This is a view of a leisure reading room on the second floor of Donnelley Library taken in the mid 1990s. Present in the picture are numerous armchairs and couches of the period. The wall of bookcases appear to be holding encyclopedias. There were built for the 1965-opened library, part of the Perkins & Will interior, and for the nucleus of what became after 1983 the library's Special Collections.  

In the 1983 renovation of the library and incorporation of the gound floor, following the move of the social science depts. to Young Hall, 1982, a new main floor Special Collections Reading Room was created, with much more capacious closed stacks on the newly occupied lower level.  The chnge came as a result of the increase danger of theft that developed after the library went online with the Illinois state higheer education system in the fall of 1980.  Oberlin had noticed the relationship of this virtual access and a rash of thefts at insecure smaller academic open-stack libraries. In 1983 the Treaure Room was enclosed above the cases for better control of noise and this became a general study room, with osme Special Collections materials still in the cases until 2003.   

"The Donnelley Library was designed by Perkins & Will to be balanced, symmetrical, and imposing. Its boxy massing was enlivened with touches that rather incongruously suggested a Japanese tea house, including rocky landscaping where it was set into the undulating terrain, a wide veranda around the main floor, and a distinctive hipped roof" (Carolyn E. Lowry on Donnelley Library in "Lake Forest College: A Guide to the Campus," 2007, pp. 42-43).

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