WWU's Special Collections opens in new space Feb. 16

On Feb. 16, Western Libraries’ Special Collections will open in its new digs – a spacious and modern set of rooms on the sixth floor of Wilson Library.

The new area features climate-controlled storage areas, a huge research space, separate offices for the three Special Collections staff members and a dedicated space for workers to sort through and catalogue new material.

“We had really outgrown our old space,” says Marian Alexander, head of Special Collections at WWU. “Our collections are growing steadily, and we had just run out of room.” In addition, she noted, the old space had neither environmental controls nor a security system, standard features of modern special collections spaces.

It’s the job of Special Collections to collect, organize, describe, preserve and maintain unique intellectual and cultural heritage materials and to promote the use of these resources by the university community, scholars and the public.

Anyone can come in to study Special Collections materials, but nothing can be checked out.

Stored in row upon row of stacks in the new space are rare books, faculty publications, historical and unique children’s books, children’s pop-up books, reading figurines and books and objects related to fly fishing, among other things. The Helene Whitson Collection of pop-up books boasts more than 320 items, and the Fly Fishing Collection is one of the largest collections in the region focused on the development of fly fishing as a sport.

“There is no other collection quite like it,” Alexander says.

One of the new double-sided display racks built into the walls of the new space soon will exhibit books, flies and other resources from the fly fishing collection. Another will feature some of the figurines in the collection donated by Miriam B. Snow Mathes, a member of the WWU faculty from 1934 until her retirement in 1971. Staff members will rotate the displays regularly to show off the interesting and unique items housed in Special Collections.

Other features of the new sixth-floor space include a conference room for group meetings and small class gatherings, HVAC and fire suppression systems to protect the collections, lockers for backpacks and other personal items, a scanning station and a light table to aid in the study of film negatives.

Special Collections’ former space – on the Wilson Library’s second floor, across from the media circulation desk – is being converted into a study area.

More information on Western Libraries’ Special Collections is available online at http://www.library.wwu.edu/specialcollections/index.html.