We have a new exhibit up in the Library’s display area in Rockefeller Hall (we had previously mentioned it here in the blog as a possible show for last spring, but better late than never, no?). The show’s title is “Gone but not Forgotten: Exploring Exeter’s Missing Past.” Made up mostly of scanned archival images, the show focuses on Academy halls, homes, and interior spaces that either no longer exist, or have been radically transformed over the years. Below are four images from the exhibit; we may post more in the weeks to come:
The old gymnasium which was used from 1886 until 1918.
A classroom in the third Academy Building, which was lost to fire in 1914.
Abbot Hall (built 1855), the Academy’s first permanent dormitory, still exists, but it originally had a dining hall on a bottom floor.
An interior view of the now lost chemical lab building, circa 1890.
The film collections are among the most popular collections in the Library, and until recently, among the hardest to browse. Newer films were kept in two wooden racks with slide-out drawers, older films were kept behind the Circulation Desk, and a large assortment of television shows and other films were kept near the music CDs on floor 1M. Not only did this cause a great deal of confusion among patrons, it even befuddled the staff a bit when trying to determine where to reshelve a returned DVD.
Thankfully, over the summer, different sections of the collection were combined and given a new home on the Library’s main floor. Located behind the row of computer terminals on the main floor of the library, the entire CinemExeter collection is now shelved in straight alphabetical order. Whether you’re looking for a new movie, a classic film, or a television series, you’ll find them all in the same place. (The educational programs and some of the older foreign films are still located in the room above the Circulation Desk.)
Integrating the collection opened up a lot of shelving in the Lawrence Music area (outside the Computer Lab on 1M), so we moved the entire paperback collection to this space for good measure. The paperbacks include fiction and non-fiction, are shelved alphabetically by author, and are selected as quick reads rather than research tools.
Using a new slideshow feature that WordPress recently introduced, we thought we would share some images of the Third Academy Building from the Archives. Before it was lost to fire in 1914, it occupied the same space as today’s Academy Building, but was built from far more flammable materials. While not much survived the conflagration, we have images to remind us how lovely it was.
Academy Library Blog 