Books and Ladders

Spring 2025
Tracey Rhoades

Despite housing 1,260,790 items, one-third of Fondren Library’s collection, the Library Service Center isn’t your typical library. There isn’t a head librarian, tables or reading carrels, but there are sky-high shelves of “book equivalents,” including videos, maps, rare model airplanes, NASA memorabilia, thousands of boxes of historical information and Fondren’s vinyl record collection.

Opened in 2003, the LSC is located just 5.2 miles from Rice’s campus. Its contemporary, utilitarian design doesn’t mimic on-campus buildings but boasts a flat roof and unique shade of green on the exterior. “The color was chosen out of five other colors by the Rice Board of Trustees who wanted a nontraditional Rice look for the building,” says James Springer, the center’s manager. Springer, who didn’t have a library background but did have extensive inventory control experience and forklift certification, possessed important skills to bring the facility online. In fact, in its first few years, the center’s staff processed 2,000 to 3,000 items each day. While the influx has slowed a bit, Springer and his staff pull and process 200 to 300 books a day, transporting items back and forth to Fondren.

“Before we opened, 60,000 books were stored in Rice Stadium,” he says, “something that had been going on since the 1980s.” To better protect and prolong the life of treasured Rice material, the 13,000-square-foot building with 40-foot tilt-up concrete walls (once the largest in Texas) is maintained at 50 degrees Fahrenheit and 30% humidity, extending the life of print materials by 275 years. If power is lost, the insulated walls of the structure can maintain temperatures and humidity for several days — not a bad place to spend a couple hundred years.