A huge game of musical chairs has already begun at Suzzallo Library as preparations are made for a $42.6 million renovation project. Large portions of the library will be closed for about 20 months (see illustration) while the building undergoes seismic upgrading and gets new mechanical, electrical, communications and fire alarm systems.

The project has been in the works for a number of years, starting with the 1991 report of the Earthquake Readiness Advisory Committee, which rated Suzzallo among the highest of campus buildings in terms of risk to both people and property during an earthquake. The problem, according to Assistant Director of Libraries Paula Walker, who is coordinating the project, is that various portions of Suzzallo were built at different times and in pre-earthquake code eras.

The Government Publications Room is just one of those to be emptied in preparation for the Suzzallo renovation.

The original library that faces Red Square dates to 1925. A wing to the south was constructed in 1935, a small addition behind the original in 1947, and the long arm that connects with Allen Library in 1963. “In an earthquake, these portions would all move differently, with serious consequences,” Walker says. “The seismic work will brace the walls and ‘knit’ the portions together so that all of them would vibrate together and hopefully be able to withstand an earthquake.”

Construction crews are set to begin their work by late May, giving library staff just a few more weeks to move materials away from the affected areas. Government Publications - 22,000 linear feet of material - has already been moved from the first floor to the sub-basement, with their service area sharing space with the Map Collection in the basement; and the Computing Resource Center has been moved to the UWired Commons in Odegaard. Children’s literature is in the Natural Sciences Library in Allen South, while curriculum materials is sharing space with reference on the ground floor.

On April 10, the beloved Suzzallo Reading Room will be closed so that its contents can be cleared. And library staff are already planning for the move of books and periodicals in the western section of Suzzallo.

“We’ll be moving books that are used the least (some of the Dewey call number books on the fourth floor) to a shelving facility we have underground between Kane Hall and Odegaard Library,” Walker said. “Those books will still be available, however. We’ll have a retrieval service twice a day.”

And what about the books that are currently in that underground space? They’ll be moved to another shelving facility in the old Sand Point Navy base. Up to this point, those books have been available through the twice-daily retrieval, and Walker says the service will continue. Once the lesser-used books are moved, the bound periodicals in the affected area of the third floor - about 6,000 linear feet - will be moved to the fourth floor where those books used to be. Books in affected areas of the second and fourth floors also must be moved into this fourth floor surge space.

All this moving is being accomplished by Hansen Brothers Moving, the company with the state contract for such services. The company has specially built book trucks and crews to do the loading and lifting, Walker says.

However, some of the moving connected with the project involves people, not books. About 70 staff members will be temporarily moved during each phase of the project - some of them to Sand Point, Walker says. The work will also include one power outage for the entire Suzzallo and Allen libraries, scheduled for two weekends during the December 2000 break, when the fewest people are on campus.

About eight months into the project, work will begin on the remaining portions of Suzzallo, but it will be done two floors at a time so that the whole space will never be closed. The entire library should reopen sometime in winter quarter of 2002, and when it does it will have a new look.

“The space that used to house the Computing Resource Center will have several uses,” Walker said. “ It will be partly devoted to an instruction room and partly to a lobby area for exhibits. We’ll also have a new disabled entrance, allowing users to go straight through into the space behind without any steps in the way.”

The area currently occupied by the Newspaper and Microform Collection and library staff offices will be opened up and become the Circulation and Reference area. And the area formerly occupied by Government Publications will become a quiet reading area.

To accomplish these changes, the Computing Resource Center will remain in the UWired area in Odegaard and in Mary Gates Hall, and Government Publications will be located on the ground floor of Suzzallo, along with Newspapers and Microforms. Children’s literature materials will move to a new space in the 1925 wing. Upstairs, the Suzzallo Reading Room will be getting new carpeting, and a hidden treasure, the Smith Room, will be more exposed.

The Smith Room, located on the south side of the Suzzallo Reading Room, was named for a former library director, Charles W. Smith, and has most recently been used for meetings and classes. But to get to it, one now has to go through the quiet reading room or through staff offices. After renovation, a new corridor will be cut through the 1935 wing so that the room can be made available for reservation by interested groups. The Smith Room also is the location for several Depression-era murals painted by WPA artists, and these are to be cleaned and then covered while construction proceeds.

The bad news for campus dwellers is that the Red Square entrance to Suzzallo will be closed and a fence erected during the construction. The good news is that the fence won’t go up until after commencement, meaning the famous west façade will still be available for photos of this year’s graduates. Walker hopes that the demolition - the noisiest, dustiest portion of the work - will be done over the summer and during the long interim between summer and fall quarters.

Patrons of the library who are worried about being inconvenienced during the project should think a little about the library staff who have had to plan these massive moves, all the while performing their usual jobs. “It’s going to be a challenge to maintain service under these conditions,” Walker says, “but I’m really proud of the way our staff has pulled together to make this work.”

For updated information on the renovation project, go to http://www.lib.washington.edu/about/suzzren. ¶

Nancy Wick