- Jun 12, 2014
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Founding Member
The graduate level ones were caged when I was there....Library East, the older library, was a general undergraduate library. Library West was billed as a graduate research library but you could use either one whether you were an undergrad or graduate student. When you entered Library East if you hung a right and then back to your left you would enter a long rectangular shaped room that had all of the state's major newspapers attached to wooden poles placed on wooden racks. You could read the sports sections of all the papers from Pensacola to Miami. You could probably find your hometown paper because they also had some of the smaller newspapers.
Heading up to Library East from the south side you would pass the statue of Albert A. Murphree. No man had more influence in higher education in the state of Florida than A.A. Murphree. He was president of Florida State University for Women in Tallahassee (the forerunner of FSU) before coming to Gainesville to lead UF. He had a long tenure at UF so his association is with with UF. When you passed Murphree's statue you could could usually count on him having a can or cup of some drink held in his raised hand place their by some student. Murphree, Spurrier, Wuerffel, and Tebow --- that's UF. Go Gators.
Library East was quirky, Library West was more analytical. If you want to use popular jargon then you would say Library East was right brain and Library West was left brain. There were cubicles on the upper floors in the stacks of Library West that had a metal desk with bookshelves. These cubicles were assigned to graduate students and they would have the books they were using in their research sitting on the bookshelves. If you were studying in a cubicle and the grad student to whom it was assigned showed up then you had to move and let him have his place.
One night I was sitting in a cubicle next to a window that looked out on University Avenue. It was during the height of the protests against the Vietnam War. Their was a group of radical leftist students who were confronting the Gainesville police in the middle of the street. The police set off some tear gas canisters and the students would run and try to regroup. There were a lot of student just milling around, hanging out, just looking for something to do.
I did a lot of research in West, but would take my books, copies etc over to east to work. West had too much activity going on for me, but I did like the periodicals over in West. I wish I had access today.