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High-Tech Rising

PC’s, desktop Macs, and the Internet made their debut on the Cornell campus in the early 1980s, and for a while, Mann Library was able to get around the limitations of a building that wasn’t designed with this technology in mind. In 1984, Mann opened the first public computing center on the upper campus, and it quickly became one of the most heavily used facilities in the library. As information resources became increasingly digital over the next twenty years, the number of computer workstations in the building quickly grew. Creative makeshift network wiring and extension cord cabling allowed the library to accommodate growth for a time, but these quick fixes were soon inadequate. Constant worries about overloaded electrical circuitry and overheated server rooms reinforced the conclusion that Mann Library was in need of not only a new addition, but also a major rehabilitation of the original library building itself.