Meyer Library, many students’ favorite 24-hour study area and home to seemingly endless numbers of computers for the past 41 years, will be gone by 2012, according to University and library administrators.

The new seismic standards imposed after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake were one of many problems plaguing the library. According to Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ‘82, the University has been upgrading existing buildings that do not meet the new standards, of which Meyer is one such structure.

The cost of renovating the four-floor library, however, created another decision for the provost: upgrade Meyer or replace it?

“When we received estimates of the cost of bringing Meyer up to modern seismic standards, the cost was over $40 million, and the needed changes would make the building even less attractive than it is today,” Etchemendy wrote in an email to The Daily. “Because of this, I decided that instead of spending a huge amount of money upgrading the building, we should demolish it and build a smaller, replacement library for approximately the same cost.”

While plans for the Meyer project remain in their preliminary stages, the building’s eventual fate has already been decided.

“Meyer Library is essentially doomed,” said Andrew Herkovic, director of communications and development of libraries. “The building has not aged very gracefully, it needs millions of dollars worth of seismic upgrades and it’s not cost-effective to keep it in the long term. It’s also, in my opinion, an eyesore.”

A second reason for the library’s demolition is its violation of previous plans for campus layout.

“The original campus master plan wanted that area to be a corridor, not a building,” Herkovic said. “Today it is very much in the way of traffic, and it also stands out oddly as a building larger than those around it. Architecturally, that’s considered a defect.”

According to Herkovic, Meyer will be demolished within five years, and its smaller replacement will be south of the current location. The new downsized building, however, will be unable to house the same resources that Meyer current accommodates.

“The replacement building will house the ‘people’ functions that are currently in Meyer, including the Academic Computing and student study space,” Etchemendy wrote, “but it will not be a book storage facility.”

Meyer currently stores more than 520,000 books as part of the East Asia Library (EAL). Those books, along with those in the Green Library stacks located underneath Meyer, will need to be relocated.

“The EAL selectors and public service staff and a portion of the EAL collection will be relocated to Green Library, resulting in the displacement of some Green Library collections,” wrote University Librarian Michael Keller in a public letter. “Those displaced collections, as well as the majority of the EAL collection, will continue to be available, but will be stored offsite at the Stanford Auxiliary Library 3 (SAL3) in Livermore and available through a paging service.”

The University cannot construct a new building to house displaced books because of restrictions imposed by the Santa Clara County General Use Permit (GUP), which is an agreement on how much Stanford can expand its physical footprint on the property it owns.

“The GUP is very political and has many complex details, not unrelated to the area’s traffic burden,” Herkovic said. “Even if we had all the money in the world, we could not use it to build infinitely. In fact we can hardly build at all. It’s sort of a no-win situation.”

The limitations imposed by the GUP raise the question of whether it will be books or people that are relocated.

“In effect, for every 75 square feet we build to house books on campus, we have to move another person to an off-campus location,” Etchemendy wrote. “I would rather move rarely-used books and bring them to campus when they’re requested than move more staff or faculty off campus.”

“The library stacks are essentially sacrificial lambs to the general campus needs,” Herkovic added.

Meyer staff not moved to the replacement building on campus, however, will have to be relocated to Stanford North Campus in Redwood City, according to Keller — a prospect that raised concern among third-floor Meyer employees.

“We know that space is a premium on campus,” said Laura Cameron, head of binding and finishing. “The hope is that the new locations will provide the same type of academic experience that we have now, but there is a fear that once we move, that will go away.

“The move to Redwood City is a big step for a lot of people,” she added, “especially those who have been here for 20 or 30 years. All of a sudden it’s like, ‘Here, welcome to another city.’”

Cameron also said that supervisors are taking staff comments into consideration.

The most contentious aspect of the Meyer project, however, is the break-up of the EAL and the dispersion of its resources between Green Library and SAL3.

“We are all very upset about this,” said an EAL librarian who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for his job security. “How can the University continue to support East Asian studies if they close the library down? You’ll have to depend on cataloguing, but sometimes it’s so crappy that you can’t find anything.

“I feel somewhat distressed that the head of our library is not making a great enough stand for this collection,” added the librarian, referring to the EAL’s collection of Chinese, Japanese and Korean texts.

With Meyer’s replacement in the preliminary stages, library administrators and the Faculty Senate will hold a town-hall meeting on Nov. 28 to initiate what Keller calls a “consultative process.”

The meeting will be held in Room 290 of the Law School from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m.; seating is limited to the first 186 persons.