What’s With the Blue Gloves in the Law Library?
The question “what’s with the blue gloves?” has come up quite a few times since the students have returned for the fall semester. The short answer is “we are working to avoid the landfill.”
The law library is disposing of hundreds of thousands of sheets of microfiche and hundreds of reels of microfilm because the materials are now available online. In order for the fiche to be recycled, each card must be removed from its protective paper sleeve. The blue gloves protect our hands and help by sticking to the fiche. Time consuming, but definitely worth the end goal!
In addition each roll of microfilm has to be unrolled from its spool. We have been mulling a few ideas. Everything from rolling races to dropping the spools off the side of the balcony in the faculty lounge have been suggested. No one ever said saving the environment had to be boring!
If you have any interesting ideas, send them along to me via email at calemmer@iupui.edu. All ideas will be considered and evaluated for fun (and of course-risk).
After the cabinets (all 78 of them) are empty, the area on the first floor will be reorganized into casual seating for students to use for studying and relaxing.
If you would like to lend your support to our “save the environment” project, we can certainly use volunteers. Come at your own time — for fifteen minutes or an hour. Just stop by the circulation desk at the library and ask to help. We will give you a box to sort and your very own pair of stylish blue gloves. Hope to see soon!
Image credits: Catherine A. Lemmer
About Catherine Lemmer
