One of the success stories of this year of celebrations around the Berkeley has been a radical change in the use of some of its spaces: the Iveagh Hall, and the basement beneath it. In a nutshell, the Hall was substantially emptied and excellent new seating installed to make a more social space.
Main and gallery images: Gill Whelan
The new social seating for the Iveagh Hall arrived at the very start of Michaelmas term this year, and before all the wrappings were off had students seated on some of the more unusual pieces. Said seating is in a variety of bright colours that “pop” against the grey of the Berkeley’s concrete. The furniture is also imbued with a 60s feel – part of the tender to supply it was that the seating had to be in keeping with the feel and style of the Berkeley, which is a direct consequence of us all in the Library living and breathing Berkeley50 this year.
It’s amazing how quickly it felt like the Hall has *always* been like this, but of course the truth is different.
We’ve looked at the use of the Hall over the years in a number of posts. In its most recent incarnation before the space was cleared to make way for the new furniture, the area was dominated with filing cabinets full of microfilms and microfiche and the readers to go with them – the microform machines can now be found in a different part of the Hall, the Counter Reserve section, along with some of the tapes; they are still heavily used as some important documents (for example, on Samuel Beckett) only exist in these formats.
The Library owns a substantial collection of DVDs and other discs purchased to support teaching – as with the microfilms, they are curated by our Multimedia Librarian, Paula Norris. These, and a number of DVD, VHS and Blu-ray players, were in the Iveagh Hall until 2016/7. The players are now in the Music Room with CD players for listening to our CD collections, up on the 2nd Floor of the Ussher. The films are in the relevant location for Film Studies on the 1st Floor of the Ussher.
(As an aside, when yours truly started work in the Berkeley in 2005, the far corner of the Iveagh Hall near the Lecky hosted hundreds of telephone directories for the UK and Ireland and Yellow (UK) and Golden (Ireland) Pages. Many people disliked it when those were removed… but the writing was on the wall for the paper telephone directory. I can’t remember the last time I saw one!)
A necessary component of reorganisation of the Hall was moving some of the student PCs and printers from it to a new, nearby location. The basement area that is now a PC hub and location for the Datapac printing help desk, together with more social seating, was last substantially reorganised in 2010. That saw the dispersal of the “Reference and Bibliography” collection of non-borrowable books to live with the relevant subject collections across the Library, a decision that isn’t without its opponents even now. However, the space was needed for the arrival of the group study rooms which have proved to be amazingly popular. More is happening to this space in the New Year, so keep an eye on this area.