The history of Colby College, Part 62

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716

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March 12, 1824 - Voted that the President communicate to the Hon. J. Price our thanks for his donation to the Library. [Note that the title is Hon., not Rev. The donor was a layman whose gifts may not have been in the field of religion at all.]

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March 26, 1824 - Voted that the President address a letter to Judge Cony, expressing our thanks for his very acceptable present to the library; viz., $20 for the purchase of books.

July 6, 1825 - Voted to express thanks to the Boston Female Juvenile Education Society for their gift of Rees's Cyclopedia.

December 5, 1825 - Voted to communicate to Mr. Walker of Boston our grateful thanks for his gift to the Library of Rollins' Ancient History in two volumes quarto with plates, and of Josephus' Antiquity of the Jews, also in two volumes with plates.

That books were actually circulated to students in the earliest years is shown by several actions taken by the faculty in 1827. By that time the teaching staff numbered three in addition to Chaplin and Briggs: Stephen Chapin as Professor of Sacred Theology, and two tutors, Ephraim Tripp and Leonard Tobey. In 1824, Tripp had relieved Briggs of the librarian's duties.

The faculty voted to authorize Tripp to procure "two quires of wrapping paper for the purpose of covering books when taken from the Library." They next voted to assign for use of the Library the room in South College "contiguous to the Cabinet" [the collection of minerals]. The collection of books had become large enough to warrant a systematic plan for their designation, and it was de- cided that "Professor Chapin shall propose a plan for labeling and numbering the books in the Library, and Mr. Tripp shall procure the printing of 2000 labels." The time had come also for published regulations concerning the Library.

Library Regulations Adopted June 29, 1827. The Library shall be opened weekly on Fridays at 1:15 P.M. for the admission of the senior and junior classes, and at 2:00 on the same afternoon for the sopho- more and freshman classes. Members of the Theological School will resort to the Library with the classes with which they rank respectively. Members of the Grammar School3 may take books from the Library on the condition that they be charged, on their term bills, the usual fee for the use of the Library every term during any part of which they apply for books. Such persons may resort to the Library any time after 2:00 P.M. until it is closed. Students shall be waited on according to the priority of application, but no student is allowed to interrupt the li- brarian while he is waiting on another student. Every student shall be considered accountable for the books he has taken out until he has pre- sented them to the librarian and credit is actually given for their return. The librarian is allowed in no case to deviate from any of the above regulations.

When the fall term of 1827 was well under way, it was found advisable to open the Library on two afternoons, instead of only one, each week. A year earlier, the Trustees had deemed the Library of such importance that, although the College was already in debt, and budgets could be balanced only by gifts, they voted "to expend $600 for books to increase the Library, and made President Chaplin, Pro- fessor Chapin, and Treasurer Timothy Boutelle a committee to purchase the books." One not unexpected use of the Library is shown by a vote of the Trustees in 1829: "Voted that thanks be presented to Rev. Rufus Babcock and his asso- ciates for their generous donation of text books to the Library for the use of indigent students."

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The first published catalogue of the Library showed that its collection in 1835 was widely distributed over the fields of knowledge, despite the fact that "theology and sacred literature" accounted for 489 of the total stock of 1747 volumes. There were 236 books dealing with law and politics, 165 with history, 95 with belles lettres; 49 were works of poetry and drama, and 73 were biographies. Although in 1835 science was in its infancy, the College Library had 47 volumes on Natural Philosophy, 46 on Mathematics, 23 on Chemistry, 16 on Natural History, 61 on "General Science," and six on Geology.

When the College was only fifteen years old, the Library's collection of bound periodicals already amounted to more than a hundred volumes. Mos! important were thirty-one bound volumes of the Edinburgh Review, several vol- umes of the American Journal of Science and Arts, and scattered volumes of the London Quarterly Review, the Foreign Quarterly Review, and the Westminster Review.

It is interesting to note a few of the distinctly secular books that were on the library shelves as early as 1835. They included six volumes of the works of Joseph Addison, six of Samuel Johnson, and perhaps more amazingly the writings of Laurence Sterne. There were Irving's Life of Columbus and Marshall's five- volume Life of Washington, as well as Southey's Life of Nelson. The Library had the now rare and valuable Greenleaf maps of Maine, published from 1828 to 1831. The Waterville student had access to the writings of Locke, Hume, and Adam Smith, as well as to Jonathan Edwards' On the Will. He could take from his college library the famous historical works of Gibbon, Hallam, and Voltaire, and he could dip into that now rare volume, History of Religions, by a New England woman, Hannah Adams. Nor was Maine neglected. Judge Williamson's History of Maine had been published in 1832, and the college library had it. If he wanted to polish his manners, the student could read the Letters of Lord Chesterfield. If he was interested in the newly developing sciences, he could find in the Library Erasmus Darwin's Zoonomia; Nuttle's Land Birds and its companion volume Water Birds; Parkman's Introduction to Fossils; Mineralogy and Geology, by Professor Parker Cleaveland of Bowdoin; Cote's Hydrostatics, Coddington's Optics, Gregory's Mechanics, Whewell's Dynamics, and Gummere's Astronomy. Even an interest in travel was whetted by Park's Travels in Africa, Samuel Johnson's Jour- ney to the Western Islands, and Leigh's Journey to Egypt. And, believe it or not, the Waterville College Library in 1835 was not too squeamish to circulate the poems of Byron and of Burns.

Interest in book collections and periodical subscriptions for student use was made apparent by the attention given to their libraries by the two literary societies, the Literary Fraternity and the Erosophian Adelphi, whose activities have been recounted in a previous chapter. The original constitution of each society pro- vided for the office of librarian to have charge of the society's collection of books and to administer its reading room. A dozen years older than the Adelphi, the Literary Fraternity had the larger library in 1843, when the librarian of the Adelphi, in an appeal to alumni and friends, wrote: "Although our library is more valuable than that of the Literary Fraternity, 1500 sounds better than 1000, not- withstanding the fact that the extra 500 may be made up of antique spelling books."

As early as 1824 the Literary Fraternity voted to raise over a period of three years what was then the huge sum of $300 to increase its library. Hastings, a Waterville bookseller, agreed to furnish the selected volumes at 35% discount.

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A competitor, Lane of Hallowell, agreed to give 40%, furnish all the books imme- diately and take his payment in three annual installments. Members of the faculty subscribed to the society libraries as well as to the College Library. In 1824 each professor gave five dollars toward the campaign of the Literary Fraternity and President Chaplin gave ten dollars.

Probably there never was a time when any library frequented by young men was free from vandalism. In 1833 both the College Library and that of the Literary Fraternity suffered losses. The culprit was apprehended. The faculty minutes of October 21, 1833, contain the following item,

B. W. of the junior class was arraigned on the charge of having purloined books and plates from the college and society libraries, confessed his crime and restored a part of the stolen articles and promised to restore the remainder forthwith. Voted unanimously that the crime of W - - is such as to require that his connection with this college be dissolved and he is accordingly directed to remove himself and his effects from the college premises before sundown.

The societies were more active in providing current periodicals than was the College Library. By 1855, when the two societies were operating a joint reading room, they were subscribing to three daily papers - a very early date for dailies to be read in Maine. On Feb. 21, 1855, Erosophian Adelphi voted that "with the concurrence of the Literary Fraternity, the daily papers for the Reading Room shall be the Portland Daily Advertiser, the Boston Daily Journal, and the New York Daily Tribune." In 1856 the society reading room was receiv- ing regularly more than thirty periodicals, prominent among which were Harper's, the North American Review, and Littel's Living Age.

When both societies dissolved in the 1870's, they gave their libraries to the College, and the College Library was thus increased by more than four thousand volumes.

The contribution of the Literary Fraternity and the Erosophian Adelphi is admirably summed up by Herrick and Rush:

The libraries of the early literary societies throughout the country are known to have played an important part in the development of our present college and university libraries. The transfer of well-selected society collections was a stroke of fortune to the college library, which often consisted for the most part of aggregate gifts of charity. We can realize the gain for the institutions that had those society libraries as their foundation collections. What was lost thereby we can less easily measure; that is, the individual student interest and active participation in the selection of books and in the management of the libraries.4

The earliest librarian's report preserved in the college archives was written by Martin B. Anderson, librarian in 1844. He was the man who later became famous as the founder and first president of the University of Rochester. After his graduation from Waterville College in 1840, he became tutor, then professor of rhetoric in the College, and served as librarian from 1842 to 1850. Anderson's report in 1844 showed that sale of duplicates and "a number of small books not fitted for use of students" had netted $115.20, only $20.80 of which was needed for binding. The remaining $94.40 had been spent for new purchases, some of

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which had been received and the rest were "now on order from the importer." That makes it obvious that most of the purchases were coming from London. Among the items thus procured in 1844 were Darwin's Journal, De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, and Thiers' History of England.

Publication of another catalogue in 1845 showed that in ten years the Li- brary had grown from 1747 volumes to 3318. Especially significant was the increase in bound periodicals. The decade had seen the addition of 23 volumes of the Eclectic Review; 12 volumes of the Journal de Physique (Paris); 113 vol- umes of the Universal Magazine (London); eight volumes of the Annals of Educa- tion (Boston); and six volumes of the Mémoires de Physique et de Chimie de la Société D'Arcueil (Paris). The Library had also acquired the earliest sixteen issues of the Maine Register, and had secured the valuable issues of the Massachu- setts Register from 1791 to 1833.

The Library was keeping up with many current publications. It had the Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, published in 1845, the very year the catalogue was printed. It had Thomson's The Seasons (1841), Byron's Dramas (1842), the Earl of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion in England (1843). More surprising was its early accession of three books in German: Ulrich's Reisen und Forschungen in Griechenland (Bremen, 1840); Hermann's Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staatsalterthümer (Heidelberg, 1841); and Hermann's Über Griechische Monatkunge (Göttingen, 1844).

Although by today's standards growth of the College Library seemed slow in the next decade, 1845 to 1855, the total volumes added were 1038, bringing the library holdings to nearly 4400 volumes. Nearly half of the thousand additions were acquired by purchase, showing that persistent and successful efforts were made to raise money for the Library. In that period money was going for books, not for service. Martin B. Anderson complained to the Trustees that he received no additional recompense for serving as librarian, although previous to 1843 his predecessor had been paid $50 a year. In 1850 Anderson was succeeded by Samuel K. Smith, both as Professor of Rhetoric and as Librarian. He had charge of the Library for 23 years, when in 1873 he was succeeded by the man whose competence, genius and devotion made the Colby Library widely known for its service to education-Edward Winslow Hall.

Four years before Hall assumed office, the Library had entered its new quar- ters in Memorial Hall. At first housed in a small room in South College, it had been moved to Recitation Hall when that building was erected in 1836. When Memorial Hall was completed in 1869, its eastern wing, with double alcoves two floors high, became the home of the College Library for nearly eighty years.

Although Colby was to wait until 1929 for its first trained librarian, it had a progressive and professionally minded librarian in Edward Winslow Hall. Be- fore he took office he had succeeded in persuading the Trustees to set up their first permanent library fund of $3000, and that modest nest egg became the nucleus of later substantial funded accounts for the benefit of the Library. What Hall did to improve the service within a few years is shown by praise from John Eaton, U. S. Commissioner of Education, who visited most of the northeastern colleges in 1877. His report said:

The gratifying increase in the usefulness of the Library of Colby Uni- versity, one of the most notable increases made anywhere in New Eng- land, was due to the labors of the present efficient librarian, Professor

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E. W. Hall, in cataloguing, indexing, and making accessible the contents of the Library; from his efforts to procure, by gift or purchase, desirable books actually in demand; from appointing the library hour at the close of chapel service, when the students would all be assembled near by in the building, and from throwing open the alcoves to the free inspection of students.5

It was not easy for Hall to persuade the faculty to adopt open stacks. Al- most everyone at that time held the view which many years later Sinclair Lewis attributed to the librarian in Main Street, that "it is the first duty of the librarian to preserve the books." Edward Hall believed, however, that a superior duty is to make books available to students and to acquaint them with books by giving every opportunity for browsing. That the open shelf plan adopted by Hall in 1874 really worked is shown by the praise in Commissioner Eaton's report:

There seems to have been no trouble arising from admitting students to the shelves. Not a volume has been missed, and there is very little misplacing of books. The saving in assistants and the speed in pro- curing books would far more than equal a loss of $50 worth of books a year.6

In 1870, under Smith, the average circulation per student had been ten vol- umes; by 1880, under Hall, it had risen to thirty-six volumes. In 1881, Hall's report said: "Our circulation remains higher than the average rate of college libraries. In 1874 we circulated only 761 volumes. Last year we circulated 5746."

So rapid was the growth in accessions during Hall's first seventeen years that, in 1890, the Library had 23,920 books and 10,500 pamphlets, all of which Hall had personally catalogued. Poole's Index to Periodical Literature had been added in 1883. The library of the late Charles Hamlin, presented by his widow, had added 1456 volumes, many of them choice works of science. The alcoves already were overcrowded, and in a few years hundreds of infrequently used volumes were stored in the attic. In his 1890 report Hall said:

The books most in demand are those that are read in connection with topics brought to the students' attention in prosecution of their studies. The Library is now open the entire afternoon of every week day. In 1873 two half-hours per week answered all demands.

In 1891 the Trustees decided the time had come to relieve Hall of all teach- ing duties and let him devote full time to the Library. Since 1866 he had been Professor of Modern Languages, carrying a full teaching schedule. Yet for at least ten years prior to 1890 he had devoted never less than thirty hours a week to library duties. Without any relaxation in his teaching he had alone accom- plished the prodigious task of cataloguing more than 30,000 items, and had in- stalled a card catalogue. Recognition was long overdue, and when he became full-time librarian in 1891 he only carried on what he had already done for many years.

Hall's catalogue system was actually a shelving system. The alcoves were numbered one, two, three, etc., beginning at the entrance. Divisions in the shelves were marked by partitions. The number 154, for instance, meant that the book

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was located on the first floor, fifth alcove, fourth division. Hall's card catalogue was the first to be introduced into any library in Maine. In 1888 he changed to the Dewey System, which prevailed until the adoption of the Library of Congress classification in 1935.

For many years, despite the interest of friends and the zeal of a devoted librarian, the Colby Library suffered for lack of funds. In 1892 Hall said that no attempt had been made for the past forty years to add a nickel to the tiny library fund.7 Seven years earlier, in 1885, Hall had said:

As will be seen by references to the report of the Treasurer, the sum appropriated for the purchase of books has been growing less for several years past, while appropriation for binding has ceased altogether. This is not likely to be interpreted as evidence of advancement. If the de- creasing process must continue, might it not be well to ask the Treasurer not to publish our shame abroad?

Finances had not improved when Hall retired in 1910, after 37 years as librarian and 43 years as a member of the faculty. By 1898 the appropriation had decreased until it was lower than at any time since 1870. Only 78 books were purchased and subscriptions to periodicals were sharply reduced. Except for special appropriations springing from designated campaigns or allocated donations, the regular library appropriation did not reach $1000 until 1913. What is more astounding, the largest regular appropriation previous to that year had been in the earliest decade of the College, when $600 was allocated to the Library. In 1834 the amount had fallen to $74. In 1882 it had reached $450, but eight years later in 1890 it was down to $202. Although in 1900 it was up again to $440, at the end of the next decade in 1910 it had dropped again to $246. When the College celebrated its centennial in 1920, the year's total expenditure for the Library, ex- clusive of the librarian's salary and the wages of student assistants, was $1181.

In 1897 the Colby Library had 30,000 volumes besides 14,000 pamphlets, and despite low funds the average annual increase was a thousand volumes. At that time the Library also supported a reading room in a separate building.

The Reading Room is situated in the South Division of South College, on the first floor, directly across from the President's office. Here may be found twenty-one daily newspapers, besides thirty-two others, in- cluding the principal local papers published in Maine, religious papers of various denominations, Puck and Judge. The room is open daily except Sunday, 8 A. M. to 10 P. M., and on Sunday from 1 to 8 P. M.8

In a previous chapter we have told of the attempts in 1902 to retire Professor Hall and operate the Library "more cheaply." The Trustees actually voted to notify Hall that his services would not be needed after the end of that college year, but alumni sentiment and the obvious injustice forced them to change their minds. Fortunately for Colby College, Professor Hall remained in charge of the Library through the critical financial years until better days had already come under Presi- dent Roberts.

We must not think that Hall's work was not appreciated or that there was any personal antagonism toward him. The President and the Trustees, in 1902, were in desperation seeking every means of economy, and they were so unwise

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as to believe it could be obtained by releasing one of New England's best known librarians. Fortunately they changed their minds.

Although Hall was retained in 1902, his salary was cut. When he had given up teaching in 1891, although keeping the title of full professor, he was paid three hundred dollars less than his colleagues. In 1904, when the professors were get- ting $1600 a year, Hall's salary was only $1000. Hall protested in a letter to Dudley P. Bailey, chairman of the Finance Committee of the Trustees. He pointed out that while he was obliged to carry on all the work at the Colby Library, with- out even student assistance, which had been denied him since 1898, the librarian at Bowdoin got $2200, and had four full-time assistants: an assistant librarian at $1000, a reference librarian at $800, a cataloguer at $600, and an assistant cata- loguer at six dollars a week, as well as the provision of $350 for student assistants. At the University of Maine the librarian's salary was $1800. He had two assist- ants, at $800 and $600 respectively, and there was $400 for student assistants. Only at Bates was the situation comparable to that at Colby. In Lewiston the librarian was part-time at $550, and $300 was paid to an assistant. But even Bates, Hall pointed out, had an appropriation for student help. Hall commented ruefully, "The librarian of a college is usually paid the same as a full professor." He could have been quite as mournful about the appropriation for books and periodicals. In 1907 he had only $275 for that purpose.

A year later Hall wanted to know what had happened to his long cherished library fund. "The appropriation last year was the smallest I have ever known [bear in mind that he had known the Library intimately for 38 years]. Something has happened to the Library Fund investments. The income in 1906 was $389.83. Last year it was only $267.25." In a moment of repentance the Trustees re- sponded by appropriating for 1908 a sum of $300 in addition to income from the fund, but the trustee records for June, 1909, tell us: "It was moved to amend the item in the report of the Committee on Finance appropriating $300 to the Library, so that the allotment to the Library should be solely the income from the Library Fund, estimated at $300."

During Hall's long tenure as librarian there began a practice of which he did not approve, but which his colleagues on the faculty countenanced because each of them never knew when he might be the next one to profit by the change. The new feature was the institution of departmental libraries, separately administered, separately financed, and all issuing books directly to students. The practice was initiated by Shailer Mathews, who expressed his views in a letter written to the President and Trustees of Colby University in 1891, immediately after Mathews' return from a year of study in Berlin.

My study of the German methods and results convinces me the students must examine original historical documents if the study of history is to be successful. Our senior class is competent to do other work than the mere appropriation of other men's conclusions. Because of the lack of

. such documents in our library such work is now impossible. We have available few of the sources except public documents. The only way to meet the need is by special annual appropriation for the collection of documents in the college library.

At first Mathews seems to have intended only special attention to the de- partment's needs in the general library, but he soon changed to an appeal for a

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separate departmental collection, and the Trustees voted, "In addition to the gen- eral library of the College, it shall be the policy to build up the libraries of special departments." Thus began the library of the Department of History, supported for many years by student fees, and jealously administered by Professor J. W. Black until he left Colby to go to Union College in 1924. Then, on recommenda- tion of the new librarian, who had been on the job only a year, the entire history library was transferred to the central collection.

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The history of Colby College, Part 62

Author: Colby College Publication date: 1963 Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press Number of Pages: 716

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716