Meeting rooms, refinished stone and wood work, cherry columns and lots of open space -that’s what the Faculty Senate saw on its tour of the soon-to-be completed Booth Library.

Senate members were impressed with what they saw Tuesday and their compliments started as they entered the original north door of the library.

“Wow,” Chair Bud Fischer, biological sciences professor, remarked as the senate viewed the building’s main foyer, which features touched-up original stone work and refinished original wood trim.

“I forgot what a great space this is,” senate member John Best, psychology professor, said while standing in the building’s north entrance, which unlike in the past will be an open room and will not host a large service desk.

The removal of the center desk goes along with what Allen Lanham, Library Services dean, said is an attempt to create a thorough fair, in order to make the building flow from one end to the other.

The strategy is somewhat of a contradiction to the old library which was almost two separate buildings, with the first section being built in 1950 and the second section added in 1968.

To achieve such open space, many of the libraries old walls had to be torn down. While the walls could be removed, many support columns could not. So those columns have been buttressed by cherry wood panels.

Many other aesthetic features of the original library will remain intact, such as the windows, stone and wood work. However, the buildings layout has been changed completely to create more open spaces, additional meeting rooms for both students and faculty and more employee offices.

The new atrium features a mix of the old and the new. It connects all four floors of the library in one location for the first time with a grand staircase. The atrium has also brought out part of the library’s original facade which had been covered over by the 1968 addition.

“We do think this atrium will bring light to the center of the building,” Lanham said.

Students will be able to experience that light on Jan. 7, the first day of classes next semester. While the opening date remains on schedule, Lanham said students and faculty won’t be the library’s only visitors for the buildings first month or two of operation. Some sections of the library may be closed as workers finish projects and move library materials.

However, all completed sections will be open and Lanham said the library will use its Web site to inform the campus of the status on projects still ongoing after the library’s opening.