Basement Reborn for Storage

If you have not been in the library recently, you will not recognize this picture. It was taken looking into the old basement from the double doors at the base of the old library steps. The view of the dark grey basement full of books is now a clean white hallway with good lighting in a bright ceiling. (The construction materials piled in the middle are now in storage.) These new walls now divide the lower level into two storage room, the east one for the library and the west one for general campus storage. At the far end of this hall, there is a double door on each side.

If you walk in the door on the right, you are in the east storage room looking down the wall where the biography and fiction used to be shelved. There are no shelves on the walls now. The ceiling tiles are gone and the old lights are suspended from the ceiling in an arrangement that actually gives better illumination than the room ever had before.

On Monday and Wednesday this week, a crew of volunteers headed by Dave Bertsche took down the gold shelving in the reading room and reconstructed it in this room, the east end of the former lower book stacks. Dave was assisted by Owen Hess, Lew Naylor and Bill Swartzentruber. On Wednesday afternoon, the crew helped Craig Neufeld load carts of back periodicals from the old lower stacks, roll them into the new building, down the elevator (We love the elevator!) and into this room. Lois Longenecker arranged the volumes on the shelves. The goal is to have the more frequently used back periodicals on the main floor and the lesser used volumes in the lower level. Library staff will retrieve volumes as needed. The remainder of this move will be completed early next week.

Thursday morning, the work crew brought two trailer loads of all the remaining gold shelving pieces from the barn where it has been in storage since about 1990. The just emptied reading room has now become a place to sort pieces of shelving, to decide what to keep, what to give away and what to send for metal recycling. On Saturday, some volunteers from the Butler Public Library near Fort Wayne will come to take the black shelving from the conference Room.

Bob Yoder from DJ Construction is putting finishing touches on door hardware in the new library. Frank is deconstructing the stairwell in the north hallway up to the Conference Room in order to install the new lift. They have moved their tool boxes into the northwest corner of the old library reading room. On the left you can see the railing from the top of the stairsto the Conference Room. It is in the foreground of the lower picture, the area where the Reference Collection was located just a couple days ago. What happened to all the wooden shelving? Read the next post to find out.

Minor Moves - Back Periodicals and Videos

The next deadline the library staff faces is to prepare the lower periodical stacks for the installation of a wheelchair lift that will make the Conference Room handicap accessible. This lift will be installed off the north hallway in the area where Barb Nelson Gingerich's office is located, just outside the Conference Room. Barb will soon be moving into the former bookstore sales area in the south wing. DJ Construction is installing a window in that room in preparation for Barb's relocation.

The library's highest priority is to clear out the back periodical stacks so that DJ workers can begin demolition around the stairwell. On Thursday, Lois Longenecker and student Craig Neufeld shifted the remaining back periodical volumes to the far side of the room. Craig moved oversized bound volumes of Mennonite newspapers onto the carrels. This picture was taken down one of the aisles and shows a carrel at the far end and the compacted bound volumes on the shelves.

These back periodicals will eventually be located in the old basement book stacks. But, before that can happen, volunteers will move the gold shelving from the library reading room down to basement storage. This gold shelving will hold the back periodicals and other little used materials that have been stored in boxes during construction.

The audiovisual collection and other materials on the south wall of the lower periodical stacks also need to be moved. Craig Neufeld has already taken the videos and DVD's to their final home in the east end of the south wing of the new library. This small area of shelving behind the back periodicals will hold all of our AV collection. The adjacent room will have video viewing equipment for individuals and small groups. There is still some adjustment being done to the lighting in this area so there is a ladder in the photo and some fixtures are in pieces.

Notice that the green boxes of Student Papers and General Papers have also made their move up to this area. In the distance you can see the end of the back periodical shelving.

The AV collection includes CD's, slides, and audiotapes which will soon be shelved near the videos and DVD's. But, what about the filmstrips, LP's (what?), maps, transparencies and picture sets? Should these outdated formats be shelved on the ground floor? relegated to lower level storage? discarded? What do you think?

These moves all took place while I was participating in the Bridgefolk Catholic-Mennonite Conference and leading tours to the Mennohof visitors' center in Shipshewana. Thank you Lois, Craig and Joanne!