Innis Library celebrates 40 years

By: Rachel Katz

Nov. 5 marked an important milestone for Innis Library and its namesake. As part of a number of ongoing events to celebrate the library’s 40th anniversary, staff served cake in honour of economist Harold Innis’ 120th birthday. McMaster Librarian Vivian Lewis said, “it’s an exciting time for the library. 40 years is a fairly significant amount of time.”

Innis Library isn’t nearly as spacious as the Thode or Mills libraries, but Lewis, who ran it for five years, said “it’s a very special place for students in the Commerce program, who really consider it to be home base, and it’s nice to do something to celebrate [it].”

One of the features that sets Innis apart from the other campus libraries is its atmosphere. Unlike Mills, there is a greater focus on group work.

“I think, because of the work that’s done in the Commerce program,” Lewis explains.

Combined with its small size, these two factors have created a close-knit community around the library.

Lewis was excited to talk about the anniversary, and mentioned that TwelvEighty even advertised a special drink to mark the occasion. She said the Innis staff was disappointed to learn Thode and Mills both had their own cocktails but Innis did not, so for Harold Innis’ birthday, the restaurant created the “Inniscapable.”

Unfortunately, the limited availability of the Innicapable is not the only disappointment the library’s staff has had to contend with. Last year the library staff announced an art contest as part of the build-up to the anniversary.

“It’s not very inspirational to have all these blank walls,” says Business Librarian Ines Perkovic.

Library Manager Ann Pearce says that the original plan was to unveil a piece of student-made artwork at the upcoming formal anniversary celebration in March.

“Unfortunately we only had three submissions, [none] of which were not made for Innis [specifically],” she said. “We were disappointed.”

Low submissions have not deterred Pearce and Perkovic though.

“It was something that we really wanted to do because we believe in working with faculty and students, because this is part of their space as well, but… now we are rethinking things, and we’re going with a word wall,” Pearce explained.

“We’ve got a preliminary list of words, and we’ll probably use a program like Wordle to kind of create it,” said Perkovic. The piece will likely go outside her office. She says they plan to “[use] words that reflect what you can do in a library,” but it will not be “business-specific."

The word wall is only in its preliminary stages. Pearce said she and Perkovic have yet to decide if the piece will be painted directly on the wall or if they will use sticker signs, but they still plan to reveal it at the formal anniversary event this March. While their initial idea was unsuccessful, Pearce said, “we’re certainly not ruling out having another competition for student art, because we have a lot of white space on our walls.”

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