UPEI launches $15-million “love our library” fundraising campaign to revitalize Robertson Library
The University of Prince Edward Island launched a $15-million fundraising campaign to revitalize the Robertson Library on Friday, April 26, as part of “Good News Week at UPEI.”
Private sector donors have already contributed $600,000 to the campaign, including two $100,000 leadership gifts, one from Grant Thornton and the other from the UPEI Alumni Association.
“The revitalization of the Robertson Library is truly a transformative project—one that will influence our students, faculty, and community members for years to come,” said Dr. Greg Keefe, interim president and vice-chancellor of UPEI. “Through the generous support of these and other donors, our library will become a more inclusive space that facilitates learning, teaching, and research, and welcomes and supports all learners.”
Opened in 1975, the Robertson Library has served the campus community, the province, and a world-wide community of users for almost 50 years. Today, with access to over 1.6 million unique books, 130,000 journals, and 100,000 streaming media, the library connects the campus to a world of information. As well as providing essential resources and study spaces to students and researchers, it offers information literacy skills training and unique learning opportunities, and provides support for Open Education Resources (OER), reducing barriers to learning and making education more affordable.
Funds raised during the campaign will be used to support teaching and learning by upgrading existing group and individual study spaces and renovating former storage space to create new study areas.
“In 2020, we worked with the UPEI Student Union to conduct a student survey about space within the library,” said University Librarian Donald Moses. “Over 700 students responded, identifying key needs such as renovating and expanding group and individual study room options, ensuring that there are quiet spaces that can be managed by the user, and improving and enhancing teaching and learning spaces within the library.”
Moses said that students also highlighted the need for spaces that are accessible, energy efficient, and sustainable and that have comfortable furniture, natural light, and amenities like electrical outlets.
“Students are invested in the library,” he said. “They come to study either individually or in groups, and they also come for socialization and respite. They want spaces that work for them and that they can control to meet their needs. The library is a second home for many students.”
Dr. Edward MacDonald, professor of history, has had a soft spot in his heart for the library since he was a student at UPEI in the 1970s.
“The library is at the very heart of a university’s educational and research mission, the one institution on campus that serves everyone: faculty, students, staff, researchers, the general public,” he said. “The excellence of a university is closely tied to the excellence of its library’s resources and staffing. As UPEI grows, the library, too, needs to grow. I can’t think of a more appropriate way to support UPEI than by helping make an excellent library even better.”
Housed within the Robertson Library is the Prince Edward Island (PEI) collection, which includes many historical documents and artifacts that are invaluable to students, researchers, and scholars. Funds raised will be used to expand and enhance the space where the collection is stored in ways that will improve the preservation and sharing of the province’s shared published heritage.
The PEI Collection has been essential to Bailey Clark’s experience at UPEI—first during his time as an undergraduate history honours student and now as a Master of Arts in Island Studies graduate student.
“Over this time, the PEI Collection has been indispensable,” he said. “Through the collection’s in-person and digital resources, I have accessed government documents, published materials including community histories, and Island newspapers—all of which have been central building blocks of historical arguments that I have made in my scholarly work. Many pieces of the Island’s documentary history are rare, so the collection fulfills a vital role in collecting, preserving, and making available these resources for scholars of the Island. I wholeheartedly support any initiative to give the collection more capacity to support research into the Island’s history.”
Donations to the Robertson Library revitalization project at all levels are welcome. To donate, please visit upei.ca/loveourlibrary. Anyone interested in supporting UPEI initiatives may contact Myrtle Jenkins-Smith, Executive Director, Department of Development and Alumni Engagement, at 902-626-8551 or mjenkinssmith@upei.ca.
