The Murray Library is currently undergoing renovations to some of its public spaces. Here’s what’s been happening lately.

Ground Floor

The large brown sofas with the high red backs have been taken out and replaced with new individual armchairs and tables. Other furniture was also taken out and will be redeployed throughout the library. The new chairs on the ground floor are lighter and easier to clean (and clean around!) than the old ones. And there is now more seating than ever available for students on the ground floor.

Old ground floor seating

New ground floor seating near Starbucks

New ground floor furniture along west wall

6th Floor

A capital project to refresh the area on the 6th floor near the staff offices is also currently in process. On May 17th, staff from Materials Handling came by to remove the three large tables. You may have heard some loud banging throughout the building on that day! They had to use a sledgehammer to bend over the metal table legs so that the tables would fit into the elevator.

old 6th floor layout and furniture

Years of old gum under the old table on the 6th floor

FMD staff taking away the old tables after sledgehammering the legs down

Most of the furniture from this space on the sixth floor will be going to surplus or to the recycling bin, but the six grey easy chairs and the stacking black chairs will be kept and used elsewhere in the Murray library.

Now that the old furniture has been taken away, some renovations to the space will occur over the summer. New furniture has been selected, which includes powered study tables for laptop docking and two soft seating areas. Carpet will also be laid, which will help to reduce noise. We hope to have this project completed by the end of the summer, but in the meantime there will be reduced seating.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 3 years since we first posted our Murray Sticks picture. (Hard to believe, because somehow the image is still sitting on my desk. Someone help me clean up please!) There have been a lot of changes to the Murray Library’s staff complement, and there are more changes that will be coming in the summer, with a few impending retirements! So here they are, the employees who currently call Murray 122 home:

Completely accurate representations of real people.

It may seem like there are a lot of us, but if I consult older stick images, there are currently two less librarians than in past versions (not including sabbaticals), two less supervisors, one more operations manager, one extra Aboriginal intern, and four more freeloaders using up all the good offices. 😉

1st version – March 2014

2nd version – August 2014