On Sept. 10 the local community gathered for the 15th Anniversary of the Jean and Charles Schulz Information Center. This event commemorates a special moment for Sonoma State as they are celebrating 15 years of support for student learning, research, information, student scholarships and grants.
The birthday party was open for the public to attend and celebrate the memories of the Jean and Schulz Information Center. There were three speakers to commemorate the library. University Library Marketing and Communications Specialist Victoria Billings, University Library Dean Karen Schneider and lastly Sonoma State president, Ruben Arminana. There were six activities for all ages that ranged from drawing a comic, decorating water bottles, spinning a prize wheel, playing trivia games and taking a picture with Snoopy. The library team was happy to see the turnout of nearly four hundred people from the Sonoma community.
Over the last 15 years the library has been on campus, it has transformed with time, being able to adapt to technology and student learning. “This is a very special occasion for the fifteenth anniversary of the building, one of the things we want to stress,” said Billings. “This building was designed in the 1990’s and completed at a time when most people did not have WiFi. We are really moving into a new phase of the building, because the education and university have altered so much over the last fifteen years, that this is a dawn of a new era for our library.” She was happy to be able show the Sonoma State community what the library had to offer for the special occasion.
Schneider was thrilled to able speak at this event. “This was fabulous. I just love to see the library full of people, the library staff did an amazing job getting people here and putting on this event,” she said. “It is an outstanding function. I love that it is filled with former alumni, past donors and student body board members. We have a lot of history in this room right now.” Schneider was ecstatic to see everyone that had contributed to making this library what is today, in one room together.
Schneider believes this is a monumental step for the library. “Opening this library fifteen years ago was a very big deal, it is a really different sort of library,” she said. “We have over 600,000 walk-ins per year and our main service is not the books on the shelves, but rather the students in these seats. We are already looking at the next 15 years, and how we can better service students with futher data, more electricity, stronger WiFi and extra study rooms. I feel the turnout here is inductive, and people here care about the library and personally want it to continue to grow.”
This was a special moment for president Arminana. Throughout his presidency at Sonoma State he has had a vision to create a library as the centerpiece of campus. “It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary which has been the seminal building that has been able to transform this university. This is the heart of what a campus should be, the library is a repository of knowledge where people come to learn and expand their intelligence,” said Arminana.
With President Arminana retiring after this year, he was asked what direction he believes the library will go in his absence from campus. He said, “It will continue to be ever changing as the world of knowledge continues to alter greater technology. We will publish more interesting books and people will relate to that knowledge in different ways then back when I was a student. That is what this library is configured to adapt to, changes that will come.”
As the world’s technology changes, the Jean and Charles Schulz Information Center will continue to adapt in the future.
