According to a list of “Silly Facts” circulating on the internet, The Main Library at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus sinks over an inch every year because, when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

Tidbits such as these are just too tantalizing not to forward onto friends. But this is actually the reason that stories like these are created and spread. As you may have guessed, the “sinking library” is an urban legend.

While the origins of this story will never be known, it falls into a class of urban legends called the “architect’s blunder,” a legend told about a specific building, bridge, or other structure. A technical oversight may lead to catastrophic problems or even drive an architect or engineer to suicide.

So, how can we be sure that this really is an urban legend? After receiving numerous queries from students, alumni, and others who read about the supposedly sinking library, Indiana University architect Robert E. Meadows issued a statement as to why this “fact” could not possibly be true.

“Five feet below the Bloomington campus is a 330-million-year old, 94-foot-thick layer of limestone,” wrote Meadows. “When the library was constructed, the upper layer of this rock was found to be harder than expected. Rather than blast, we raised the lowest level of the building a number of feet.”

So, in fact, the library actually sits a number of feet higher than the original design. And unlike urban legends where the original source of information is unlisted or unverifiable, here we have rock solid evidence to debunk this story.

If you run across engineering or architecture related stories that you think are urban legends, pass them onto us at In-Site@fisherassoc.com. We will research their validity and report any findings in an upcoming issue.

Includes reporting from The Source, a newsletter for the friends and supporters of the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries, and www.indiana.edu/~libweb/campus/libsink.html.