The library has been modernised and refurbished in a makeover costing more than £1m.

There has been a complete redesign of the building, which should have taken 12 months, but has been completed in six months.

The ground floor has undergone the most changes, and now features a cultural exchange, which has several plasma screens which will show cultural events from around the world.

Both students and staff can watch the television or read a newspaper on stylish eco-friendly furniture.

Also on the ground floor are a range of study pods in which students can study or chat in a quiet, air-conditioned plastic pod.

There is also a café on the ground floor, open from 9am-7pm weekdays and 11am-5pm on weekends. Water is available through new water fountains.

Following high student demand, 100 more PC’s are available in the library, and 100 laptops can be rented from the third floor.

To help students get the books that are most needed on their course, a key resources collection has been created on the first floor, where the books that are most in demand can be found easily.

New technology is also being used on the books as well. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) strips have been installed on all of the books which will speed up several processes.

Students can now loan books without fiddling around with barcodes by simply placing however many books they require on a RFID reader, which automatically loans the book to the student.

A similar system is in place for returning books.  The technology will also help staff to find lost or misplaced books in the library by using a hand-held scanner rather than manually searching through each shelf for the missing book.

One million books are now available online as e-books at the cost of £500,000.

Craig Hickson, head of business support, said that he was delighted with how the refurbishments have gone.  He said: “We had a choice of whether to slowly plod along with the repairs over 12 months or to try and get it done within a few months, and I think we’ve done well.”

One of the major gripes for students is noise in the silent study areas.  Electronic ears have now been installed which glow green when noise is at an acceptable level, orange when the noise becomes louder, and red when there is too much noise.

Hickson said: “We are hoping that students take notice of the ears and if they want to listen to their iPod or go for a chat, they can go into one of the many other areas where nobody will be disturbed.”

“We had some students say that they have to look at large maps and drawings or have to do groupwork, and the problem with the old library was that the tables were too small.  In the group study area on the ground floor, several tables can be moved to accommodate a large group of students.”

“We want students to create the spaces and to use them how they want to use it.  Libraries have always been about books, but they’re also about group study and interaction, and we hope that students will flourish here.  It’s a blank canvas for students, and the measure of it is how they are going to use it.”

All students are to be given feedback cards in help the library make any improvements.  The library are also looking for feedback and are running a competition on their Facebook page, which can be found by searching for “My New UCLan Library” on the site.