Creating a First-Class Center for Theological Scholarship
 
Fuller Seminary’s new David Allan Hubbard Library will be dedicated at a grand opening celebration on May 18.  Associate Provost for Library Services David Bundy, Executive Vice President for Administration Howard Wilson, and Assistant Provost for Library Services Michael Murray worked closely together to envision, plan, and build a library that would serve the needs of the seminary and larger evangelical community for generations to come. Below, they offer comments on vision, design, and use of the new library.
 
The Vision: A Theological Library for the World
By David D. Bundy, Associate Provost for Library Services
 
David Allan Hubbard, Fuller Seminary’s eminently influential president of 30 years, was “a man of unlimited peripheral vision,” says trustee emeritus Max De Pree. Dr. Hubbard had a vision for offering excellence in theological scholarship to the world—and this new library, named in his honor, will offer resources to empower the Church of the 21st century world.
 
Fuller’s students and faculty will find this library to be a leading-edge center for their research, study, reflection, and learning. It is a place that firmly supports the traditional theological research for which Fuller has achieved international recognition. Yet it also moves into uncharted streams of new forms and traditions of Christianity.
 
The center of Christianity today has shifted to what is often called the “Two-Thirds World,” and the new Hubbard Library recognizes this—offering increasing collections that document the lives, ministries, and theologies of newer churches and traditions as well as established ones. With Fuller’s strategic location on the Pacific Rim, this is an academic center where not just Fuller’s community, but scholars and clergy from around the world will discover resources to empower them for renewal and transformation.
 
Our Asian Studies Collection, for example, offers documents from China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, many in their original languages. We hold a growing collection of books, digital media, and other items in Spanish and other languages of our neighbors. Our David du Plessis Archives is internationally known for its collections on the growing Holiness, Pentecostal, and Charismatic movements. This, of course, is all in addition to the strong biblical studies and theology collections that form the backbone of our offerings.
 
The David Allan Hubbard Library is a place where students at our seminary campuses and scholars around the world can understand themselves in the context of new Christian realities and in continuity with the great Christian evangelical traditions. As our President Richard J. Mouw has said, “it is a library of the future—that offers a way of connecting us with the global Christian community, and of connecting the global Christian community to us.” A place of unlimited peripheral vision!

Fulfilling the Vision: Excellence in Form and Function
By Howard Wilson, Executive Vice President for Administration
 
Helping us shape our vision for a theological library was William McDonough and Partners, a highly respected architectural firm. At the outset they asked us, “What were the defining characteristics of David Allan Hubbard?” He was a leader with a far-reaching vision, keen intellect, and real devotion to Fuller’s students. And those are the characteristics we have sought to embody in this new library.
 
Inspired by Dr. Hubbard’s “unlimited peripheral vision,” we designed a library that is filled with natural light. Panoramic windows and an open-air balcony offer beautiful vistas of the Pasadena cityscape and our campus mall.  
 
And the commitment of David Allan Hubbard to serious scholarship and inquiry is reflected in every component of the library’s layout and construction. The front of the building is even designed, through the use of angles and panels, to look like an open book! Much more important, of course, are the books within, and we built this library to offer a maximum of space to house Fuller’s growing collections. The Hubbard Library more than triples our previous capacity, now offering space for 1.4 million items—from our highly regarded Asian Studies Collection on the third floor to basement space that can hold up to 900,000 books in secure compact storage.
 
Finally, Dr. Hubbard was devoted to Fuller’s students, and this new library is designed for them. It is a welcoming place, with abundant places to study or meet with others. There are lounge seats with laptop tables, traditional study carrels, five conference rooms with full audio-visual capacity, and even a space designed to look like an internet café. For those who want to be outdoors, there’s both a ground floor terrace and third-floor balcony. It’s a very computer-friendly place, with an outlet at every seat in the library and wireless inside and outside. We are reaching out to students at our regional campuses as well, through new website support that enables them to increasingly access library resources digitally.
 
In form and function, the new library carries on David Allan Hubbard’s legacy well—supporting the needs of today’s students while envisioning a future of expanding outreach to the global church.

Filling a Need—Right from the Start
By Michael Murray, Assistant Provost for Library Services
 
In March 2005 the Hubbard Library Project Team held its first meeting—and nearly every single week after that, we met to coordinate the immense amount of work needed to create the new David Allan Hubbard Library. Over nearly four years, we saw the dream of this library evolve from ideas, to paper, to real bricks and mortar—or, in this case, precast and glass.
 
Most exciting to me is that, from the day the new Hubbard Library building opened in January, it has been filled with students. With some new buildings, it takes time to create awareness and increase traffic. But not so with the Hubbard Library. On that opening day and ever since, our seats and study carrels have been occupied—we’re seeing a significant increase in the numbers of individuals using the library over what we used to see. I think this is overwhelming evidence that the new library is meeting a need!
 
We have gotten great feedback from members of the Pasadena community, too. The new building is hard to miss—it’s a prominent, interesting presence on Union Street, at the south end of campus—and this is increasing awareness in the community about Fuller and what we do. We have offered tours to the general public, and on one of those tours, someone who was impressed with the library and its resources made the comment: “Wow—I want to come to school here!” What better testimony is that?