Elvis, not to be found

From Gale Walden’s “David’s Presence,” about the writer’s relationship with David Foster Wallace:

It was David who introduced me to the Urbana Free Library on a visit to his parents, shortly after we started dating. “This is where I studied in high school,” he said. “Not at the university?” I asked. The University of Illinois, a few blocks down the street, has several wonderful libraries; the main reading room has long wooden tables and small lamps, like a library in a movie. Across the atrium, behind the circulation desk, there are stacks and stacks of books that move at the push of a button, compressing and expanding like an accordion. There is a little shrine to Elvis Presley, who once ordered a library card from there. Since David’s father, a philosophy professor, had an office next door, I assumed he would have worked there. “No, way more relaxed and down home at the public library,” he said.

This passage piqued my interest. I sometimes work in the Urbana Free Library when Elaine is at a rehearsal and we’re spending a day in Champaign-Urbana. And I’ve spent many hours roaming the stacks at University Library, UIUC’s main library. But I’ve never seen an Elvis shrine.

We spent some of the day in C-U yesterday and made a quick stop at the University Library. I am sorry to report that the Elvis shrine, created in 1994, seems to be no more. A staff member showed me where it was once housed, in a corner right before one enters the stacks. No one knew when it had been removed. Years ago, before their time.

[Where the shrine once stood.]

But wait, there’s more:

A 2013 story about spooky stuff at UIUC has the shrine’s backstory (it has to do with the Divine Comedy, not a library card) and the story of its removal and relocation:

For more than a decade, it hung in a metal case near the circulation desk . . . . Alas, duct and drywall work in 2008 necessitated the shrine’s removal to the remote corridor of the stacks where it now dwells, somewhat unappreciated.

Is the shrine still in the stacks? If it is, the librarians weren’t saying, at least not to me.

[The main library at UIUC is beyond huge — searching for the shrine in the stacks could take days.]