Description:
The Lilly Library publicly announced its renovation on April 1, 2019. From that point, the Lilly staff had approximately eight months to not only remove themselves but also all materials and furniture. Early in the semester, it became clear that juggling renovation related issues and their day jobs would be too much work to complete by the deadline. Therefore, the Lilly hired two renovation assistants to help shoulder the burden of renovation. As renovation assistants, we focused primarily on preparing for the move to Wells Library, the Lilly’s temporary home for the foreseeable future. However, because of the liminal nature of library renovations, how we prepared for the move was contingent on the day-to-day needs that arose. No shift was the same. Everyday felt like we were learning a new job and yet, because of the inflexibility of the move’s deadline, we were required to be experts already. In this position, we occupied an unique space where everything we did was essential to continued progress of pre-move preparation and yet not readily visible to other staff who were not actively involved in the moving process. In this poster, we will discuss our duties related to the move, our work with the teaching collection, and the shift in responsibilities we undertook after the move to Wells was underway. Through this discussion, we will call attention to the essential yet invisible space student workers occupy in a library renovation.
