The University of Idaho Women’s Center Library has been around since the Women’s Center’s foundation and is now moving to the main UI library.
It is nestled in the back of the Women’s Center past the lounge area, and houses the books, multimedia content, local resource brochures and two computer stations. Most of this small room is dominated by a wooden conference table.
“As I’m sitting here, pulling books, I’m just overcome with waves of nostalgia, because so many of the books were donated by people who were really instrumental in the Women’s Center’s history,” said Lysa Salsbury, director of the Women’s Center.
Lysa Salsbury | Courtesy
The library started as a place for the Women’s Center to keep a special collection of feminist literature, she said.
“It served two purposes, I think, one to educate our campus community about issues that affect women and the historical feminist movement, and then also I think, as an archive, a repository for classic feminist books,” Salsbury said.
The books, which populate three of the four walls of the library, are stacked three shelves high —80% of which have not circulated in the last five years, Salsbury said.
“In the time the Women’s Center has been around, most of the books have been donated by people that were close to the Women’s Center or involved in the Women’s Center in some way,” Salsbury said.
With an estimated collection of around 3,000 books, DVDs, CDs and journals, Salsbury said she is currently going through and removing all the materials already in the main library. The duplicates will be donated, she said.
“The decision to decommission the library was a tough one, because libraries like this one are pretty unique, and increasingly disappearing,” she said. “But we we’re getting feedback from students that this space was not really serving their needs.”
Salsbury said the staff already has plans for the space after they move all the books, and are going to update the computer stations already in the library. They hope to add a few smaller tables and an easy chair or two.
But the library had its issues, Salsbury said, like books being misshelved or missing altogether. There was no scanner in the Women’s Center, which Salsbury said could lead to people walking out with books and causing problems, such as books being put on hold through UI’s interlibrary loan system.
“It would be one thing if students were really excited about the library and were using it a lot. … And so while I think the collection is important, both from a social and political and historical point of view, I don’t think having it housed here is serving the needs of the students,” Salsbury said.
Kali Nelson can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @kalinelson6