Halvorsen Library’s Fourth Floor Closes for a Year-Long Renovation

The fourth floor of Halvorsen Library closed Monday for a renovation scheduled to last about a year. When it reopens in spring 2026, the floor’s closed stacks will have been replaced by 14 bookable group-study rooms, a quiet reading room where talking is not allowed, and a small gallery for student and faculty work.

The fourth floor has held lightly used print collections since the library opened. Library staff checked circulation records for the floor and found that fewer than 1 percent of last year’s checkouts came from it. During finals week, meanwhile, every group room on the other three floors was booked solid by 8 a.m.

About 112,000 volumes will move to a shared regional storage facility used by several Wesconsin libraries. Anything stored there can still be requested through the catalog and will arrive at the circulation desk within two business days. Faculty can ask for chapter scans instead, which usually arrive within a day. Titles that the library is the only Wesconsin holder of will stay on campus in compact shelving on the lower level.

“Nobody is throwing books away. We are moving the books nobody has opened since 2009 to a place where they are perfectly safe and two days away, and giving the space to the students who are sitting on the floor of the second-floor hallway because there is nowhere else to work.”

— Dr. Peder Moen, Dean of Libraries

What to expect while the floor is closed:

• The fourth-floor stairwell doors will be locked, and the elevator will skip the floor.
• Six temporary group rooms will open in Founders Union, rooms 210–215, bookable through the library’s room system.
• Construction noise is limited to before 10 a.m. and after 10 p.m. during the fall semester, and to normal hours during breaks.
• Interlibrary loan and storage requests continue as usual through interlibrary loan.

The project costs $2.3 million. It is paid for by the state’s campus maintenance program and a gift from the family of a 1968 graduate, who asked that the quiet room be “actually quiet.” Library staff say they intend to enforce that.

Services, hours and room booking are on the library services page.

Contact: Office of University Communications, news@uwporterfalls.edu