Theme I:
ON BROOKLYN’S GREEN FIELDS:
The Bread Crumb Trail

We soon saw that there were many human or sociological issues associated with our new spaces. Accustomed to dwelling together in a single building and working closely, staff genuinely missed each other. Busy days made it difficult to find the time to visit colleagues sprinkled in various locations. Since a walk from the Field Library to Boylan or Ingersoll Halls might take fifteen minutes, staff found themselves attempting to bundle meetings in ways never before necessary. Systems staff (who serve all Library and AIT units) were forced to schedule and cluster service calls: sprinting back and forth between the Field Library and the Music Library or the Library Café multiple times each day was too costly to consider.

Technology-related problems continued to plague both students and staff (particularly in the Field and Gershwin libraries). Massive wiring and data line issues contributed to a sort of systems hell during the first six to eight weeks of the fall 1999 semester, as students milled about restlessly, looking for any machine that could offer access to the Web, or even the Library catalog. Bad cable was pulled and replaced. Weeks elapsed before the Library’s classroom could be reassembled and Library instruction delivered from it.

Library Systems staff worked frenetically, diagnosing and solving countless problems. The move called for conversion from a token-ring to an Ethernet topology, so that all public access computers were converted to Ethernet. The Music Library was converted twice: once to Ethernet, then later back to token-ring, in order to eliminate the incredible bottleneck created by routing traffic through BCBC equipment and to take advantage of a new cable run between the Plaza and Gershwin buildings.

We also experienced the zombie punch list, AKA the punch list that would not die. Fire inspections also dragged on and on. Cut-off dates were announced, passed, and work continued. It was early May 2000 when the fire inspections for the Field Library were at last completed. It was March before the high security Assa Abloy locks were installed. (Staff in Roosevelt found the use of these expensive cylinders rather amusing, since any thief could easily bypass the locks by climbing over the partition walls used to define this spaces.)

Once the circulating collections were fully resident in their various temporary locations, staff discovered the movers had made many errors in shelving sequences and the great shelf-reading and reordering project began.

The College chose a new photocopy vendor for the campus and the Library. While the new vendor proved superior to its predecessor in every way, confusion reigned during the first several weeks of the semester. (For more information, see Photocopy Services, below.)

·  The Field Library

·  The Roosevelt Library

“Staff in Roosevelt and Gershwin are not so lucky as staff in the Field Library: floods, heat, capricious elevators, and broken security gates have taken their tolls. Still, everyone has taken these problems in stride, keeping their eyes on the prize.” Barbra Buckner Higginbotham, Chief Librarian & Executive Director for Academic Information Technologies

“The birds have not been seen since early summer, when we had to discourage them from nesting in the Ready Reference collection. We have made an effort to make an unlikely library location appealing and attractive to our users.” Jane Cramer, Government Publications & Microforms Librarian

“The beginning of the year started out rather traumatically as we moved into temporary quarters in the 3rd floor gym of Old Roosevelt. Our spaces also took a lot of getting used to. The fans and air-conditioning are extremely noisy in this environment, which is very drafty. The noise has not been beneficial to the cohesiveness of the division, as people cannot communicate effectively with each other in this space. Last winter we nearly froze until Turner Construction made some major adjustments to the system and plastic was affixed to the large gym windows.” Judith Wild, Associate Librarian for Technical Services

Judith Wild’s comments accurately describe the early days of life in the Roosevelt Library. Throughout the year, the temperature proved difficult if not impossible to regulate in Roosevelt’s high-ceilinged gymnasium spaces, where staff and readers were often either too hot or too cold. Staff in the College’s HVAC control room worked hard to establish and maintain a consistent climate, but because the old steam radiator controls were not part of the Library Project, there were definite limits to what could be achieved. (The Library Project budget dictated that the periodicals area in Roosevelt not be air conditioned. Facilities staff attempted to upgrade the comfort level in this enormous, windowless reading room by putting fans in place.)

The Roosevelt Library also experienced several debilitating floods, caused by differing circumstances. First, locating a service point with expensive and extensive collections beneath a large air conditioning unit one floor above proved to have been a bad plan. Second, roofing work on Roosevelt Hall caused yet more flooding. Only fast action by Sandra Stumbo and her staff prevented a significant loss of both equipment and materials. We hope that the roofer’s insurer will eventually reimburse us for some $7,000 in water damage. All in all, during 1999/2000 plastic sheeting was the commodity most in demand in the Roosevelt Library.

About two weeks after the start of the fall semester, with no warning the elevator serving most of the Roosevelt Library was taken out of service for renovation. This required readers to climb many staircases to reach the Library’s units, or to use another elevator located some distance away. It also meant that many of the signs we had so carefully crafted and posted now provided erroneous directions, and staff scurried to replace them with new ones.

The condition of the floors in the bound periodicals area--badly warped by water damage and (like all gymnasium floors) built to be springy--meant that stack ranges leaned and required additional bracing.

The second-hand security gate purchased for Government Publications & Microforms operated erratically at best. Sometimes it detects materials that have not been charged out or counts readers who pass through it, but often it does not.

We found it quite interesting that readers did not always use the spaces as we anticipated that they would:

“Staff thought the lack of air conditioning would have students taking materials from the periodicals wing into the documents area. However, no one moves. They sit on the floor and cram the tables. It is hot and uncomfortable, but they do not move.” Susan Vaughn, Associate Librarian for Collection Development

Finally, this tale of mail illustrates almost every problem experienced in the Roosevelt Library.

· Most Library mail is periodicals and newspapers.

· First, the Library’s mail boxes could not be reassembled because some of their parts were needed to recreate the Reference office cubicles, whose parts had been lost during the move.

· Next, the Roosevelt elevator was taken out-of-service for eight weeks while it was renovated, and the College’s mail room staff refused to deliver the Library’s copious amounts of mail, invoking union regulations.

· We had little choice but to move the mail room to another floor--one serviced by a different (and working) elevator. Here, the only space available was the staff restroom area.

· Despite the unorthodoxy of the space, this arrangement did not work too badly until the room’s ceiling caved in during a flood caused by the roofers. This space is now uninhabitable and reeks of mildew.

· Nonetheless, the mail distribution area has found a permanent temporary home, squeezed into the back of Technical Services gymnasium space. Library staff are nothing if not ingenious.

·  The Music Library in Gershwin Hall

Just as other collections were found to have been misfiled by the movers, so were music materials.

“I discovered that there were extensive areas in the music book and music score collections that had been shelved upside down and out--way out--of order. I fear that the entire process (of undoing sloppy work by the movers) will have to be repeated after the move to the new building. Honora Raphael, Music Librarian

Music suffered the worst Internet and connectivity problems of all the temporary sites. Initially all computers in Music were connected to the Library network through BCBC, a network already overloaded and slow in performance. Whenever the BCBC server went down (a frequent occurrence) Music lost all service. At last, a direct cable was run from Plaza to Gershwin, resulting in considerable improvement. Nonetheless, it was six months before the music librarian had a working PC in her office.

The Music Library’s security gate was destroyed in the move. While another was purchased second-hand, the Music Library space in Gershwin is so small that the ballasts in the ceiling lighting interfere with the operation of the gate, which has proven useless.