(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) As I hope I’ve expressed in previous posts, the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection is pretty large, and includes a wide array of different formats for material. All of this, of course, has to fit into the Rare Books and Special Collections spaces here in Boatwright Library, and, coupled with the other collections and 23,000 volumes of rare books the division holds, space has been getting a little tight. So, this #WyattWalkerWednesday, I’d like to talk a little about some renovations to the RBSC space in Boatwright happening to help us expand our storage space and improve our research and instructions areas as well!

Now, some of these renovations you might have already seen if you’ve been on campus. And we can’t credit the Walker collection as the only motivation behind them, as some of it happened even before the 2015 donation. Nonetheless, the work going on now has built upon what’s come before, so let’s start with those earlier projects.

First and foremost is the Rare Book Seminar Room. This is a new classroom that was put up a few years ago to help with instruction within our division, and it’s been very helpful. As I’ve mentioned before, Dr. Walker was adamant that his collection not be used just for research, but for instruction as well. Having this room has meant that as we process materials, we can use them to help teach students about Dr. Walker’s life and work.

At the same time as the Rare Book Seminar Room was put together, our Rare Book Room also got a makeover. This included a nice redesign of the space. The Rare Book Room’s open hours have been canceled this academic year as we prepared for the renovations, so you might not have had the chance to see it. We’ve also rearranged the room in preparation for some renovations occurring — including the installation of some new shelving along one wall — so it looks very new and exciting! The room is already a great place to conduct research, but the new addition will help with staging material for research appointments. We’ll be reopening the room this fall, and we’re always open by appointment.

The Rare Book Room collections being packed and moved into storage in preparation for the renovation.

The new shelves in the Rare Book Room are part of a larger renovation project that we’ve been prepping for since last semester, and which began officially over Spring Break in March. Throughout the beginning of the semester, I worked with some student workers to help pack up the entire contents of our Rare Book Room vault, where the main portion of our collections are held. All of this material was packed up and shifted into some storage rooms by Spring Break, at which point all the shelves and furniture in the vault were stripped out. This was to make room for a new set of compact shelving, which will all but fill the space. The new compact shelving will take our storage space in the vault from 1200 linear feet to 6000 linear feet! With as large a collection as the Walker collection is, you can understand why we might be excited about all that extra footage.

The Rare Book Room vault awaiting its new compact shelving after deep cleaning and paint touchups.

Overall, this will be helping to keep all of our collections in a more secure, environmentally controlled and stable environment, ensuring that our collections will last longer and that we will have faster access for researchers and instruction. This is just another way that we are showing our dedication to preserving Dr. Walker’s unique legacy while maintaining access for instruction use and research into his many, varied accomplishments.