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Re: closures



James,

Good luck with your remodeling and move, the J. Willard Marriott
Library at the University of Utah went through about five years of
new construction and remodeling, and it really isn't over yet.

As part of this, our Special Collections department moved in April
1998 onto one side of the 5th floor.  We had a temporary reference
desk while asbestos removal, HVAC work, and some remodeling
was completed on the parts of the building we'd occupied for
twenty years.  We were in the temporary status for about 14
months, and then moved back basically where we'd always been.

I strongly urged our administration to allow us to close during the
move process.  When we moved over, we stayed open during about
a three day, very labor intensive move (we did it all ourselves).
During that time, the morning of the first day of the move, when we
were supposed to open our temporary  reference desk, there was a
major water leak right over it.  I'll never forget the three nicely
dressed elderly ladies who came in to use materials with three
inches of water everywhere and people frantically pushing carts.  I
was glad we didn't knock one of them down.

In short, staying open caused many more problems than closing
for a short time.  Security was compromised, patrons were ill-
served if not endangered, the staff was frantic; it just wasn't worth it
at all.  So a year or so later, when we moved back, we all learned
from that; we urged more strongly than before, gathered supporting
documentation, offered plans to ease the disruption in service
through what we can only call an archival media blitz,  planned the
move down to the minute  to take advantage of the long spring
break so as to disrupt service to faculty and staff as little as
possible.   I'm happy to say the library  administration responded to
this and actually allowed us to remain closed a week longer than
we'd asked for!  (five weeks instead of four).   Since the move also
involved building new shelving, finishing walls, workmen going in
and out, I at least thanked the stars every day that they'd let us do
that, and the move went on time, under budget, as smoothly as
that kind of thing can go.

We kept our fax, phones, and email running full speed sending out
notices about the closure for six weeks in advance.  Every radio
station in the valley, every TV station, every newspaper in the
Wasatch Front knew about it, it was on our websites; we wanted
the word out to the research community, which is a lively and
intense one in Utah.  But during the move we allowed no access;
didn't even answer the phone most of the time.  There were a
couple of cases where arrangements for visiting scholars had been
made well in advance that we accomodated.  We sent out updates
to the media and other library staff on the progress of the move,
smiled at everyone, apologized and sympathized a lot with
researchers, promised hope for the future, and I think the archival
research community in the region actually respected us for
standing up for the collections.  Very few feathers were ruffled; and
while we were sure glad to have it done, in the end it was a win-win-
win (patrons-collections-us) situation.  And all, I'll say in closing,
because we were allowed to close.




Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
rwebb@library.utah.edu

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