The Harvey Andruss Library will be celebrating a major milestone next week. Twenty years have passed since the library was moved from what is now the Student Services Center into the current building in May 1998.

To commemorate the library’s dedication, the library staff is inviting the whole campus to its “Twentieth on the Twentieth” celebration, scheduled for 1 to 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 20.

The festivities will include refreshments and live music in the library’s first-floor alcove. At 1 p.m., John Faus, a member of The Greenwood Valley Boys & Raven Creek bands and a library custodian, will perform a selection of bluegrass music on his fiddle.

The library employees will craft a commemorative time capsule and unveil a student mural contest that will run the rest of the semester. The BU Women’s Choral Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Amelia Garbisch, will close out the event at 2:15.

Kathryn Yelinek, a Research Librarian and the library’s Coordinator of Government Documents, says the idea for the “Twentieth on the Twentieth” event first arose last fall. The library staff formed the Events Working Group, a small group of volunteers committed to getting more “fun stuff” set up in the library, she says. Yelinek now runs the committee and is looking forward to their first major event.

“As a unit and as a library we all work really hard to get resources students and faculty need to answer their questions as necessary,” Yelinek says of her experience working at Andruss Library. She joined the staff in 2005 specifically to work with the Government Documents collection. The creation of a section for popular reads and bestsellers was another of Yelinek’s contributions to the library setup.

The celebration will run for the entire week of Sept. 17 to 21. Students can pick up library-themed coloring sheets and word puzzles at the Circulation Desk on the first floor. Bloomsburg students can win a $25 Amazon gift card by visiting the “Unusual and Rare Items from the Library’s Collections” exhibit in front of the University Archives on the third floor and guessing the age of the oldest library book.

The “Unusual and Rare Items from the Library’s Collections” exhibit will be on display through mid-October. An The first-floor cases, containing interesting facts and features of the library’s long history, will remain throughout the fall semester.

The library staff will release further details about the mural design contest, which is open to all BU students, later in the semester. The victor will receive a $250 gift card and the winning mural will be installed on the library’s first floor.

The celebration is a commemoration of the library as much as the students inside who spend long hours studying and spending time with friends. “We have a lot of regular students who become like family,” says Evening Shift Supervisor Linda Lapp.

Joelle Sanders, a Library Assistant and former BloomU student, remembers venturing to the library in 1998 when the building was new.
“I remember coming here to study and hang out, pass time between classes, finding a book to read… But many of the students today do the same exact thing. Things have changed but they haven’t changed.”