
National Library Week for 2023 will be celebrated nationally on April 23-29. Let’s look at library study spaces in the past at Defiance College. The above picture is one of the few we have of the library room on the second floor of old Defiance Hall. It is not dated but probably from about 1948. This has the look of a faculty or administrators’ meeting, but we don’t have a lot of information about the photo. The room was used as the campus library until the Anthony Wayne Library was built in the early 1950s.

This is Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife Pat touring the interior of the Anthony Wayne Library in 1956. Nixon’s boss President Dwight Eisenhower laid the cornerstone of the building in 1953. Nixon came to speak at fall convocation for 1956. I haven’t been able to figure out where this space would have been in today’s Hubbard Hall. Hubbard was renovated from the Anthony Wayne Library during the mid-1990s, once the Pilgrim Library was constructed.

Two students studying in the Anthony Wayne Library, in a space today occupied by offices associated with Student Life, the side of the building facing the quad. Does the clock look familiar? Today it’s sitting in the historical niche in the Pilgrim Library next to the elevator. The clock had stood in the White House in Washington, and was given to Kevin McCann, DC’s President in the 1950s and early 60s, who donated it to the Library. The photo isn’t dated but we think it’s from about 1958.

This is another undated photo of the Anthony Wayne Library interior, but probably late 1950s. It’s probably taken in what today would be the area of the hallway leading to Student Services in Hubbard.

This one is from 1969, showing a study lounge with racks of magazines for students to browse. This area today is about where the booths are across from the Hive counter in Hubbard Hall. The curtains on the right cover large glass sliding patio doors that led out to the Ruth McCann Reading Court.

This photo is on the darkish side, but it’s the only one we have of this part of the building. The photographer would have been standing about where the above photo was taken, but turned in the opposite direction. The student studying in 1974 in this picture is sitting in what today is the kitchen part of the Hive in Hubbard Hall. The emergency door is still there today, as an exit from the Hive kitchen.

This is the reference room of the Anthony Wayne Library in 1989, where dictionaries, indexes to print magazines, and other reference books were kept in the days when research was done in print resources and the internet didn’t exist on campus yet. The students seated at the tables would be about where the hallway is in Hubbard today that leads back to Student Life offices.

Now we come to the present-day Pilgrim Library, which opened in fall of 1993. Do you recognize this area today? When we first opened, there were two circulation desks. This one was in front of the moveable shelves, which back then held many volumes of print journals and magazines. 1993 was before the internet, and students relied on print resources in that era. A student worker “personned” the desk to retrieve magazines for fellow students doing research. Once the internet took hold and more students began using online resources for research, we no longer had a need for this desk and it was removed. The moveable shelves are still used today for the few print magazines/journals we retained, and also act as a storage area.

Originally the Pilgrim Library’s circulation desk was to your left as you came in the front doors. Here in 2008 the desk area is decorated for Homecoming, and to complete the effect for the office decorating contest, Collette Knight (right) is dressed as a yellow jacket.
Barb Sedlock
Lead Librarian/Coordinator of Metadata and Archives