The new library at the U. of Toronto at Mississauga, clad in an unusual wood veneer, is a warm and inviting place, unlike its predecessor. (Photos by Ben Rahn, A-Frame Inc.)

A couple of weeks ago, I went up to Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo, Ontario, to give a speech at a conference focusing on campus-library design. Naturally, the conference featured speakers from all over Canada who came to talk about the dazzling new libraries that they had built to replace not-so-dazzling buildings that had frustrated and frightened off librarians and patrons.

One such project was the new library at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, a suburban campus of the Canadian flagship university. Mississauga’s old library was so awful that the head librarian, Mary Ann Mavrinac, actually considered turning down the job she was offered there in 2001.

“I told my spouse, ‘I can’t see myself there,’” she says. “It was like a dungeon.” The building was running out of space for both people and materials. Two floors were completely inaccessible to people with disabilities.

But a new library was in the campus’s master plan. Ms. Mavrinac wanted a building that put an emphasis on “people space over collections space.” After some planning and pushing — and $34-million — the new, 108,000-square-foot building opened in June 2007. It was designed by Andrew Frontini of Shore, Tilbe, Irwin & Partners.

Ms. Mavrinac says the building is “modern, but it’s warm.” The unusual cladding on the building may add to that warmth: It’s called Prodema, a resin-impregnated wood veneer, layered over a high-density phenolic core, made from knot-free African trees. The cladding is made by a Spanish company, and Ms. Mavrinac says it seems to be holding up to Ontario winters.

While tours for prospective faculty members would routinely skip the old library, the new one has turned into a beacon for both professors and students the university hopes to draw.

After opening, Ms. Mavrinac said that one of the primary challenges was noise. The building attracts around 7,500 visitors a day, on a campus with about 10,000 students. (Last Monday, the building drew 9,900 visitors.) With all of those people occupying the building, “we had to be more specific about demarcation between quiet study areas,” Ms. Mavrinac says.

The librarians and architects decided to hang acoustical panels between columns in one space; Ms. Mavrinac says they had to balance the goals of cutting down on noise and maintaining the open environment. Among the problems one has to deal with after occupying a building, a space that’s perhaps too popular is not a bad one to have. —Scott Carlson