A year-long construction project has concluded. The west wing of the David O. McKay Library on BYU-Idaho’s campus has received a full remodel.
Although construction only took about a year, the process began long before. It’s a process 15 years in the making, according to Chris Olsen, the university’s librarian.
Olsen says the library was in need of a remodel due to the changing needs of students now.
“If anybody has been in our library prior to now, it’s been really the same for the last 30-35 years,” Olsen said. “So, there hasn’t been a lot of changes, but technology has changed, students have changed, needs have changed, so we really just needed to do something to bring it up to date and make it more useable for our students.”
There are several new and updated features in the library, including group study rooms, private study space and new furniture.
“We’ve taken a lot of the 3rd floor and made that our private study space and we’ve introduced a lot of new furniture there that we hope will make students feel like they have privacy,” Olsen said. “The nice thing about our private study furniture especially is there’s electricity at every seat. A lot of the desks are nice and big so you can spread out and do a lot of things that you really couldn’t do before.”
With just a week gone by in the new fall semester, the overall response from students and others has been “really positive,” Olsen says.
“Especially if they’re familiar with what the library was before, it’s completely unrecognizable,” Olsen said. “We see wide eyes and jaws open. We’ve seen some people doing video calls with family members or friends showing them what’s changed, and to overhear some of their comments has been really, really fun.”
With the remodel of the west wing done, the project to renovate the east wing is next.
“In the east wing, it’s going to be tutoring space,” Olsen said. “Currently, we’ve got the Tutoring Center all on the second floor on the west side, but when we’re done the entire east side will be tutoring space. There will be classrooms and other things. That whole process should take just about another year; it should be ready to go for fall semester of 2026.”