YCAL-JWJ Service Disruptions: A Note from the Curators

March 12, 2014

By Nancy Kuhl

Dear Colleagues—

As the Beinecke Library prepares for a major renovation in 2015, many frequently-consulted YCAL and JWJ archival collections will be moved off site to the Yale Library Shelving Facility (LSF). The transfer process will require the Library to close individual collections for approximately 6-8 weeks; during the transfer period, collections will not be available for consultation in the reading room, classrooms, or for reproduction requests. Collections will be closed to Library staff as well as readers.

The spring and fall 2014 collection closures will include some of the Library’s most important and frequently-consulted American literary archival collections (the papers of Thornton Wilder, Eugene O’Neill, Langston Hughes, James Weldon and Grace Nail Johnson, H. D., and Edith Wharton, to name a few transfers this spring; fall transfer collections include the papers of Mable Dodge Luhan, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, William Carlos Williams, and Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe). Please consult the Library’s “Closed Collections” list for specific details, updates, and changes.

Please know that the library will aim to limit service disruptions  as  much as possible, but collection closures are unavoidable. We regret any inconvenience these necessary disruptions may cause and encourage to you to plan your research carefully in the coming months.  For more information about the Beinecke Library renovation, please visit: http://beineckelibraryrenovation.yale.edu/. If you have questions, please feel free to contact us.

Sincerely,
 
Melissa Barton, Curator of Prose and Drama, & Nancy Kuhl, Curator of Poetry
Yale Collection of American Literature and the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters.
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
 
The Beinecke Library will be closed for renovations May 2015 to August 2016.  We will maintain a temporary reading room in Sterling Memorial Library during this time.  However, access to collections will be limited.  Please see http://beineckelibraryrenovation.yale.edu/ for more information.