New Set Design for Drama Library
Before Angela Weaver started work renovating her branch facility, the UW Drama Library had some of the charm and comfort of a locker room. It had the drab colors, frosted windows and paucity of comfortable seating that one would expect in an institutional changing room, which, in fact, it was. Hutchinson Hall (1927), the Collegiate Gothic building designed by Suzzallo Library's original architects, Bebb and Gould, served as the first women's gymnasium, and was transformed in 1984 into the Drama Building. The Drama Library occupied part of the locker rooms for the swimming pool next door. Transforming Drama's space and its collections was made a key UW Libraries priority in 2007, following goals included in the new Vision 2010 Strategic Plan.
Left to right: Patrick Scheible, Angela Weaver
As part of the Strategic Plan's initiative to "reshape our physical facilities as discovery and learning centers," Angela -- assisted by Patrick Scheible, Library Technician Lead in Drama, and Paula Walker, Director of Libraries for Space Planning -- set about reorganizing the Drama Library, adding security measures and altering stack spaces to make collections more directly accessible to students. Security was a prime consideration, as the branch had no magnetic alarm gates. Past concerns for the loss of materials caused many collections to be crowded behind the Circulation Desk. To maximize the accessibility of materials, the library administration provided funding for new security gates-a $10,000 addition-allowing Angela more freedom in rearranging her collections. She moved out her voluminous monologues, periodicals, and acting editions into the general stack area and transferred others out, relocating rarer volumes to the Department of Special Collections. She also implemented a new open reserves area that has proven to be quite successful. The result has been a smaller Circulation Desk area and greatly expanded general stacks.
With the other $41,000 at her disposal (derived from the Allen Endowment), she purchased new furniture and had the walls brightened with new coats of paint. A nice feature of the new space is the way in which Angela accentuated the sculptural concrete columns in the library by highlighting their capitals in a darker tone than the walls. She assessed current student study patterns, deciding that they worked together far more than in the past. As a result, she removed four individual carrels and added two more group study tables. She also made comfort a priority. Four new lounge chairs were placed in various locations to encourage students to linger and read. The overall effect is to give the Drama Library a much more welcoming and engaging ambiance, one that fits the needs of students, making it a "workplace of choice." |
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Story coordinated & developed by Alan Michelson, Architecture & Urban Planning Library
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