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Title: Leading lady: Miss Wilson makes a library
Date: 2010-2019, 2010
Digital Collection: Special Collections Publications
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Special Collections Publications
Local Identifier: SCP_MZW
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Leading Lady: Miss Wilson Makes a Library Leading Lady: Miss Wilson Makes a Library By Marian Alexander, Head of Special Collections, WWU Li
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Leading Lady: Miss Wilson Makes a Library Leading Lady: Miss Wilson Makes a Library By Marian Alexander, Head of Special Collections, WWU Libraries It’s hard to imagine Western without the Mabel Zoe Wilson Library. Its elegant, Italianate brick façade has graced the south end of the green swathe in front of Old Main since 1928. But when the famously feisty, determined woman for whom the building is now named first set foot on campus, there was no separate structure serving as a library, and there was barely a library collection at all. “There just wasn’t a library,” Mabel Zoe Wilson was to exclaim many years later, recalling her reaction on February 1, 1902, her first day on the job. On the uppermost floor of the institution’s only building at the time (now Old Main), she saw a few reference books, a great pile of disorganized magazines shoved into a corner, and perhaps 400 to 500 additional books. A sheaf of bills from book firms and some lists of items to be ordered constituted the official records. For the next 43 years, Mabel Zoe Wilson made it her life’s work to wrest a functioning, well stocked, superbly organized academic library from virtually nothing. “Her dedication to one library was total,” remarked a colleague, and her leadership nothing short of remarkable in the face of significant challenges as Western grew and as its mission and purpose evolved throughout the first half of the 20 th century. Born in 1878 in Athens, Ohio, Mabel Zoe Wilson was not trained as a librarian; rather, her degree from Athens’ Ohio University, earned in 1900, resulted from a course of study that included Greek, political economy, and rhetoric. How she came to apply for the position of librarian at the State Normal School at New Whatcom—as Western was then called—in the isolated reaches of the Pacific Northwest remains unknown. Her application, however, was championed by Edward T. Mathes, head of the school, who brought her West at a salary of $600 per year. Slender and petit, even by the standards of the time, with a mass of dark hair and a penetrating gaze from deep-set dark brown eyes, Mabel Zoe Wilson set to work immediately to make a library. Within a year, there were 4600 books, properly organized and indexed by a card catalog whose entries she wrote by hand. More acquisitions followed steadily and staff was added as Miss Wilson’s burdens grew. In 1909, she was able to leave to obtain a professional librarian degree at the Albany (N.Y). Library School founded by Melvil Dewey himself. Success followed success, the collections grew apace and by 1920, the library had completely outgrown its allotted space. As early as 1916, the Board of Trustees had acknowledged the exigent need for a separate library building, but it wasn’t until 1924, following the arrival of President Charles H. Fisher, that the effort moved into high gear. Miss Wilson’s devotion to the library met its match in Fisher’s; it was he who propelled forward her dream of building a proper library to serve as “the student’s workshop” where students could “double and magnify their creative work.” Designed by Charles H. Bebb and Carl Gould, who had created the University of Washington’s “Collegiate Gothicstyle” Suzzallo Library shortly before this time, the new library was dedicated on June 5, 1928. The main reading room (still extant), with its wonderfully painted ceiling and tall, mullioned windows featuring stain glass panels, was the building’s glory. Its built-in oak book cases held 25,000 volumes, testimony, along with thousands more housed in nearby multi-level stacks, to Miss Wilson’s two-plus decades of vigorous collection building. The new building was acclaimed by all, but Mabel Zoe Wilson’s work was not yet done. She continued to develop the library’s holdings; secured additional professional and clerical staff; and expanded the library’s instructional services to including credit courses in library and research skills. She also found the time to actively serve professional library organizations in the state and region. An avid traveler, she made regular trips across the country and abroad, usually visiting libraries along the way and often reporting on her adventures in the campus newspaper. She was famed for the extravagant parties and dinners she hosted for students and staff at downtown Bellingham hotels and for flashes of sentiment ranging from anonymously acknowledging staff birthdays with flowers to creating part-time jobs for war widows. Mabel Zoe Wilson retired in September 1945. On April 15, 1964, Western’s library was officially named for her, following a campaign initiated by retired faculty members who enlisted the support of legions of Miss Wilson’s friends, former students, and colleagues. To the many encomia addressed to her at the dedication ceremony, she replied, in typical fashion, “I do not recognize myself.” She died a few weeks later, on June 1, 1964, at the age of eighty-six. Visitors to today’s Mabel Zoe Wilson Library who pass through the north foyer sometimes pause to note the portrait hanging there, of a dreamy, almost wistful-seeming Mabel Zoe Wilson. The look belies the woman of steel within, who created the library that now stretches up and outward in ways and directions she could not have imagined. Many legends circle around her, in part because she left so little of a personal nature—no letters, diaries, or reminiscences. We must understand her as she wished to be understood and remembered, as the creator of a truly wondrous thing—a library, Western’s library, our library.
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Title: The Mabel Zoe Wilson Library Reading Room
Date: 2000-2009, 2003
Digital Collection: Special Collections Publications
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Special Collections Publications
Local Identifier: SCP_ReadingRoom
Text preview (might not show all results): The Mabel Zoe Wilson Library Reading Room “We lined up in the Main reading room to receive congratulations of a large crowd assembled from the entire countryside. The evening sun streamed across the f
Show moreThe Mabel Zoe Wilson Library Reading Room “We lined up in the Main reading room to receive congratulations of a large crowd assembled from the entire countryside. The evening sun streamed across the floor & through the large windows. Splendid clouds could be seen ascending. All profuse in praise and no indication of any disapproval.” Thus did Carl Gould, architect of the library for the Washington State Normal School at Bellingham, describe in his personal diary the conclusion of ceremonies held on June 5, 1928, dedicating the splendid new building. More praise was soon to follow, especially of the Reading Room. “Following the walls in an unbroken line are 20,000 books,” enthused The Washingtonian. “Lifting the eye to the ceiling, one receives a delightful surprise in a color scheme that has taken into account the decorative aspirations of Egyptian and American Indian artists. Brilliant colors have touched the beams and the intervening spaces. In each of the large windows is a single colored panel modeled after the Aztecs. Such is the room that houses twenty-five times as many volumes as the Normal possessed shortly before Miss Wilson began.” For her part, Mabel Zoe Wilson, librarian since 1902, viewed the books themselves as “the most decorative effect of this room.” The new library, she declared, and particularly the Reading Room, with its 30 ft. high ceiling and space for 300 readers, would serve as “the student’s workshop,” inspiring them to ever greater accomplishments. In its essentials, the Reading Room today, although worn and mellowed by time, closely resembles the space that so overwhelmed visitors in 1928. The original built-in oak bookcases still line the walls, and the heavy, quarter-sawn oak tables and chairs continue to serve students and others who quietly read and study here. The painted ceiling is as it was in the earliest days (it has never been cleaned or retouched). The original doors—popularly supposed to be covered with whale skin—still grace the entryways. Carpeting was installed, and the walls painted a rosy hue, in the 1990s. The most significant changes to the Reading Room since its opening day have all involved lighting. Originally, the sole source of electric light was a double row of elaborate, art-nouveau style hanging fixtures. Although beautiful, the lamps were the object of constant complaint by users of the Room. In 1947, one study table was outfitted with fluorescent fixtures as a trial, but this solution was not adopted in the end. In 1958, the Board of Trustees engaged architect Paul Thiry, who had designed Haggard Hall, then under construction, to solve the problem of relighting the Reading Room. All the original lamps were removed (and presumably destroyed) and replaced by a functional, modernistic grid of suspended fluorescent tracks. At last, “the illumination the students had been crying for,” applauded the campus newspaper The Collegian in January 1959. Although practical, the grid was not a thing of beauty and its unremitting “buzz” drove readers to distraction. However, it was not until 1995 that the grid came down and fixtures more in keeping with the room’s period atmosphere were installed. At this time too, shelf lighting was added as well as table top study lights. Although primarily a study area, the Reading Room has seen many uses over the years. The building that seemed so spacious in 1928 was, twenty years later, severely taxed to accommodate both growing collections and ever-larger student enrollments. Freestanding shelving units were added to the Reading Room in time and, until completion of a minor addition to the adjoining book stacks area in 1948, books were also “shelved” on the floor of the Room. Completion in 1962 of the first major addition to the library considerably relieved crowding of both books and library users and in the decade that followed, the Reading Room became home to the newly formed Education-Curriculum Library. During the 2nd major renovation of the library which took place during 1970-72, project architect Fred Bassetti sought to underscore the Reading Room’s attractions by creating views into it from above—through windows cut into it the upper corners of the south wall. In the years following this renovation, the Room was returned to its earlier purposes when the Education-Curriculum Library relocated. But, it was pressed into service once more as a holding area during the asbestos abatement projects of the mid-1990s, when most of its floor surface was turned into a vast horizontal “stacks” for books and journals transiting in and out of sections of the library under abatement. Today, except for occasional service as a venue for a special event, such as the President’s annual dinner, the Reading Room is generally quiet, belying its long, active history as the very heart of the library. Generations of students have studied here, proposals of marriage have been made here, gossip exchanged, exam deadlines faced, term papers drafted. The Reading Room has nobly served, as Mabel Zoe Wilson foresaw, as “the student’s workshop.” It remains a pleasing place, an authentic “library” space for reading, learning, quiet contemplation, and even—sshhh—hushed conversation. We hope you enjoy your visit to the Mabel Zoe Wilson Library Reading Room. If you would like to help us restore the Reading Room to its original luster, please contact Béla Foltin, University Librarian, 360-650-3051, or by email: Bela.Foltin@wwu.edu. “With these new facilities of beauty and utility it is hoped that students may double and magnify their creative work.” Mabel Zoe Wilson August 12, 1927
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Title: Mabel Zoe Wilson Library Rotunda
Date: 2000-2009, 2003
Digital Collection: Special Collections Publications
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Special Collections Publications
Local Identifier: SCP_Rotunda
Text preview (might not show all results): The Mabel Zoe Wilson Library Rotunda The stained glass window Mabel Zoe Wilson hailed as “one of the most beautiful windows in the whole Northwest,” still looks down on the area of the 1928 library kn
Show moreThe Mabel Zoe Wilson Library Rotunda The stained glass window Mabel Zoe Wilson hailed as “one of the most beautiful windows in the whole Northwest,” still looks down on the area of the 1928 library know as “The Rotunda.” This space, also called the “main delivery hall,” was intended in its impressive dimensions to provide a suitable transition to the richly decorated, light-filled Reading Room with its high ceiling and elegant oak furnishings. As well, many of the library’s core services were originally located here. The main circulation (or “charging”) desk was found to the visitor’s right at the top of the stairs. Opposite stood the card catalog, positioned in front of an office suite with two entry doors, leading to the head librarian’s office and library workrooms. Between the catalog and the circulation desk, the visitor crossed the terrazzo-patterned marble floor to reach the bronze-studded doors opening into the Reading Room itself. An elaborate chandelier, suspended from the Rotunda’s dome and styled after the art nouveau overhead lamps adorning the Reading Room, provided faceted light by which to marvel at the area’s lofty spaces and stained glass panels. Of the Rotunda’s original features, only the office suite and the Reading Room doors remain. Until the early 1970s, a solid wall with a single door could be seen in the niche originally fronted by the circulation desk. The door provided entry to the “glass stacks.” These stacks, which occupied the area now filled with reading tables, held the collections not shelved in the Reading Room. They consisted of opaque glass walkways, not unlike catwalks, accessing book stacks mounted on dark green steel uprights. In the glass stacks, it was possible at the edges of the walkways to see all the way down to the first level, or up to ceiling level. The glass stacks were demolished, along with the wall separating them from Rotunda, during the second major renovation of the library in 1970-72. The short stairway adjacent to the main staircase leads up to one of the levels added to the library during this same renovation. Architect Fred Bassetti wrapped an entirely new building around the south facade of the original library, extending it toward Haggard Hall and creating four floors (five on the west end) of badly needed space to complement the original building’s two main floors. He retained the fine stained glass window so admired by Miss Wilson, artfully making it a design element in the hallway that links the east and west ends of one of the new levels. You can admire the top half of the window from its original exterior aspect by turning right at the top of the short stairway and entering the hallway. The suite containing Mabel Zoe Wilson’s office and library workrooms retains its original dark-stained wood paneling and built-in book shelves. The library’s administrative operations vacated this space after the first major renovation of the building in 1961-62. A variety of library and University services have been housed here since that time. It is the library’s hope to one day refurbish these historic rooms. The Rotunda was painted in the 1990s. The original chandelier disappeared many years ago. The present fixture was installed in 1995.
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Title: Bassetti addition
Date: 2000-2009, 2003
Digital Collection: Special Collections Publications
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Special Collections Publications
Local Identifier: SCP_BassettiAddition
Text preview (might not show all results): The Bassetti Addition Mabel Zoe Wilson Library Western Washington University 1970-1972 On February 9, 1967, the Western Washington State College Board of Trustees selected Fred Bassetti & Company
Show moreThe Bassetti Addition Mabel Zoe Wilson Library Western Washington University 1970-1972 On February 9, 1967, the Western Washington State College Board of Trustees selected Fred Bassetti & Company of Seattle to design the second major expansion of the Mabel Zoe Wilson Library. Although the original 1928 building, by Charles Bebb and Carl Gould, had been enlarged only five years previously by noted Northwest architect Paul Thiry, it had proved inadequate for the library’s rapidly growing collections, services, and number of users. In addition, the modernistic Thiry additions, so at odds with the character of the Bebb & Gould design, were widely criticized. By July 1967, architect Fred Bassetti stated that his design aims for the new project were “to provide for more students and faculty, to correct present deficiencies and to create a character which encourages student involvement, a building that is more than a study hall or a repository of books, a building that lives.” By late 1968, Bassetti had developed the concept of completely surrounding the Thiry additions in order to unify the architectural styles. Originally, the new addition was to be limited to 75,000 square feet, but a phased approach was soon developed to ultimately provide a total of 142,000 square feet keyed to student enrollments ranging from 8,000 to 15,000. In early 1969, the first two phases were combined into one, with the aim of achieving an immediate increase of 90,000 square feet of space. On June 25, 1970, on the recommendation of Fred Bassetti, the Board accepted the bid of Cawdry and Vemo Construction of Seattle. As construction began that summer, planning also commenced for the next phase to add another 64,000 square feet of space. To accomplish this, Bassetti proposed two wings on the opposite (north) side of Wilson, one reaching out parallel to the bookstore across High Street and the other extending parallel to the south end of Old Main. The result envisioned was “an esthetically attractive, functional, centrally located library capable of serving 15,000 students.” In the end, the state legislature did not approve full funding for the final phase. Among other needed improvements, completion across Wilson of the highest (now sixth) floor was a significant casualty of this development. The principal Bassetti addition was substantially completed in the spring of 1972. Dedication ceremonies took place on November 4 of that year, with the State’s senior Senator, Warren G. Magnuson, providing the dedication address. Overall, the Bassetti addition increased the area of the library by over 90,000 square feet. The dramatic new exterior featured the same type of brick façade and clay tile roof that characterized Bebb & Gould’s original building. Ground floor arcades and sculptural window hoods and bays complemented the design features of nearly buildings constructed around Red Square, Western’s central academic plaza. The library building had indeed been restored as “the focal point of academic and architectural aspects of the college.”
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Title: The true University
Date: 1990-1999, 1999
Digital Collection: Special Collections Publications
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Special Collections Publications
Local Identifier: SCP_1999_TrueUniversity
Text preview (might not show all results): immediately to the left of the entrance, and the Library of Children’s Literature to the right. Beyond these will be found a study room for the faculty, student-teachers, and pupils of the training s
Show more immediately to the left of the entrance, and the Library of Children’s Literature to the right. Beyond these will be found a study room for the faculty, student-teachers, and pupils of the training school, a picture library, "an exhibition of text books," and a separate reading room "equipped especially for faculty." From this area, a short corridor will lead to the book stacks
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MABEL: Multimedia Archives Based Electronic Library

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