve with the times. Two years ago, in response to student needs, library leadership undertook a construction job in which the original computer stations near the third-floor entrance were replaced by a new area called the Hybrid Learning Lab, a partnership with Instructional and Information Technology Services (IITS) that includes individual study pods, group study spaces, an upgraded computer lab, Zoom rooms and comfortable furniture.

"There are nap pods, there are fold-out chairs," Booth said. "You can plug in, or you can use group seating for collaborating. … If you're tired, we want you to be able to take a nap. If you're hungry, we want you to be able to get a snack from the satellite food pantry (on the second floor) that we've worked with the Cougar Pantry to create."

This spring marked the debut of The Makery, a makerspace that reimagined a second-floor area that formerly housed media services. That low-fi addition to the library - featuring sewing machines, a craft printer, a button maker and myriad other supplies for arts and crafts - joined an existing high-tech one in Inspiration Studios, with its video, photography and audio production services.

"These are good, recent reflections of how we really want students to make this library their own and find ways to express themselves and consider this building a home," Booth said.

During the infancy of CSUSM, it was the library that was searching for a home, or at least one with some degree of permanence. Like the rest of the new institution, it originated as part of so-called Cal State Jerome's, the university that was born next to a furniture store in a strip mall off Highway 78.

There were only two library employees in that founding year of 1989: interim director, and future dean, Marion Reid (whose husband, Brooks, was a founding faculty member) and the first person she hired, Cathie Dorsett. They worked in concert with Bonnie Biggs, then the librarian of San Diego State's North County campus and an eventual associate dean of CSUSM's library.

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The library, such as it was, occupied two ends of a building - with public services, magazines and two CD-ROM stations on one side and the humble book collection and staff offices on the other. It was a different era, to be sure.

"My first day, I remember Marion said, 'This is your cubicle, and there's a computer,' " Dorsett said. "I had never touched a computer. I was terrified. And she said, 'And there's already some email for you.' I was like, 'What's email?' "

By 1991, SDSU North County was gone and the CSUSM library had grown to 15 employees. One of them was Downie, who was hired as a student assistant on the first day of orientation.

"They put me in charge of delivering media equipment, like TVs and VCRs, on a cart," Downie said. "We did what we had to do to provide students and faculty with what they needed."

CSUSM shifted its operations from the strip mall location to the hillside campus gradually, as new edifices were completed. Among the final units to make the move was the library, in the spring of 1993. It took over parts of the third and fourth floors of the Administrative Building, with the entrance from the Tukwut Courtyard.

The library's new footprint was substantially larger, but the digs were far from ideal. Reid remembers that the space didn't have lights at the beginning, so employees had to leave work as soon as it got dark outside. And even when the lighting came, it wasn't suitable for a library because the room had been designed to contain a TV recording studio.

"The walls were dark, and the ceiling was a black, acoustic-type ceiling," Downie said. "The day we opened up, a student walked in, looked around and said, 'What's with the cocktail lightning?' There were sections of the stacks where you basically felt like you had to have a flashlight to read."

The problems didn't stop there. There weren't enough computers or chairs to keep up with demand. There were only four study rooms initially, and all four had to be converted into faculty offices. There were, for some reason known only to 1990s design aesthetics, double-decker study carrels.

By the middle of the decade, it was clear that the library had outgrown its two floors in the admin building. But where could it go? This was a period when no less an authority than Barry Munitz, then-chancellor of the CSU system, was saying CSUSM didn't need a library because - does this sound familiar? - all books were going to be electronic.

Into this uncertainty stepped the couple for whom the library would be named. W. Keith Kellogg II was the grandson of the cereal magnate, and he and his wife Jean eventually settled in Rancho Santa Fe and began directing some of their philanthropy toward CSUSM. In 1996, the Kelloggs donated $1 million to the university, then the largest gift in its history, to kick-start a project to construct a standalone library. They ultimately gave $1.5 million for the library, securing naming rights in the process, and also established an endowment that continues to fund library renovations to the present.

The groundbreaking took place in 2001, and the final price tag for Kellogg Library was $48 million. About six weeks after the doors opened to students, a grand opening ceremony was held on March 5, 2004, attended by new CSUSM President Karen Haynes (in her first semester on the job), U.S. Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham (one year before he went to prison on bribery charges) and, of course, the Kelloggs. Reid spoke at the event while wearing clothes reminiscent of early-1900s England.

"It was fun, a physical symbol of the importance of libraries," Reid said of her outfit. "The message was: Look how far we've come and how advanced libraries always have tried to be. This isn't a new thing."

Reid worked closely with the architecture firm Carrier Johnson on nearly aspect of the library's design and construction, particularly the interior.

"It was hours and hours and hours of time. But we had to do it," she said. "Somebody had to speak for the people who were going to use the space."

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Kellogg Library opened with 35 total employees, and though the structure was new, the staff had long since begun to think of themselves as family. In at least one case, the dynamic became literal.

Dorsett had a son named Ryan in 1992, and he was 12 years old when Kellogg was born. Ryan doesn't remember spending much time there - like many teenagers, he was a devotee of video games - but he valued his mother's profession and, if nothing else, he gained an appreciation for the library through osmosis.

He enrolled at CSUSM in 2010 and, with Cathie's help, immediately started working for the library as a student assistant. He stayed on for his five years of undergraduate education, then returned as a full-time employee in 2018. Last year, two years after his mom's retirement, he transitioned from working in media reserves to becoming coordinator of The Makery.

"Some of the staff have known me since I was a baby. A lot of those relationships have carried on into the present, and it has made certain areas of the library feel really special to me," Ryan Dorsett said. "I know that there are people here who I can go to and rely on now that my mom is retired. They are my other library moms.

"For me, this place is like an extension of home. It's been a huge part of my life, in more ways than I can express."

The Dorsett legacy in the library means just as much to Cathie.

"Talk about full circle," she said. "I worked here before he was even a twinkle in my eye, and to have him coming in, I was so excited. It felt so right, and I knew he would love it, and he did and he does. It was one of my proudest moments to have my son here and watch him grow and make his own way."

As Kellogg Library marks its 20^th anniversary - a celebrationwill take place Thursday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Kellogg Plaza - it's preparing to begin its next chapter with a new leader, as a permanent dean could be announced by the end of the year. Whoever is hired will inherit a strategic planthat will guide the library for the proceeding five years.

A big part of the plan involves further rethinking of the building's space. The Makery breathed fresh life into the second floor this spring, as the Hybrid Learning Lab had done for the third floor in 2022. The library has been raising money for its next signature project, a planned 8,200-square-foot renovationon the fifth floor that would expand and enliven the area dedicated to the Special Collections Department, currently located on the first floor, well beyond public view.

The library, however, wants to solicit feedback from the campus community about other ways that the upper two floors could be made over. Booth envisions, for instance, a family study room that would allow student parents to do their classwork while their children play with toys or games. And Booth would like to devote more space to highlighting student art and complement the existing art in Kellogg such as the twice-annual Context Exhibit Seriesand the striking mural by Jessica Sabogalthat greets students in the stairwell.

"One thing we hear is that we likely don't need to devote quite as much of our floor plan to storing books," Booth said. "As our electronic resources grow, we can imagine different possibilities for those floors that could be larger areas for collaboration, more technology-rich spaces."

From its humble origins in a strip mall, the CSUSM library has long been and remains the beating heart of campus. There's a reason why Kellogg averages a million visitors per year, and it goes far beyond students cramming for their finals.

Reid recalls giving a tour of the library to a former CSUSM provost who had been involved in the planning but left the university before construction was complete.

"What he said afterward was that this building makes his heart sing," said Reid, who retired in 2009. "I think about that a lot. My husband and I live in San Marcos, and it's nice for us still to be able to look up on the hill and see it. I can't imagine it being any other way than it is -the building, the community, the family."

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Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

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