the portal

On the third floor of the library, we recently punched through the wall into the building next door, the latest CC aquisition, in order to make more room in the library for both books and people...Since there are staff areas in the new annex that need to be accessed, though the building itself (the old Spertus Institute) is not officially open, we've been required, if we want any access at all from this side of the wall, to post a guard, a sentry all hours during which the library is open who will sit there and not let anyone not suppsed to be in there through the door until it's officially open. We've been calling it "The Portal" and part of me wonders whether the urge to open the forbidden door by our patrons is not exacerbated by the fact that we seem to be guarding it so closely. Were it simply a nondescript metal doorway, surely no one would find it half as enticing as one closely guarded with a sentry complete with a sign-in sheet and a well placed table...is it not sort of like the button that says "Do not push this button..."

I've been amusing myself with thoughts about what the random person might possibly guess could be hidden behind such a door. The secret to the Dewey Decimel system? a super computer? The gateway to the underworld? (actually the reference staff, newly relieved of their cushy offices to make way for group study rooms and now relegated to cubicle-land are now housed there. Given how most of them seem to get along, and now the complete lack of their former privacy or any ability to get away from each other, I'm guaging we may one day open the door to bloodied librarians strewn far and wide...)

Hmm..Perhaps it IS the gateway to evil...