Ater years of debate, new music library a success

Two weeks into the current academic year, the School of Music welcomed the opening of the $11 million Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, complete with soundproof rooms, listening rooms, and a reading room, in Sterling Memorial Library (SML).

JULIA TIERNAN/YH SWEET SOUNDS: There are many listening stations in the new music library.

According to music librarian Karl Schrom, the construction of the new library was long overdue. "[Sprague Hall] was never meant to be a music library," he said. He described how the basement and first floor of the old library couldn't contain the entire collection in 1955, forcing the University to store scores in Beinecke and at off-campus sites. The new library thus marks "the first time that the collection is in one place," according to Schrom.

The condition of the old library was a nightmare."There was no air conditioning in the winter. It was not good for the books," Schrom said. The basement flooded every year, damaging many books. For books that survived the deluge, librarians worried about bookworms.

The music librarians started brainstorming about a possibilities for a new music library in the 1970s. However, the project did not begin to take shape until President Richard Levin, GRD '74, took office and suggested that since there wasn't enough funding to construct a freestanding music library, the University should pursue creating it as an extension of SML in an adjacent empty field.

With a donation from the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, Yale formulated a design for the library in 1994 from a 300-page, 1988 proposal by former head music librarian Harold Samuel. Construction began two years later.

The increased distance between the library and the School of Music does not faze graduate music students, who feel the modern facilities more than make up for the longer walk.

"The bottom level of the old library was like a dungeon," complained Dan Krekeler, MUS '99."The new library is beautiful. You walk in and the walls just shoot up into this wide-open space."

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