A STRONG CALL on the Government to face the issue of funding for university libraries has been made by the chairman of the University of Limerick's governing body, John A Daly.

He was speaking recently at the"topping out" ceremony for the newest building on the UL campus, the £14 million library and information services building. He said such funding was essential if Ireland was to keep up with world standards.

"We are going to have a superb library building, but are we going to have a superb library?" Daly asked.

That figure of £14 million relates purely to the building, and not to equipping it with books, computers or furniture.

The State is providing £7 million, and £7 million is being given from private resources through the University of Limerick Foundation.

More than £6 million of the private money has already been raised, mostly in the US. The largest donation has come, perhaps predictably, from the chairman of the University of Limerick Foundation, Lewis L Glucksman, and his wife Loretta Brennan Glucksman, who, as her name suggests, has Irish roots. The building is being named after the couple.

In addition, a fundraising campaign by the University of Limerick Friends has already raised over £250,000 locally.

"It looks as if the building will be opened debt free," the UL president, Dr Edward Walsh, said at the ceremony.

The Minister for Health, Michael Noonan TD, who put the ceremonial finishing touch on the building, remarked that the Government liked dealing with UL's president because it knew his projects would come in on time and within budget.

The building will provide 1,100 study places in the first phase. One hundred of these will be equipped with personal computers or possibly network computers, and the other thousand places will be fully wired up so that students can use their own laptop or network computers.

According to Patrick Kelly, UL's director of information systems and services and the university librarian, this is going to be a library of the future, with an integrated set of services.

Specialist librarians, and computer, telecommunication and audiovisual experts will all be brought together in the new building to generate a service that will be independent of the source of the information, whether it be an old manuscript, a paper based journal, a CD ROM or a sophisticated on line database, Kelly explains.

The new building, which was designed by architects Murray O'Laoire and built by John Sisk, has an unusual shape, with parallel fingers stretching out from the core to provide lots of fresh air and natural light.