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UConn's Newest Library
Music & Dramatic Arts Library Occupies A Distinctive New Building
Tracey Rudnick
In a frequently played out scene, students, faculty, and visitors approach the Music & Dramatic Arts Library, UConn's newest library facility, with their heads tipped back, awed by the towering cylindrical green glass structure. Their eyes widen-particularly if they knew the old facility-when they take in the glowing, spacious interior filled with intertwining architectural curves.
This new state-of-the-art facility is part of a $15.1 million School of Fine Arts project that also includes a new rehearsal hall, new and remodeled practice rooms and faculty studio-offices, digital recording facilities, and student and faculty commons. The architects, The Kagan Company, worked with librarians and music faculty to plan the facility in 1989; and Governor John Rowland announced funding for the project in October 1997. Construction began in April 1998; finishing touches are still being applied. Located within the Fine Arts complex on the Storrs campus, the Music & Dramatic Arts Library opened its doors on June 28, 1999. The library building has an area of 33,208 square feet, of which 14,148 are dedicated to library functions and 5,492 support other Music Department activities.
The much-anticipated facility, described in a recent Music Department assessment as "at long last...commensurate with the collections and our mission," could not be more different from its dark, cramped, eternally grimy, and well-hidden predecessor. Floor to ceiling windows-treated to protect materials from damaging UVA radiation-softly illuminate salmon pink furnishings and wall coverings accented with touches of cool forest green. The basement, in which scores and books are housed, has high ceilings and a feeling of spaciousness that belies any notion of dark, dusty, seldom-used library stacks.
Users have other reasons to linger. Forthcoming comfortable lounge chairs (a luxury never before possible due to a lack of space); over forty seats for quiet study (three times that in the old library, and all with network connections); and fifteen secure, networked graduate research carrels provide an inviting atmosphere for both students and faculty. Current periodicals and unbound back issues have been brought out of storage, and library users can more easily browse them on attractive display shelves.
In a major change of service philosophy, library users for the first time are able to control the playback of sound recordings, either in individual carrels or in group listening/viewing-study rooms, greatly enhancing the learning and enjoyment of music. Formerly, recordings were played centrally from behind the circulation desk by staff, and users listened on headphones at shared listening stations. Custom listening carrels will allow both privacy and plenty of room to spread out scores, books, and notebooks, and will accommodate future growth, including the possible addition of computers for digital delivery of sound recordings. A new seminar room with audiovisual and computer projection equipment provides a much needed space for library instruction, staff training, fine arts seminars, and guest speakers.
While technological innovations promise exciting new options, musical scholarship still depends on physical collections of musical scores and sound recordings. The library now houses a large classical and jazz performance collection of over 35,000 music books and scores, 157 current journals, and over 32,000 sound and video recordings, 20,000 of which are unprocessed gift materials previously stored offsite. Doubling of the library's collections space assures growth for fifteen to twenty years-a welcome contrast to the desperate overcrowding of earlier days-and stack areas are built to allow for future conversion to mobile compact stacks. Working with the Department of Dramatic Arts later this year, the UConn Libraries will begin shifting parts of the dramatic arts collections into the new facility.
Library users enjoy easy access to the reference librarian, whose office is now in the public reference area. Computers providing a gateway to UConn's online catalog, information databases, and the Internet are prominently located where users can find them and where staff can readily lend a hand as needed. Student and professional staff are thrilled to have real offices, work areas, exhibit cases, and a greatly enlarged circulation area.
The music and dramatic arts programs and communities now have an appealing, useful facility that both reflects and supports their own outstanding work. The dynamic transformation of the Music & Dramatic Arts Library is part of a larger state and university campaign to make Connecticut, in the words of Governor Rowland, "the best place in the world for connecting people to culture." The circular structure stands as an impressive visual landmark in the heart of the university's Fine Arts complex and will serve as a beacon and a symbol for all those who treasure our musical and theatrical traditions.
Tracey Rudnick is music and dramatic arts librarian; tracey.rudnick@uconn.edu or 860-486-2502.
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