Betty Wagner, Architecture and Urban Planning Library
Carl F. Gould, were he to step out of the pages of history, would likely be astounded and pleased to find the rich array of library resources available to researchers at the University of Washington today. In 1914, Gould founded the Department of Architecture, the first component of what is now the College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Even as the first freshman class in architecture was receiving instruction in back of the stage of old Meany Hall--since demolished because of earthquake damage--Gould was working on developing what is now the Architecture-Urban Planning Library.
Gould was a faculty member and a principal in the architectural firm of Bebb and Gould. Among numerous campus buildings they designed are Suzzallo Library's 1926 and 1934 sections, and the Henry Art Gallery. They also developed an early campus plan that proposed the liberal arts, central, and science quadrangles, and they established collegiate Gothic as the prominent architectural form on campus.
Soon after being made a branch of the University of Washington Libraries, the library moved to the main floor of what is now Architecture Hall in 1949. The collection continued to grow from 2,400 volumes in 1949 to 13,600 in 1971, while the number of currently received serial titles increased more than tenfold from 30 to 353.
When Carl F. Gould Hall was completed in late 1971, the library moved once again, this time to its present home. Today the collection is just under 40,000 volumes, and last year it was used by over 60,000 people. Along the way, the collection grew to support Construction Management, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design and Planning as these disciplines became degree programs in the college.
Through five public computer terminals in the AUP Library, users can locate the vast majority of the UW Libraries resources. In addition to the UW Libraries Catalog, twenty-two databases covering a wide spectrum of disciplines can be searched by a click of a mouse. The most useful to this library's clientele is the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, covering landscape architecture and urban design and planning, as well as architecture. The availability of this index online is a quantum leap for a clientele long used to print indexes which came out no more frequently than quarterly or annually.
Other electronic tools available are Art Index, Dissertation Abstracts, American History and Life, and Historical Abstracts. These CD-ROMs are transmitted over a local area network to a public computer workstation. The World Wide Web is also searchable from this workstation.
These new tools have made locating information much easier and quicker. However, they have in no way eliminated the need to buy books and periodicals, which supplement rather than replace print on paper.
Newest in AUP Library's arsenal of the printed word is the Dictionary of Art from the Oxford University Press. This work, rich in architectural content as well as in art, greatly extends the library's reference potential. Other noteworthy resources in the collection are: The Le Corbusier Archive, 32,000 drawings held by the Fondation Le Corbusier; The Architectural Drawings of Alvar Aalto, 1917-1939; and The Louis I. Kahn Archive, all of the drawings in the Louis I. Kahn collection at the University of Pennsylvania.