Mississippi State University will expand the Mitchell Memorial Library by adding to the house of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library  on the fourth floor.  
Stephen Cunetto, systems administrator for MSU Libraries, said the 21,000 square feet expansion will be on the north east corner of the library on the Hardy Street side. 
“The new presidential library will take you through an experience where you will be able to learnabout his early life, his early career, his presidency and what he did after he was president,” Cunetto said.
Frances Coleman, dean of libraries, said the expansion will be a scholarly addition to the wealth of resources the university is already building. 
“We are really excited about it,” Coleman said. “It will assist in teaching and research and we want to bring all of this on behalf of our students.”
Cunetto said funding for the project will come from the Mississippi Legislature to the university, and construction will initiate in the May to June time frame and will take around 14-18 months to complete. 
“We don’t expect to close any services in the library,” Cunetto said. “Everything else will continue to operate as normal, but it will be a little noisier in the building. There is no way around it.” 
The expansion will have two large exhibit areas, reading room, office space and storage space for the Grant collection, according to Cunetto. 
“This will not just be a museum where you only see objects and artifacts, but a place where you can learn more about the individual and you have technology built into it,” he said.
Coleman said the exhibit will be extraordinary and prestigious. 
“We are looking at Grant as a family man, military man, as a general during the Civil War, when he was a president, statesman and when he died,” Coleman said. “All of that will be reflected on that floor.”
Coleman said teachers from throughout the state and individuals all over the United States have visited the presidential library, and this expansion will greatly enhance the traffic of visitors and opportunity for research everywhere. 
“We don’t have all of the money we need to finish this, but we will finish the building aspects of that,” Coleman said. 
According to Coleman, education is more than sitting in the classroom, and a resource such as this on campus will help everyone.
“Students should realize that this expansion is really in support of what they are learning,” Coleman said. 
Coleman said even though most people do not have as positive an image of Grant, because of this presidential library people will get to know Grant as a person and might change their perspective.
“Once you go through and see the different aspects of his life, it will give you a true picture of him and his family,” she said. 
Shengtian Wu, psychology Ph.D. student, said he spends a lot of time at the library and enjoys seeing the library expand its resources, but he would like to see the expansion of study rooms for students as well. 
“I wish the library had a 24-hour study room,” Wu said. “When I was in Iowa, there was 24-hour study room in which medical students always studied. Here they close at six, which is really early for me.”