The Library Vault

If you haven’t been to Russell Library since the pandemic, a few things have changed.

The library was closed for a few months in the Spring of 2020 and then again that winter. However, we were still hard at work inside the building. Not only did we offer Curbside Pickup, we looked at our plain white and yellow walls and decided to paint.

That may sound mundane, but we are far from mundane here at Russell. Did we just freshen up the walls with more of what we were privately calling “library paste white”? Did we give those pale yellow walls another coat of pale yellow? Nope. We. Went. Wild.

As the assistant director of public services, I decided we would begin in the children’s department. I went to the librarians and assigned each one an area and asked them to pick out whatever color pleased them. I explained that we wanted each separate section of the department to be a different color.

Their choices were bold, playful, imaginative. And the change was stunning.

“This looks (bleep) amazing!” one staff member said.

We surged forth into other areas. The meeting rooms. The Activity Room, the lobby, the second floor, the teen area. We used greens and golds, reds and purples. We boldly painted adjacent walls different colors. We rearranged the book stacks in some areas. We redid our signage.

And when we reopened our doors, the public’s response reenforced what we all believed. It looks (bleep) amazing.