The seventh floor of the Louis L. Biro Law Library is undergoing major remodeling as part of The John Marshall Law School’s overall renovation project.
When the work is completed in early April, the seventh floor will house the library and Information Technology Services (ITS) staffs.
The work is part of the law school’s ongoing remodeling efforts that will culminate with the opening of a new entrance on State Street and the consolidation of the 19 W. Jackson building
into the law school’s Loop campus.
Foreign and international law materials from the library’s seventh floor have been primarily integrated into materials on the ninth and 10th floors. The seventh floor also housed library
staff offices for the Technical Services Department and reference librarians, as well as a number of faculty offices. All of that seventh floor space has been gutted and is being redesigned into
offices.
“It will be nice to have all the library’s staff in one place,” said June Liebert, library director. “For the first time, almost all the library and ITS staff will be located together on one floor,
which will allow all of us to work in a much more collaborative and effective manner.”
ITS has been in a very tight space on the second floor for several years, so the move will give staff much needed work space. On the seventh floor, ITS will keep its “bull pen” open design, but the 12 staff members will be segmented by their assignments.
“It’s hard enough for the staff to work in this restricted environment, and when we bring in consultants or specialists, we sometimes have to set up a card table for them because we
just don’t have any space to give them,” said Jim Velco, director of ITS. “We expect we all will have some breathing room.” The Help Desk will remain on the second floor, but the rest of the ITS staff will relocate to the seventh floor space. In the renovation scheme, one completed job helps initiate another. For example, when the Business Office moved from the ninth to the 15th floor of the 321 S. Plymouth Ct. building, its ninth floor space was remodeled for faculty offices
for professors who moved from the library’s seventh floor. The ITS department’s move from the second floor of the State Street building onto the seventh floor will clear the way for the creation of a new entrance on State Street.
A row of staff offices is being created on the library's seventh floor.