Construction on the Leichter Listening Library was recently completed, but there is still work to be done.
The listening library is in Wanda L. Bass Music Center houses musical scores, reference books and other performance-related materials.
The deans of the Wanda L. Bass School of Music made plans to run construction last April to provide more room for musical scores that wouldn’t fit, among other changes, according to Student Publications archives. Construction was originally scheduled to begin May 7 and expected to take place over that summer, but a number of architectural errors caused construction to be pushed back into the school year.
Construction was finished Feb. 20, but some of the planned changes are still incomplete. Officials were given clearance to move all furniture into the new space, but Beth Fleming, performing arts librarian, said they are waiting for six more free-standing bookshelves to arrive in April before they move the collection into the new space.
“You don’t realize how horrible space issues can be until you’ve had to consolidate something that used to take all the space into just one tiny portion,” Fleming said. “I’m really grateful for it, because beforehand we were super-duper overloaded with what we had, and now there will be far more space. With the double-sided bookshelves, that’s almost six times the amount of storage we had before.”
The 36 additional shelves in the new space are narrower than is standard for a library and are also a darker shade than the ones in the main part of the library. Though the construction was done by Beck Design, the same company that built the library itself, the shelves were installed by a different subcontractor than the one who installed the previous shelves. It is unknown how or when they will be corrected.
The new lighting fixtures are different from the ones that were ordered and go a different direction than the ones in the rest of the library. They will be corrected in mid-March, Fleming said.
Other changes include an additional storage room where officials will be able to store and process books, lettering above the door and a wooden border that matches the wood of the entryway to Bass. Fleming said the changes give the library a feeling of grand entrance.
“It makes this space a little more distinctive because of that,” she said. “I think it makes the room itself feel much more open, and I know that part of that is because we had a big construction space there for so long, and it felt so crushed and tiny, and so now with it open it just feels like it’s even more open.”
Fleming said students were excited about the changes but also slightly confused.
“They were confused that we were building a new space, and then when we opened it up there were really only two sets of shelves,” she said. “I think they’ll understand the significance of it a little bit more once the double-sided shelves get here.”
Alonso Jordan, first-year opera performance graduate and Leichter employee, said the expansion will hopefully give students more options that were previously limited by lack of space.
“I notice sometimes when we can’t find some sheet music or literature or something like that, it’s kind of inconvenient because then we have to recommend that they either purchase it or they go to a different source to find something that we should have or could have, but that we might not because of the space,” Jordan said. “Now this gives us a chance to build the music library more, the collection that we have, and give students more options for them to choose from instead of having to go outside of the school.”
Fleming said even though the renovation isn’t complete, she’s still pleased by the changes.
“I’m grateful that this place is regarded as a good place to come and hang,” she said. “It makes it my favorite place on earth, and so now my favorite place on earth just got exponentially bigger.”
Fleming said she is hoping the library will be fully renovated by the end of this school year.
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