The collection includes the copper time capsule and the published materials that composed its contents, which were sealed inside the 1969 Central Michigan University Park Library building cornerstone until they were extracted during the 1999-2001 building renovation. These publications mainly document the history of the Park, Mr. Charles V. Park, for whom the library building is named, sources of the library’s collection development activities, CMU courses, CMU President William B. Boyd, student protests against the Vietnam War, both on campus and nationally, international relations, and President Richard M. Nixon. Except for the newspapers, which are quite acidic, the collection is in very good condition. Materials are organized by size and format, alphabetically and chronologically. Published items in the collection are under copyright.
Researchers may be interested in other Clarke collections documenting the CMU Libraries, President William Boyd, Mr. Park, and student protests against the Vietnam War.
Organizational History:
Prior to the Park being built CMU’s library was housed in “Old Main” from 1893 until 1925, when the building burned to the ground. Reconstructed and newly purchased collections then moved to the east wing of Warriner Hall, then called the Administration Building, which was quickly outgrown. In February 1956 the Park and Clarke libraries moved to Ronan Hall. Due to expanding numbers of students and collections, CMU decided to build a new library which opened in 1969 at a cost of $4.2 million, partly funded by a federal grant. The library was named for Charles Park, who came to Central as head librarian in 1931 after being an assistant librarian at Stanford for fifteen years. Construction and reconstruction of the Park library began on April 21, 1999 with a groundbreaking ceremony. The cost of the re/construction was $50,000,000. In the new building, usable floor space expanded from 130,000 square feet to over 205,000 square feet. During the 1999-2001 renovation and expansion of the library, the copper time capsule and its contents was extracted from the cornerstone. The lid was removed and lost. The renovated structure included 2,500 network connections and over four hundred computer workstations. Storage space for volumes expanded from 550,000 to 1,300,000 volumes. New electronic moving shelves balanced efficient use of space with ease of use. The architects for the expansion were URS, Inc., and Woollen Molzan and Partners. During construction, Library personnel and collections were temporarily housed in Finch Fieldhouse, Rose 143, and parts of the Park Library during the construction. The new library opened in January 2002 and was formally dedicated in April 2002. Revisions to the Park Library began in spring 2016. The major focus of the renovations will be that part of second floor will become a “learning commons” area and reorganization of space due to the vastly decreased need to house physical volumes, especially periodicals in the digital age. (This information is from a compilation of Clarke webpages re: CMU library buildings, and memories of Archivist M. Matyn re the time capsule.)
