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Date: Sun 21-Nov-1991 21:32:40 From: clarinews@clarinet.com (WILLIAM M. REILLY) Subject: High-tech science and business center proposed NEW YORK (UPI) -- An $80 million high-tech science and business information center for the New York Public Library was announced Thursday for the now empty but still landmark B. Altman Department Store. The Science, Industry and Business Library, called SIBL, will merge collections in Midtown Manhattan from the Central Research Library and the N.Y. Public Library at West 43rd Street. Construction of the approximately 200,000-square-foot center was expected to start in the middle of next year and be completed in 1995. Some 680,000 square feet, or more than three quarters of the Italian Rennaisance-style landmark, was to be taken up by the design industry's New York Resource Center. Timothy Healy, president of the N.Y. Public Library, said, ``For many years, we have been dreaming of uniting the library's great science and business collections and finding a new home for them that would do two things -- increase access through new services and use advanced technology.'' Healy spoke at a celebrity-studded ceremony on the vacant department's store main floor, in the shadow of escalators and empty display cases. ``He are about to embark on the largest project we've undertaken since the building of the Central Research Library at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue nearly a century ago,'' he said, adding that SIBL will promote and create intellectual capital, which he called the city's greatest resource. ``Through telecommunications technology, SIBL will become a library without walls,'' extending access to users in the branch libraries and corporations, in classrooms, libraries, and businesses throughout the city, the region and even the nation. Marshal Rose, chairman of the library's board of trustees, said that over the last decade, the main library was crammed with ``all the electronic information tools it can handle.'' ``People need what SIBL has to offer,'' he said. ``They need a library built for the 21st Century (in) a location close enough to the flagships of the Branch and Research Libraries to form a sort of urban campus.'' Mayor David Dinkins said SIBL surely would be ``one of the richest jewels in our cultural crown.'' ``Not only will it pour millions of dollars into our economy today, it will pour billions of dollars worth of knowledge into the minds of New Yorkers tomorrow,'' said Dinkins in expressing his appreciation to Gov. Mario Cuomo for the state's assistance. The project is being funded in various degrees, according to officials, by the city, state, and federal governments, as well as by corporate and personal donations. A long-time major benefactor of the library, octogenarian Brooks Astor, sat in the front row of spectators. Gov. Mario Cuomo, again decrying the state of the economy and the need for jobs, said SIBL could only help the region in increasing jobs and therefore the availability of information in the information capital of the world. ``Nothing can stop you from making it here, the greatest place in the world,'' he said. ``This is where the information is,'' he said. ``Most of the big brains are here.'' -------------------------------End of Article-------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ernesto F. B. Pena | "Volite magis, Facite magis, Estote magis" University of Illinois at UC | Want more, Do more, BE more! pena@sumter.cso.uiuc.edu | erno@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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