Open House at YUL

[Scott Bennett <scott.bennett@YALE.EDU>]

There is now a view among research library directors that describing the
library as “the heart of the university” no longer captures the essence of
our enterprise.  My Saturday experience at the High Street door of Sterling
Memorial Library belies this view.  Open House guests  thousands of them!
were attracted to Sterling knowing that our library embodies the very
heartbeat of a great university.

There was a crowd at the door when we opened Saturday morning, and it took
two photocopying machines running throughout the day just to keep us
supplied, most of the time, with our welcoming handout.  People asked
incessantly for directions to the Map Collection, the Conservation Studio
and Collections Care, the Slavic Collection, the Gilmore Music Library,
Manuscripts and Archives, and the Arts of the Book.  The tours given by
Judy Schiff and Alan Solomon were, well, mobbed.  People lingered over the
exhibited maps all day long.  Countless people asked where the Gutenberg
Bible was displayed, so I can imagine what the day at the Beinecke was
like.  And I know that visitors to the Medical Center found an
extraordinary welcome at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.  

I chatted with visitors about the card catalog, about the building’s wood
carvings (including my favorite piece in the Arts of the Book), and about
the castle on our roof.  What made my day was seeing Yale students showing
the library off to their parents and the comment by one gentleman who said
he had lived in New Haven for 55 years and had never visited the library
before.  He asked whether the computers could be used and would anyone
teach him how to use them.  I urged him to come back!

I thank every member of the library staff and our custodial colleagues
whose sustained work in making the library the heart of Yale University was
so manifest at the Open House.  I particularly thank those from the library
and elsewhere in the university who were able to volunteer to make the Open
House such an enjoyable event for our thousands of visitors.  It was a
memorable day for our community and a grand way to begin our tercentennial
celebrations!