Firestone to replace carrels

Between 125 and 140 of these carrels have already been demolished and the old parts recycled. The rest will be removed over the course of the next five years as library construction continues.

Over the last two years, the Faculty Steering Committee on the Firestone Renovation has been working with the Library, the Provost’s Office and project architects to modernize the 64-year old Firestone. The 430,000 square feet occupied by carrels will help open up space for new library features.

Though the number of students signed up for carrels remains high — 490 undergraduates and 231 graduate students are currently registered — actual use is much lower than in previous generations. According to University Librarian Karin Trainer, carrel usage has been declining for about a decade. Library staff have begun to notice the trend, especially within the last five years.

“It was obvious that there was a lot of space in the building that was empty most of the time,” Trainer said. “At the same time, there weren’t enough comfortable seating spaces for students who were trying to do work, particularly during exam time.”

To verify that few of the carrels were actually being used, Firestone conducted a survey last spring from Feb. 22 to May 27. Monday through Saturday, at different times each day, staff would walk past each carrel to see how many were occupied and how many had items stored inside. Over that period, the average rate of occupation was 3 percent and an average of 32 percent of the carrels was completely unused on a given day.

Rooms that hold up to seven people, though registered as carrel spaces, were not included in the survey. These spaces will be turned into new reading rooms as part of the renovation, modeled after the Trustee Reading Room. The new floor space will also provide for wider stack aisles to make shelving more accessible to those with disabilities, while accommodating a larger Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

In addition, Firestone staff learned that, according to current building code, a sprinkler and smoke detector would have to be installed in each carrel, a process that Trainer said would have cost millions of dollars.

“It just seemed like a bad way to use space and spend money,” Trainer explained.

The locked metal carrels will be replaced by unassigned, single-student open wooden carrels with modern lighting and wireless connection. Students will be assigned locked storage units for their books and other belongings.

According to Trainer, the amount of desk space per person will be larger than before, and the linear feet of shelving space in the storage units will be comparable to what the carrels currently contain. The new carrels will be distributed throughout the building, while the storage units will be located near the resources and collections each student needs.

Project architects are still working on the design of the carrels, but Trainer compared them to student carrels in Marquand Library.

“The lighting is a lot better; they’re just more attractive, and it’s easier to plug things in,” Trainer said of the Marquand carrels. “But we’ll go one better.”

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Firestone will be having an open house on April 3 at which students and faculty can respond to the ideas of the architects and see their designs for the carrels and chairs, which are not yet finalized.

Though Trainer noted that the carrels have limited appeal for current students, they often are a source of nostalgia for alumni. During his return visits to campus, Jim Marketos ’76 occasionally walks by his carrel, which he shared with a good friend and fellow medieval studies major. He still remembers the carrel number.

“They were hot,” Marketos said, reflecting on the carrels. “You had to keep the door open. You couldn’t talk too loudly. It was therefore kind of nice when there weren’t too many people, and you found lots more things to talk about than things you were supposed to be doing.”

When told that the current rate of occupation was around 3 percent, Marketos replied, “Wow.”

“Assuming peak hours were in the evening, I would be very surprised that it’s only 3 percent because when I was there it was much more,” he said. “It had to be about half.”

Current students seem to have less of an attachment to their spaces. Donna Park ’12, an English major who has been spending six to eight hours a week in her carrel, admitted that her carrel is not her ideal workspace.

“I actually don’t like my carrel very much, but it is really convenient to have a place to put your books,” she said. “And it locks.”

Despite the amount of time she spends in it, which she said would increase as her thesis deadline draws closer, Park said she has done little to make her carrel feel like home.

Marketos, in contrast, used to stock his carrel with a hidden supply of sherry and glasses stowed away in empty filecard boxes. He even threw a party complete with food and music after hours when theses were completed.

Unlike Marketos, who was close to his carrel mate, Park said she has little contact with the two other students assigned to her carrel.

“I’ve seen one of them once — that was in October. I don’t know his name even though it’s marked on the carrel,” Park said. “I’ve never seen the other one.”

Kevin Donahue ’12 signed up for a carrel but has chosen not to work in it. Donahue was late in applying for a carrel, and when he went to Firestone’s Access Office during reading period, he was originally told he would have to share one. He ended up being assigned his own.

Though he, too, said the carrels are too hot, Donahue also described his own carrel in Firestone as “cool, kind of sweet.” Still, he said he prefers working in the digital photo lab in Whitman College, a space he settled on three weeks ago after trying out various locations when he decided to crack down on writing his thesis.

“I like having a space that’s a little more my own than the library is,” he explained. “I can more easily listen to music, get up and walk around.”

Donahue, a Wilson School major, relies primarily on journals for his research and thus said he felt that walking to Firestone is too much of a time investment. At the moment his carrel is completely empty.

Trainer said she believed that the new facilities in Firestone will make students more likely to work and stay there. As for the old carrels, there are plans to gather up and reinstall the dedication plaques on those that were donated. However, Trainer said she wasn’t sure whether any carrels themselves would be preserved.

“We thought about that, and we haven’t quite decided,” Trainer said. “We did decide for the sake of posterity we would save the fronts of card catalog drawers and a couple of complete drawers for people to look at when they come back. We’ll have to decide whether there’s a place where we can keep a blue metal carrel.”

“I just hope they keep a couple around,” Marketos said. “People can look at them and know that things were once different.”