A public open house will take place Thursday, Aug. 28 from 1 p.m. until 3 p.m. at the 295,000-square-foot, five-story Knowledge Center, located just south of the Joe Crowley Student Union. Guests are invited to take a self-guided tour of the facility.

As part of the self-guided tour, attendees will have the opportunity to explore the Knowledge Center’s features floor-by-floor. Areas on display will include the 170-seat Wells Fargo Auditorium, the Nevada Writer’s Hall of Fame, the Carol Franc Buck Sculpture Garden, @One, Basque Studies and Special Collections. Additionally, there will be a time-lapse video highlighting the construction of the Knowledge Center playing in the auditorium. A demonstration video will also be on display outside of the entrance to MARS to give guests a sense of how it works.

Entertainment will be provided by local band “No Comprende” in the Atrium.

Knowledge Center staff will be available to answer questions and provide additional information to guests.

The Knowledge Center goes far beyond the traditional library role of housing information. Twice the size of the former Getchell Library, it will allow the campus community to generate new information and transform it into new innovation.

“The new Knowledge Center is the physical manifestation of the convergence of technology and the written word,” University President Milton Glick said. “I believe that of all the library-type structures built in the last 20 years in the country, this one becomes the exemplar.”

Features of the Knowledge Center include: more than one million volumes of books and published journals; more than 20,000 electronic journals and books; research databases; spacious reading rooms and quiet study-areas; computing and data works laboratories with large format printing; wireless network and computer access throughout; smart classrooms and conference rooms; a full-service rotunda coffee shop; outdoor seating on a covered porch; art gallery and sculpture garden; 170-seat auditorium; the Book Nook—which sells used books, magazines and CDs—the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame; University Archives; Special Collections; Center for Basque Studies; and the Life and Health Sciences Library.

The Building is named in recognition of a combined $10 million gift from Charles and Ann Mathewson and International Game Technology (IGT). Private donations account for more than $22 million of the $75 million facility. Remaining funding came from bonds and the State of Nevada. It is the University of Nevada, Reno’s most ambitious construction project in history. It is poised to be the intellectual nexus of the region.

The design of the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center was the result of a collaboration between the architectural firms of Hershenow + Klippenstein Architects in Reno (Architect of Record) and Dekker/Perich/Sabatini in Albuquerque, New Mexico (Associate Architect).

This collaboration allowed the strengths of each firm to contribute value in both service and design expertise to the University and create a unique, dynamic facility which will anchor the north campus for years to come.