Howard-Tilton Memorial Library Build-back and Hazard Mitigation Project: Loud Work Has Ceased for the Study and Exam Period

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Loud Work Has Ceased for the Study and Exam Period

Rules laid out in the construction plans prohibit disruptive work onsite during study and exam periods. This effectively means that all construction work within the lower floors of the building has now been halted, officially between the dates of Friday, Dec. 4 and Tuesday Dec. 15. Loud activity within the new 5th and 6th floors above has been shut down as well.

A small crew from a library shelving company has been completing its installation of the last remaining book shelves to go in on the upper floors, in this case located in a small section of the southeast corner of the new 5th floor. The crew is not using power tools and the work is not considered equivalent to construction activity or noticeable on the floors below. However, the work will be stopped too by Tulane’s department of Capital Projects & Real Estate (CPREG) if it at any point its determined to be disruptive.

Once the construction work resumes after the study and exam period ends, only a few more weeks of work is expected before the construction project is officially declared by inspectors to be "substantially complete," with only minor punch list items remaining. The goal is to allow the library to move collections and staff into the new upper spaces in time to open them for the upcoming spring 2016 semester.

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Project Purpose

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library is located on the uptown campus of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 its lowest level filled with more than eight feet of water, which caused severe damage to the building while submerging its basement collections. The nearby Joseph M. Jones Memorial Building (Jones Hall), which houses the library’s Special Collections division, sustained major flood damage also, in the lowest level of its library stacks core.

Flooded in the Howard-Tilton building were its music library and very large collections of government documents, newspapers, and microforms. Other areas destroyed included a large area of overflow shelving for general collections and two areas for closed collections storage: one for books waiting for special cataloging and for art and photography titles requiring a secure location; the other for older science materials. Much of the shelving in the basement of the Howard-Tilton building was compact or high-density shelving that accommodated a maximum number of shelves within the spaces used for them. In Jones Hall the flooded stacks core area was packed with closely arranged shelves that housed rare collections.

In the Howard-Tilton building alone more than 700,000 books and recordings were submerged underwater, as were nearly 1.5 million individual pieces of microform. In Jones Hall another 700,000 or so manuscript folders and other archival items were also flooded. The remarkable collections salvage, recovery, and rebuilding effort that followed can be seen as part of an overall library recovery that this next stage of building remediation--a 5th and 6th floor addition atop the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library--will help to complete.

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library Build-back and Hazard Mitigation Project

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Loud Work Has Ceased for the Study and Exam Period

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Project Information

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