Library tour reveals old-English furniture, skull, caged archives
Tours of the Merrill Library were given to students and faculty Thursday in celebration of National Library Week.
In addition to visiting offices and book-processing areas, students walked through little-known areas of the library usually restricted from the public.
“It’s not every day you get to see the places that I will take you,” said tour guide and Merrill Library cataloger Marcia Cheney.
The library was built during the 1930s, Cheney said. It was expanded in 1963 and 1967 to become the Merrill Library that USU students know today. Cheney said the Merrill is scheduled to be torn down and replaced with a new library by fall 2005.
The tour began in the dimly lit basement. Cheney said the basement originally housed a darkroom for developing photos, a desk where graduating students could pick up their caps and gowns, and a bomb shelter built in the 1950s in case of a nuclear attack. It is now a storage area where hard copies of old newspapers, journals and the original Utah State University cornerstone are kept.
Along one side of the basement, bookshelves of theses, dissertations and archive information are protected by a floor-to-ceiling metal fence in an area called “The Cage.”
“I have heard that these shelves were fenced off after a student tried to blackmail a professor with information he stole from this area,” Cheney said, noting the story might be just a library legend.
Cheney said the basement is currently being remodeled and will become the new home of Computer Solutions.
Next, Cheney led the tour into an area called Special Collections. She said Special Collections is located in the original part of the Merrill Library. When the building was enlarged during the 1960s, the university decided to build around part of the existing structure. The roof of the original library can still be seen from the top of the Business Building.
Cheney said Special Collections contains rare and valuable books, an accumulation of old cowboy poetry and the second-largest collection of Jack London novels in the world. It is also the resting place for “Old Ephraim’s” skull. According to the story posted next to the skull, Old Ephraim was a 9-foot-11-inch grizzly bear that terrorized sheep farmers in Cache National Forest during the early 1900s. After years of tracking, the bear was finally killed in 1923. A monument stands in Blacksmith Fork Canyon at the site of the bear’s grave.
The tour then entered the “Hatch Room.” The room was decorated like a old-English hall, complete with fireplace, intricately carved bookshelves, rich draperies and a large wooden table.
Art and Book Arts Curator Rose Milovich said the room was named after L. Boyd and Anne McQuarrie Hatch, a local couple who had brought antiques from Europe to furnish the authentic English-manor style house they planned to build in Providence. When they decided to build elsewhere, they donated what would have been the contents and decorations of the manor library to USU.
The room contains two original portraits from the 1700s, a vase from the Ming Dynasty, an ornate hanging tapestry, and other furnishings, some of which Milovich said could be traced back to the 15th century. Bookshelves on the wall hold old and valuable books in various languages, some with hand-painted illustrations.
Students were then led into the Technical Services area of the library, where books are ordered, cataloged and entered into the online reference service. Cheney said about 150 employees and student workers are employed by the Merrill and Science and Technology libraries.
Cheney said many students are not aware of the resources offered by the Merrill Library. Students can check out compact discs from the library’s classical music collection, find the latest popular fiction novels, and can even have books transferred from the libraries of other universities. Map printouts can be obtained for as little as $1 in the Government Documents area. Cheney said students can also make an appointment with a reference librarian for help researching a subject.
The Quad Side Café opened last year on the bottom floor of the Merrill Library. Cheney said everything but the floor of the new café is removable so it can be transferred to the new library when the Merrill is finally torn down.
-lynze@cc.usu.edu
A bank note autographed by Joseph Smith Jr. is housed in Special Collections.
A Ming Dynasty vase sits in the Hatch Room of the Merrill Library.
Rose Milovich of Special Collections shows a 15th-century piece of furniture in the Merril Library.