Library Travels.

On July 10, 2010 a good friend of mine from 6th Grade, Kathryn Fisken, and I traveled down to Seattle. To be specific the University of Washington Campus. Like many of my friends who knew I went down to the UW Campus, I bet you're wondering why we went down there. Well you see, we went because of the following reasons:

1. I really wanted to visit the library that looks like the Great Hall from Harry Potter. (I'll elaborate on that more in the post)
2. I wanted to hang out with Kathryn because she honestly is one of the few friends I have left from that long ago. Also, we just wanted to hang out at UW seeing as she goes there for school.

Seeing as one of the reasons as to why I wanted to visit UW was because of their libraries, I found this an opportunity to add to the libraries I've visited. Seeing as Tarra wrote a blog on the different libraries she visited, I thought I'd add to it :). Maybe this could become like a little segment Tarra and I do throughout the year(s).

Anyways, there was one library in particular that I wanted to visit, and that was the Harry Potter library. It's pretty much the library that looks like the Great Hall from Harry Potter. Unfortunately, the timing Kathryn and I had wasn't the greatest because the library wasn't even open, but here's a picture for you to see what the library looks like, haha.



If you look carefully, you can see that there was a wedding going on at the time. In fact, there were three different weddings going on that day at the campus. For those that don't to UW, the Harry Potter library is actually named Suzzallo. Here's a different shot of the library from a different angle :)

Seeing as Kathryn and I couldn't get into that library, we had to settle for the other library that was open on the weekend during summer session. This library was named Odegaard. Right away I could see many differences from their library compared to ours at the University of Portland. Before any of you start to make comments, I'm aware that their library will be different from ours seeing as they have so many more students than us. I know we can't compare a campus that is about 45,000 students to our 3,000 students. But the differences made it really cool.

If there was something similar between their library and our library, it was that on the main floor there was a place to sit, and look at computers. [Unfortunately, I don't have any photos from our UP library. You'll just have to use your imagination to try picture something up!] This area though is kind of their lobby area, or in our case at UP it's the area that would be near the offices.

One of the other things that caught my attention was the stairs in this library. Obviously, since we have a small library we don't have that many staircases. In fact, we have maybe like one main staircase that takes us between all the three floors in our library. Thinking about it though, the staircase that does take us between all floors isn't placed in the best place within the library, ha. It's a good thing though that the library will be getting a serious makeover!




It was just really cool to see how intricate the stairs were also. I felt like I was in Hogwarts looking at the way the stairs were built, haha. (Me and my Harry Potter love!)

The one last thing I would like to touch base on about UW's library compared to ours was the computer lab. Again, we have a small campus, so there's no need to have more computers. Well, in my opinion I think our library could use some more computers in the computer areas. Yeah, people bring their laptops, but sometimes we need to print things. I might be counting wrong, but  the thing is, we have like 8 circular tables in the main part of the library that house 4 computers each. If you look at the photo [click to enlarge it] you can see that there are 8 circular tables with 4 computers each. What's around those tables is obviously more computers. The other thing you guys can't see is that this is only half the computers that they have on this floor. Yes, there's more computers on this floor and the floor above and below this one. CRAZY!!


Right away I kind of got jealous at UW's library, but you know what they need a library like this seeing as they are a larger school. It's a good thing to know though that the library at the University of Portland is getting remodeled. Unfortunately, it won't be during my time. (That just means that I'll have to maybe come visit the library once it's finished and running)

That's it for my library travels, I hope to have more this upcoming school year!

PS. This post is about a month overdue [library joke, haha]. Sorry about that though :)