Hannaford Donates $50,000 for University Library

Hannaford Bros. Co., the food retailer which operates a chain of supermarkets in the eastern U.S., has donated $50,000 to the University at Albany to purchase equipment for the University�s Science and Technology Library now under construction.

University President Karen R. Hitchcock said the Hannaford gift represents a �vote of confidence� in the library, which is the first new academic building to go up on the University�s main campus since it opened 30 years ago.

�Construction of this facility would not be possible without new partnerships between the University and our colleagues both in the private sector and in government,� she said. �We are extremely grateful for the support of the Hannaford Charitable Foundation.�

Ronald C. Hodge, Hannaford�s senior vice president, Northeast Operations, said that Hannaford has a strong commitment to the communities where it does business. �The University at Albany is an important part of this community, for many of our customers and our associates, and that is why we are happy to support the University through its Science and Technology Library,� Hodge said.

Hannaford Bros. Co., based in Scarborough, Maine, operates 140 supermarkets and food and drug combination stores in New York, northern New England, Virginia and North and South Carolina. Hannaford has 22,000 employees and a regional distribution center in Schodack Landing, near Albany. In the Capital Region its stores recently changed their operating name from Shop �N Save to Hannaford.

The five-story, $22 million Science and Technology Library will provide on-site and remote access to books, journals, catalogs, reference sources, dissertations, government documents, newspapers and a host of other media available in digital format and accessible via telecommunications networks. Albany students, faculty and off-campus residents of the region will be able to use its resources.

To date, the state Legislature has granted $22 million toward the project. The University is seeking an additional $3 million from the private sector to equip and outfit the building, which is scheduled to be completed in 1999. The Hannaford gift is the first of its size toward that goal.

Meredith Butler, dean and director of University Libraries, said, �We are planning a state-of-the-art electronic library. These funds will help us to buy the equipment we need to provide electronic access for students, faculty and community users.�

Demands for electronic resources, computer laboratories and networking capabilities throughout the building, multimedia electronic classrooms, digital imaging capabilities and fully wired group study facilities make the Science and Technology Library an expensive building to construct and maintain, Butler said. �The Hannaford grant takes us a major step closer to our goals,� she added.