COLUMBIA -- It has 90 computer access stations, some of them outdoors. It has eight group study rooms and a half-dozen faculty offices. It has two floors and 10 skylights. It has elegance and charm.

The new, 20,000-square-foot Columbia College Library has everything except books -- and they're on their way from the library across the campus.

Everything is on schedule to open the facility -- and this is a public library, not just for college students -- by the time fall classes start on Sept. 2. A grand opening is scheduled Oct. 8, time to be announced.

Larry Steuben, the college librarian for 27 years, can't wait.

"It's breathtaking," Steuben raved Wednesday before leading a tour through his new digs. "Simply breathtaking."

The $8.1 million library got its funding from California's Proposition 1A, a $9.2 billion campus-improvement bond measure voters passed in 1998. Construction started 18 months ago on the library, the first new building on campus since the domed Oak Pavilion gymnasium took shape in 1992.

And the library is a sorely needed new building. Between 3,000 and 4,000 students attend Columbia College, and publicist Doug Lau said the current library was built to serve an enrollment of about 1,500.

Steuben added that apart from being too small, the current facility is "blatantly illegal" for its lack of handicapped access. Besides taking care of that problem, the new library has room for about 50 percent more books.

"And I don't care if this is the computer age," Steuben said. "Students want books."