Maag Library's 30th birthday Dec. 6

YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown State University’s William F. Maag Jr. Library, named for the late editor and publisher of The Vindicator, will mark its 30th birthday with a celebration from 2 to 4 p.m. Dec. 6 in the library’s lobby.

A display chronicling the library’s history, prizes and a birthday cake are planned as a way to celebrate the library’s three decades on campus.

“I don’t think he [Maag Jr.] would recognize the place,” said Paul Kobulnicky, executive director of the library, referring to students using cell phones while typing on a computer keyboard, then taking a break in the coffee house on the third floor.

“The library was always a place to access knowledge, for people to study and to work to better themselves,” Kobulnicky said. “The construction of this library 30 years ago was state of the art in size and architecture. For the Youngstown area, it was a big deal.”

The history of YSU’s library dates to the start of the college in 1908, when the library was a reading area in the YMCA law school in downtown Youngstown. In 1931, the new Main Building, later known as Jones Hall, opened on the corner of Lincoln and Wick avenues. The library occupied one room on the main floor.

When the collection outgrew the space, the library moved to the building’s fourth-floor attic. In 1953, after extensive fundraising, the library moved to a new facility in what is now Tod Hall, where it remained until the $6.64 million, six-floor Maag Library opened in 1976.

Constructed on the site of the old East Hall, the 150,000-square-foot library was in some ways the crowning jewel of a campus building boom that started with YSU’s becoming a public university in 1967. The new library had space for 485,000 volumes and seating for 1,600 students.

Today, although the personal computer and Internet have transformed libraries, Maag Library remains an important part of the campus, Kobulnicky said.

“Information is a large part of learning. Information is a large part of scholarship. Information is a large part of living,” he said. “How that information is accessed has changed since Maag opened. But, information remains at the focus of everything we do.”