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History
of the Curriculum Library
In 1996,
Sarah Michalak, Director of the University of Utah’s Marriott Library
and Colleen Kennedy, Dean of the University of Utah’s Graduate School
of Education, convened a Curriculum Library Task Force to provide much
needed space for the ever increasing curriculum needs of K-12 teach candidates.
The location in the GSE’s Milton Bennion Hall had become too cramped
to accomodate the plethora of materials housed in the existing location.
The Task Force discussed issues of location, staffing, services and funding
issues and concluded that the Marriott Library would create an enclosed
space on the North side of Level 3 that would house the curriculum materials
and provide services, access and responsibility for its holdings.
The relocation and
upgrade of the Curriculum Lab into the Marriott Library’s present
Curriculum Library location became possible, in part, by virtue of several
generous grants provided by The George S. and Dolores Dore’ Eccles
Foundation, The Emma Eccles Jones Foundation and The L.T. and Janet T.
Dee Foundation. A "Library within The Library" began construction
in 1998.
Robert Nelson, a Marriott
Librarian who had been working in Government Documents, was hired to manage
the new facility and worked closely with Peggy McCandless, the GSE’s
faculty liaison, to devise a level of access and services that would match
the quality of the "bricks and mortar" of the new facility itself.
Meetings were held to determine that the staffing level would double to
a Librarian supervisor, a full time Curriculum Assistant and two Student
hourly employees. This enabled the hours of operation of the Curriculum
Library to increase by half. An ongoing effort would be undertaken to
catalog the Curriculum Library’s materials. Nelson devised an original
system based on a modified Library of Congress call number scheme to fit
the unique nature of the textbooks so they could be accessible in the
Marriott Library’s Online Catalog. The University of Utah Task Force
on Computing provided several computer workstations for web searching
and software demonstration purposes.
The materials were
loaded by moving vans, one book cart at a time, and deposited into a holding
area within the Marriott Library. This gave the Curriculum Library staff
time to organize the materials for their permanent move onto library shelves
in the new finished space. They were open in time for the first day of
Fall Semester classes.
The new Curriculum
Library now contains more than twice the room for textbooks and multimedia
sources than in their former space within Milton Bennion Hall. Two web
reference PCs and two stand alone computer stations for using education
software were installed. A sizeable increase in the counter space and
the implementation of "accordion" files allowed for housing
acitivty kits and "big books". The architectural plan allowed
for a dramatic increase in the number of study tables within the confines
of the Curriculum Library.
The Curriculum Library
is also located in a strategically advantageous position to other useful
library services. It is adjacent to the Juvenile Literature Collection.
the ERIC microfiche collection of Education monographs is housed West
of its walls. The Copy Center and two Instructional facilities exist east
of the Curriculum Library. Other helpful service points in proximity to
the Curriculum Library include General Reference, Interlibrary Loans and
the Circulation Department.
An Open House, with
remarks from Sarah Michalak and Dean Kennedy, was held on February 25,
1999.
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