1969 The campus benefits from the construction of a new and more efficient library.
 The accreditation committees in 1964 and 1968 emphasized the inadequacy of the existing library building, for while it was an important achievement in 1950, it was small and poorly designed for library operations or for student use. DeLong and Finch had planned on an addition to the building, which would have been a minimal improvement. Brown, however, agreed with his librarians that starting over was the best course. As part of the CEPP process and under the initial guidance of librarians Elizabeth Hall, and then Esther Schandorff, the library staff, developed a planning statement in 1966 that included ideas for a different kind library, one that would help students find and use books. The college hired Dr. Stanley McElderry as a consultant. Rejecting the ideas of a "reading room" and "vaults" for stacks, the librarians proposed freestanding stacks intermingled with study tables. A series of small study rooms lined one side of the building, and the reference desk was positioned for easy use. The administration worked closely and sympathetically with the library planners who wanted the building to include a faculty lounge. When completed, the new library became a center of the campus for the faculty as well as for the students.
Financing such a building was an impossible task in an era of austerity and deficit reduction. Total outside funding was the only answer. The college applied to the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare and won a grant of over $300,000 for one-third of the cost if the college could raise the other two-thirds. In another show of support, the district superintendents, pastors, and churches responded and pledged nearly $700,000 for the project.
The completed building was more than a spacious and modern library. It was a visible symbol of a new beginning. It faced north, toward the areas of future campus expansion, visibly symbolizing the presence of vision and energy. The architecture with its exterior arches, which Brown refused to eliminate in cost-cutting sessions, was a repudiation of the corporate functionalism of the early stucco buildings and the vault like feeling of the early library as a thickly protected depository of knowledge. This new building, with its beauty and reflection of the past and present, symbolized the liberal arts heritage as well as the future of the college.
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