Chronicling Cochrane's construction

19 December 2011

David Orton, Senior Library Assistant, has spent the last two years painstakingly picturing the demolition of Radnor House and the construction of the University's new flagshsip medical education centre, The Cochrane Building.

In November, David moved into Cochrane and started work at his new desk. Here, he tells Blas what it’s like working in the new building.

Introduce yourself. Hello. My name is David Cooper Orton, and since joining the University in March 2006, I have been a working at the Health (formerly Sir Herbert Duthie) Library, at the Heath campus. My primary role here is to process inter-library loans - ordering on behalf of the library's users any documents not available from library stock, and borrowing books which aren't held locally from other libraries throughout the UK, including the British Library, and the AWHILES network - All Wales Health Information & Library Extension Services.

You've pictured every stage of the demolition and construction of the Cochrane Building – tell us more?  The prosaic response would be that I was asked to by Lindsay Roberts, the Librarian here. I was already taking images of the changes taking place to the layout of the Duthie Library and placing those on a flickr site so that everyone could see how it looked, particularly occasional users or Distance Learners who wanted to see where all this great material we keep sending them is coming from.

To that extent it was a natural development to keep a visual record as Radnor House was razed to rubble, followed by the construction of the Cochrane Building on the vacated site. It's also almost a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness the building of a new library. Well - maybe twice, as I worked at the British Library during the time the "academy for secret police" at St Pancras finally emerged on Euston Road, but that was a little less easy to access.

However, the Cochrane Building is right there on my way into work each day, so a quick few snaps every so often was easy to do. And given the pace at which the structure arose, there was nearly always something new and visually interesting to capture.

Where were you based before Cochrane? How will the move change your place of work? The former Sir Herbert Duthie Library was located on the second floor of the main University Hospital of Wales building. In as much as that building is now some 40 years old and displaying signs of wear and tear, the switch from the somewhat gloomier ambience of the old location to the new purpose built, controlled environment will hopefully provide an improved working experience...although having to reign-in my tendency to allow desk-top clutter to spread laterally in all directions will take some getting used to.

What do you think will be the benefits of working in the Cochrane Building for students? The wide array of new facilities - computing areas and teaching labs, the variety of learning spaces, including those suited to quiet individual study, group work, and an area to gather socially - will all be marked improvements on what we could offer previously, given the space restrictions and layout of an area not necessarily designed for library use, and especially not the pre-computing era.

What do you think having this new building means for Cardiff University? It's a serious statement of intent, that even in these current, trying times, the University is committed to improving the facilities available for teaching on all fronts, and specifically here, healthcare.

What's the best thing about the Cochrane Building? For me personally - it's commendably closer to Heath High Level railway station.