Thursday, May 15, 2008 was an historic day as the HUT closed for the next two academic years. The Library staff has known from word of mouth how popular the HUT was and how fond of it students were (some of them even preferring it to the “mother ship” of MSEL!), but I thought I’d provide some hard evidence of that fondness with these numbers. Did you know that the HUT monitors routinely counted patrons and reshelving of materials at various times of day? From our patron counts of
2003-04 to 2007-08, 145,521 patrons used the HUT. For that same period of time, 11,110 magazines were reshelved. If you find yourself missing the copies of People or Rolling Stone that you used to read at the HUT, don’t despair! We’re moving the popular magazine collection down to the south end of A-Level along with some comfortable seating.
Have a special memory of the HUT? Feel free to share it as a comment. And, for those who like to burn the midnight oil, MSEL will be open 24/7 (following the academic calendar) starting in Fall 2008. Check out more historic pictures of the HUT and Gilman Hall here.
Are there more old photos of the Hut, or of Gilman generally, that could be posted?
(The hard floors and wooden chairs in the old photo of this post look fabulous! So much more dignified and inspirational than the dreary carpet and waiting-room upholstery of the Hut in its latest terminal iteration. And don’t get me started on declining standards of dress at Hopkins. Sigh.)
Ellen replies . . .
Dear Nostalgic,
Thanks for your comment! We do have more archival photos of the HUT that we should be able to post to the site. We displayed the one in the post (among others) at our Farewell to the HUT party in April. We’ve got one of the old Gilman stacks as well as others from the 1950s. What I like is how the plants that were in evidence in the pictures from the 1930s (as this one is) disappeared by the time we get to the 1950s. No budget for horticulture, perhaps? The HUT certainly did have a different look and feel in those days. As for dress, there’s one picture where all but one student (all male) are wearing suits and ties. The one that’s in a sports jacket with no tie stands out by comparison.