University of Virginia Library

2. BEGINNINGS OF REORGANIZATION

The foregoing are general statements. Now, as a radio
commentator might say, for some of the details. The 101st
session of the University of Virginia began in 1925. There
were then, including the Law Librarian, seven full time
members of the Library Staffs; and in the general library in
the Rotunda and in the thirteen separate collections scattered
among the university buildings there was a reported
total of 131,422 volumes. With the exception of the 17,194
which had survived the fire of 1895, this was a new collection
which had been assembled in thirty years.

John Shelton Patton continued to be Librarian through
two years of the second century. During that biennium
there was little alteration in the status quo of the years

immediately preceding. There was completion of the process
of taking over the northwest wing of the Rotunda
building as a stack and reading room for periodicals; from
James Reese McKeldin came an endowment fund of $1,000
for books in Philosophy; an additional $1,000 for the
Education Library was received from Alfred William
Erickson; the Thomas Carroll Smith Memorial Endowment
Fund of $10,000 was established for the Law Library; and
1926 saw the beginning of the Institute for Research in the
Social Sciences, organized and headed by Professor Wilson
Gee. That Institute had significance for library development
because of the argumented emphasis on research and
because of the effective cooperation between Professor Gee
and the University Library in matters of common concern.

Meantime, as a step toward an expanded library programme,
Dean Metcalf, Chairman of the Faculty Library
Committee, had turned his attention to the selection of a
successor to Librarian Patton. It was deemed wise this time
to choose someone with previous library experience. Jefferson's
conception of the Librarian as a guardian and a
guide was, in fact, being broadened to include the Librarian
as an administrator. The choice would naturally have fallen
on an alumnus of the University of Virginia, as it had in all
previous cases. But librarianship as a vocation appeared to
have been singularly lacking in appeal to the University's
graduates. It therefore seemed necessary to widen the field
of search. Chairman Metcalf's own realization of the difficulties
in the situation that the new Librarian must face
was sharpened by the unwillingness of several of those who
were under favorable consideration to undertake the task.
Actually it was not until the month after Librarian Patton's
retirement that the new appointment was made; and then,
after the century of ingrowing selections, the choice went
amusingly far afield. For it fell on Harry Clemons, who
had been Librarian of the missionary University of Nanking

in China until March of that year, 1927, when a Russian-induced
civil uprising had led to the historic “Nanking
Incident” and had made necessary the evacuation of
Americans from that section of China. Chairman Metcalf
learned of the possible availability of the Nanking Librarian,
arranged for a conference as soon as the latter returned
to the United States, and the appointment was made by
President Alderman early in July, with approval somewhat
later by the Board of Visitors.

The new Librarian, wishing to enroll in a refresher
course in Library Administration at Columbia University
that summer (a course conducted by that Solon among
Librarians, Azariah Root of Oberlin College), did not take
office until September, Miss Dinwiddie, the Assistant Librarian,
being in charge during the intervening months. In
addition to this special library course at Columbia, the tenth
Librarian in the series had had academic training at Wesleyan,
Princeton, and Oxford Universities and library and
teaching experience at Wesleyan, Princeton, and Nanking.
During the first world war he had been the official representative
of the American Library Association in charge of
the library war service for the American Expeditionary
Force in Siberia; and for a brief period he had been connected
with the Chinese Section of the Library of Congress.
It would appear to have been a daring gamble on the part of
President Alderman and Chairman Metcalf to interpret
such types of experience as applicable to the situation at
the University of Virginia.

The obvious first moves for the newcomer were to
familiarize himself as rapidly as possible with the details
of the situation, to coordinate his efforts with those of the
small Staff which had been loyally maintaining the service
schedules, and to develop his own planning in harmony
with the purposes and policies of the Faculty Library
Committee. In his first report, covering the last four months

of 1927, there is record of several minor moves that would
not impede a service in operation, of a listing of the
accumulation of unfinished tasks, of an increase in the
cataloguing force, and of an extension of the hours of
opening from forty-nine to eighty-four a week. The actual
addition to the hours of opening had, however, been less
extensive than the figures indicated. In the previous session
a small group of students, headed by Joseph Lee Vaughan
and Hubert Douglas Bennett, had been permitted to keep
the library room open at night without pay, and such
volunteer hours had not been included in the official figures.
An early move of the new Librarian had been to arrange
for salary compensation for this public-spirited service.

As for the actual extent of the University's holdings, a
shelf by shelf count had been made of all library books in
any way available in any building of the University. The
total of this census, 151,333, did not include sundry
unopened boxes of gifts or the motley aggregation of
unprocessed volumes that covered the floor of the top
gallery of the Rotunda. As there had been additions during
the biennium 1925 to 1927, this total indicated the approximate
correctness of the figure, 131,422, reported in 1925.

The increase in the Cataloguing Staff made it possible
to give immediate attention to the century-old problem
of cataloguing. In order that this might proceed as wisely
as possible, half hour daily conferences of the Cataloguers
were instituted; and it is doubtful if the four volume
Survey of Libraries in the United States, which had been
published by the American Library Association the previous
year, proved anywhere more timely than it did for
the little group in one of the first floor oval rooms in the
Rotunda which daily read aloud and, with growing confidence
and good humor and enthusiasm, discussed the problems
encountered and the solutions attempted by other
libraries.

Any glimmerings of enthusiasm were salutary. That
patience was a primary requisite in the library programme
at the University of Virginia had been and continued to
be only too plainly apparent. Yet patience and the note of
hope proved hardy, as was indicated three years later in
the opening sentence of the library report for 1930:—

The activities of the Library Staff have resembled the efforts of
a mountain climber. The path has led upward, but progress has
been increasingly hampered by the crowding in of trees and underbrush.
Occasional glimpses of a broadening prospect have stimulated
the climber to renewed exertions; and the dishevelment and
discomfort which attend such efforts have been borne with cheerfulness
because of the hope that the goal can be reached.

It proved fortunate that the advance could be by
several paths. For progress was possible on some even when
others seemed at least temporarily blocked. A new home
for the general library was essential. But there were also
the problems of cataloguing, of collection building, and of
assembling an adequate and efficient staff. None of these
four was an end in itself. But each afforded an important
means toward a fuller library service. Each will be considered
in turn.

First, however, there should be a word concerning
changes in the status of the Librarian and in the operations
of the Faculty Library Committee.

The tenth Librarian was the first to be granted faculty
rank, that of a Professor; and he became not only Secretary
of the Faculty Library Committee but also a voting member.
In the matter of initiative in library planning, Chairman
Metcalf played the part of a wise parent: first directing
the course of action, with careful explanation of the reasons
therefor; then, as indications of maturity emerged, falling
in behind as supporter and counsellor. A significant recognition
of the new role of the Librarian as an administrator
came in an invitation in October 1930 to present to the

University Senate a statement of the library situation and
of proposed plans for reorganization. The Senate was a new
body which had been established in 1926, its membership
consisting of ten administrative officers and of eleven representatives
elected by the Faculties of the various Departments.
The reception accorded to the Librarian by this
body was a far cry from the early attitude towards the
student Librarians.

There was a gradual change also in the operations of
the Faculty Library Committee. In course of time its function
became more exclusively the formulation of general
policies and not executive action. For several years after
1927 the responsibility for the selection of books to be
purchased, which previously had involved the committee
in its most time consuming task, had been continued. But
by common consent that function was then transferred to
an executive subcommittee composed of the Chairman
and the Librarian. In order that authoritative knowledge
of the material in each field of learning might be available,
each School or Department—there were then approximately
thirty in all—was asked to designate one of its faculty members
to act in liaison with the Librarian and to pass on
all requests for the purchase of books which might originate
in his School or Department. This large group did not
operate as a committee, and no meetings of the whole were
ever attempted. But it did afford direct access between the
Faculties and the Library; and in a number of cases it
resulted in thoroughgoing attempts at collection building
in the specified fields of learning that would have met the
approval of Mr. Jefferson.

In the intensive planning for the proposed new building,
especially in 1931 and 1938, and again in 1944 when
attention was turned to plans for an extension to that
building, the Library Committee performed much close
and careful work through subcommittees, the Chairman

and the Librarian being members of each subcommittee.
In 1942 a subcommittee composed of Dean Metcalf, who
had in 1940 been designated Chairman Emeritus of the
Faculty Library Committee, of Professor Robert Henning
Webb, the new Chairman, and of the Librarian made
an extensive survey of the library operations in order
to outline moves toward economy and efficiency, its proposals
being afterwards approved by the whole committee.

As a result of its concentration on its policy making
function, fewer meetings of the Library Committee became
necessary, but each meeting was of augmented importance.
In illustration of the actions taken, two examples may be
given, one concerning censorship, the other the policy for
acquisitions to the library collections.

Because of the nationwide agitation concerning censorship
preliminary to the second world war, the Faculty
Library Committee in December 1939

The crucial words “for research by qualified scholars” are
a signboard of the progress that had by that time been
achieved in the development of the research service of this
University Library.

The second action was the outcome of meetings held
in April 1940, one having the unique character of being a
joint session of the Faculty Library Committee with ten
representatives of the Library Staff. The matter under
consideration was the problem whether this Library should
accept and make available all obtainable books, periodicals,
pamphlets, newspapers, and manuscripts, or should adopt

a policy of selection. There was final agreement on the
following resolutions:—

It needs but a reminder of the detailed supervision of
all phases of library activity maintained by the Faculty
Library Committees of the earlier years to reveal the
contrast in the very wording of these resolutions.

This is, however, getting ahead of our story; and we
return to the four paths of progress.