I. THE NATIONAL EQUAL JUSTICE LIBRARY AT AMERICAN UNIVERSITY –A
MULTI-PURPOSE FACILITY IN THE NATION’S CAPITAL
Washington College of Law generously donated 2,000 square
feet of prime space in its new law building to house the National Equal Justice
Library. It is located behind a glass wall easily visible from the law school’s
impressive entrance foyer. We have divided this space into five rooms. Because
the NEJL is so much more than a passive repository of books, articles, and
documents, these rooms are equipped to serve a number of other purposes and
programs.
The largest, over 1000 square feet, is the NEJL Reading
Room. That room, in turn, is divided into two areas. The first, the museum
area, features 340 square feet of display walls featuring text, photos,
graphics, etc. telling the history of legal aid and indigent defense, two
display cabinets housing key documents and artifacts, and the Wall of Justice
honoring the heroes of these movements. The second is the reading area itself,
where library patrons can sit at tables and read books or examine documents
found in the Library’s collections.
The NEJL Archives occupy an archival storage room of
some 370 square feet. This room is filled with archival shelving that stores
acid free boxes containing correspondence, memos, and other documents. The room
also has a small worktable for use in processing these papers.
The NEJL Media Center is built around a combination
TV-VCR and includes chairs for visitors desiring to view videotaped oral
histories, TV documentaries, etc. This room also contains equipment for copying
and storing videotapes, as well as storage space for audio-tapes and other
media.
The final two rooms are offices - the
NEJL Curator's Office and the Visiting Scholars Office. The latter is currently used as a workroom for the processing of documents the NEJL is acquiring while building its initial collections.
While the Library's décor and furnishings are functional, for the most part they remain austere. As funding permits we expect to implement a plan to replace wallboard with wood paneling and otherwise upgrade the appearance of the facility. But for the present we have elected to focus our limited resources on the Library's several important programs.
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