Irving S. Gilmore Music Library

Gilmore Music Library turns 20!

Gilmore Music Library
September 13, 2018

Monday, September 28, 1998, started out like any other day for most of the Yale community. Sunny and warm, nothing seemed unusual…except for the Music Library, which had closed Sunday evening at nine p.m., as it had for the previous eighty-one years, at 98 Wall Street. Monday, 9/28/98 changed all that forever.

The staff was charged with moving the entire Music Library to its new facility, during the semester. The new Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, built into an old light court in SML that no one knew about, was finished, and the shelving had finally been installed. So, at 7:00 a.m. Kendall Crilly, the Music Librarian, and Eva M. Heater met at 98 Wall street, loaded the reserve books, scores, and recordings on carts, and wheeled them up Wall Street to their new home. By 8:30, when the library opened, the reserves were up on their new shelves and ready to be used, and Eva started setting up the new CD players—there was a line of people waiting to use them. Meanwhile, Ken doubled back to 98 Wall Street, to help coordinate the circulating collection being moved. For several days, users had to request items to be paged, because they could be at any of three places: 98 Wall Street, on the moving truck, or at their new home on the shiny new shelving. However, the Music Library never closed for any of it, and all services continued throughout the move, which took more than a week.

The Irving S. Gilmore Music Library has been open for twenty years this month. Yale University President Richard Levin completely transformed the campus during his tenure; few know that building a new facility for the Music Library into the old light court in SML was his idea. We are forever grateful to him for making this happen. 

-- Eva Heater, Catalog Assistant, Gilmore Music Library.