Transforming an old building usually produces loud noise and dust, two archenemies of libraries and their guardians.

But Kornelia Tancheva, the University of Pittsburgh’s new library system director, was unruffled when the sound of drilling pierced the quiet of her office on Hillman’s third floor. Ms. Tancheva continued explaining the need to update the 50-year-old building, which cost $12 million and was designed to hold 1.2 million volumes.

“Students are asked to do multimedia presentations with podcasts, video and movies,” she said. Right now, the library isn’t set up for that. It’s also outdated in other ways, from its appearance to the numbers and kinds of materials it’s equipped to hold.

In May, Ms. Tancheva assumed the duties of Hillman university librarian and director. Since then, she has met for 30 minuteswith each of the 168 people who work in the university’s vast library system, including archivists and staff on regional campuses.

But much of her immediate responsibilities involve the overhaul of Hillman, a square, five-story structure at Forbes Avenue and Schenley Drive used by faculty, students and staff on Pitt’s Oakland campus. It was named for industrialist John Hartwell Hillman Jr., who died in 1959. He was the father of Henry Hillman, the billionaire philanthropist who died in April.

A year ago this month, workers began replacing outdated heating and air conditioning systems, a project that evolved into a full-scale renovation. In June, trustees authorized spending $29 million on other mechanical systems and the library’s fourth floor and basement. The project’s total cost will range between $60 million to $100 million, depending on whether the library’s Schenley Drive entrance is altered or stays within its current footprint.

When it was dedicated in 1968, Hillman Library stood next to Forbes Field, the late home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Building a quiet library for research and study next to a boisterous ballpark crowd posed challenges.

That’s one reason the library’s Schenley Drive side looks like a fortress, said Owen J. Cooks, Pitt’s assistant vice chancellor for planning, design and construction. The goal was to create a buffer between sports fans and people who were studying at the library. But that hasn’t been an issue for a long time; Forbes Field was demolished in 1970.

“We have challenged our architects as to how we can soften that edge and make a more welcoming side to the Hillman Library. It no longer needs to serve as this buffer between the ballpark and the library,” Mr. Cooks said.

Anne Chen, a principal at the Pittsburgh office of GBBN, an architectural firm, said the renovated library will “feel more like a place for people, as opposed to a place for books where people are secondary.”

Currently, the library lacks “a real great sensibility of what spaces are for collaborative work and what spaces are there for quiet work. You need multiple types of spaces,” Ms. Chen said.

The older model of learning — in classrooms with 100 students facing forward — is outdated, she added.

“The newer model is one where you have a multiplicity of teaching resources. Students are working together with one other person or four or five other people. It’s a method that can enhance the learning process. There will be spaces for closed collaborative study or project rooms,” Ms. Chen said. There also will be spots for faculty members to write books and livelier places for students to study together.

The library will remain open while work continues, floor by floor, over the next five years. During that time, as many as 2.7 million books may have to be stored at Pitt’s Archives Service Center on Thomas Boulevard in North Point Breeze.

That’s why construction of a prefabricated metal structure to store additional volumes is underway northeast of the Archives Service Center. That facility is slated for completion in May. If a book is not immediately available at Hillman, users can request it and it will be delivered within a day.

Some improvements already have been implemented.

To help students, faculty and staff find the librarian who can best help them, a rack on the building’s ground floor holds flyers. Each flyer shows a librarian’s picture, describes his or her areas of expertise and provides contact information. The flyers were suggested by Kiana Jones, a diversity fellow.

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Before coming to Pittsburgh, Ms. Tancheva worked for 20 years in Cornell University’s library system in Ithaca, N.Y. The 55-year-old academic, who lives in Squirrel Hill, grew up in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.

Besides her native Bulgarian and English, Ms. Tancheva is fluent in Russian. She also reads German, French and Spanish. A hiker and gardener, she likes to read fiction on an electronic device but does her research on paper.

When she was a university student, she said, “You had to have permission from your professor to go into the library.”

Today, she said, Hillman must “be a node in the global network of knowledge” and an “information commons,’’ where undergraduates can work in teams while doing original research.

There are, Ms. Tancheva said, “lots of calls for active learning. Sitting and reading a book is not ‘active learning.’ At least this is the prevailing view,” she said, adding that “parents want to know their children can get jobs.”

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Hillman already has a studio where students can produce multimedia presentations. But the library, Ms. Tancheva said, needs additional spaces to inspire active learning and teamwork. The building holds 15 glass-enclosed rooms with three desks and a screen. When the renovation concludes, as many as 100 of these spaces may be built.

Display space in the library will increase so that people can see special collection exhibits after 5 p.m. The building will have a much larger and better equipped classroom, and this space will have a movable wall.

Pitt professors assign projects that require students to make use of the library’s special collections, which holds rare books, maps and original hand-colored prints by John James Audubon, an artist, explorer and naturalist who documented the birds of America.

But Ms. Tancheva hopes students will make use of Pitt’s archives, which hold the papers of organ transplant pioneer Thomas Starzl and of Peter Jannetta, a neurosurgeon who invented a procedure to combat trigeminal neuralgia. The archives also include the papers of Kuntu Repertory Theater, founded by Vernell A. Lillie, and those of Pittsburgh composer and pianist Erroll Garner, whose best-known song is the jazz standard “Misty.”

Marylynne Pitz: mpitz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1648 or on Twitter: @mpitzpg

First Published: November 26, 2017, 5:00 a.m.