University of Virginia Library

6. THE STAFF

Thus the library effort during 1925–1950 struggled
upward by several paths: towards a general library buildng,
towards an adequate catalogue, towards a storehouse of
books that would facilitate research as well as undergraduate
studies. Yet those goals were but means, not the desired
end. It was the fourth effort, the development of a skilled
and cooperative Staff, that would most directly affect the
quality of the service that was the central purpose of this
period of reorganization. It was in this matter of a Staff
that the greatest measure of success had been achieved.

In July 1925 there had been seven full time members
and one student part time assistant in the Library Staffs.
The indications at that time were that librarianship had
been offering little appeal to graduates of the University
of Virginia. At the end of June 1950 there were sixty-six
full time members and forty-five student or other part time
assistants in the Library Staffs. Moreover all of the heads
of divisions in the general library who had received appointment
during those twenty-five years had previously been
students at the University; and all of them had at one time
or another since their appointments received tempting
offers of library positions elsewhere. The quality of technical
skill had become high, the contributions of original and
constructive ideas had been outstanding, and many letters
in the library files bore tribute to the range and spirit of
the services that had been rendered. The story of what
happened is a pleasant one. But it is too long to be told
here. Some isolated bits must suffice.

One bit has already been told—the manner in which a
small group of Cataloguers applied to a huge task the
formula of interest and patience and good cheer; and how
the opportunity afforded by the Humanities Fund had been
utilized for an early increase of that Cataloguing Staff.

Another bit appropriately began with Christmas. During

the Christmas holidays of 1928, an undergraduate, who
had been reported to the new Librarian as having capably
performed an odd job or two for the Library at the
Rotunda, was engaged to undertake one of the many special
pieces of work that then impeded the very entrance to any
paths towards progress. What that task was has been forgotten
—but not the speed, accuracy, and completeness of the
performance. It was not long before a regular part time
assistantship had been found for that student. It so happened
that he had two undergraduate friends—a sort of
Three Musketeer group. The two were intrigued by this
new occupation of their comrade, even as Tom Sawyer's
mates discovered that whitewashing a fence had unsuspected
glamor. In a few months they also were members
of the Student Library Staff. It was good fortune for the
new Librarian. For these three student assistants, being at
the same time users of the Library and workers behind the
scenes, had acquired a double point of view. Since they
were endowed with both curiosity and imagination, they
readily grasped the meaning of plans intended to make
library work yield greater dividends in library service. They
also found that their modestly ventured suggestions were
being considered and not infrequently adopted. There had
been no thought in their minds of library business as a
permanent occupation; and the full time positions that
were offered them when they graduated meant to them at
first merely a means for financing graduate study. But their
own contributions to an expanding programme tied them
to that programme by making it their own. That it was
their own needs no proof except their names. The student
who started this by working through his Christmas holidays
was John Wyllie, Curator of Rare Books and of the McGregor
Library; and his two friends were Randolph
Church, Virginia State Librarian, and Jack Dalton, eleventh
Librarian of the University of Virginia.

Another bit had only indirect effect on the permanent
Staff. But the utilization of depression means in order to
clean up the 1927 list of undone jobs had undoubted value
for morale. In 1933 federal emergency relief funds became
available for library work by students and others. Those
were the funds which helped to coin a language of abbreviations:
CWA, FERA, NYA, WPA. At the University of
Virginia they were for the most part administered by
Charles Henry Kauffmann, Director of Student Help; and
his enthusiastic support of the library undertakings made
his contribution to the reorganization programme vitally
effective. On its part, the library administration was able
to present a score or more of worthwhile projects that
demanded concentrated effort and in some cases had instructional
and apprenticeship values. From the number
employed—on the peak year there were 156 library
appointees—there was an unrivalled opportunity to select
library minded workers for regular student assistantships.
It is true that the task of training and supervising ever-changing
groups of part time workers necessarily drew
regular members of the Staff off from their routine duties;
and that an equal amount of money expended on full time
and skilled assistants might have produced more effective
results. But for the Library's clean-up jobs these emergency
funds proved a veritable gift horse. For the ten years 1933
to 1943, during which the funds were available, the records
for all the University Libraries totalled 1,119 individuals
who performed 277,081 hours of work and received
$112,730.12 in wages.

Two developments in the staff situation came from acts
of the General Assembly of Virginia which affected the
libraries of all state supported institutions. The Certification
Law, which went into operation on 1 July 1937, established
professional standards for the more responsible
library positions. This law applied also to the libraries of

Engineering, Law, and Medical Library Reading Rooms

Some Library Publications

political subdivisions exceeding 5,000 in population. It
was the result of several years of effort by the Virginia
Library Association, in which effort several members of
the Staff of the University of Virginia Library took an active
part; and on the three member State Board of Certification
for Librarians Mr. Clemons and Mr. Dalton in succession
received appointments from the Governor. Of the sixty-six
full time members of the Staffs of the University Libraries
in 1950, twenty-six had qualified for professional
status. By the State Personnel Act, which went into effect 1
July 1942, both professional and non-professional members
of Library Staffs were, along with the majority of other
employees of the State, graded for salary standards. Acting
as consultants in the matter of library grading, members of
the Staff of the University of Virginia Library had a part
in this development also. The Personnel Act did much to
solve the vexed problem of inequalities in salaries, and it
also supplied the machinery for cost-of-living adjustments
to which reference has earlier been made. Of course strict
standardization presents its own problems. But by 1950
the understanding, patience, and loyalty of the Library Staff
at the University of Virginia had won through to the reward
of a comparatively satisfactory situation, there being both
recognition of the professional status of library work and
of its appropriate compensation. There was ample cause for
the satisfaction of the University and of the State also. For
the later years had brought evidence of a widespread
impression that the Staff of the University of Virginia
Library was the peer of any in the country.

At the Alderman Library the introduction of research
services, while the functions of a college library were at
the same time being maintained, had brought about conditions
for specialization. The small Staff of 1925 had been
performing the duties pertaining to the purchase, cataloguing,
and circulation of books. As expanded, these functions

had developed into the separately organized Acquisitions,
Preparations, and Circulation Divisions. To those had, in
the 1925–1950 period, been added the Reference and Rare
Book and Manuscript Divisions, making five in all. It was
a planned development. But in a background of economic
and political crises, the growth had necessarily been opportunistic
and poorly balanced. It had been conditioned by
acute pressures at certain points and relief had come
through fortuitous circumstances. Such had been the expansion
of the Preparations Division because of the cataloguing
campaign, and of the Rare Book and Manuscript Division
because of the rapid increase of manuscripts and rare books.
It was not until toward the close of the period that there
had been adequate manning of the Acquisitions and Reference
Divisions; and further adjustments upward were
definitely on the programme for the second quarter of the
Library's second hundred years.

Partly to offset the isolation disadvantages of specialization,
it had been deemed wise, after the move into the Alderman
Library building, to create a representative body of
the Library Staffs in order that information concerning
local library activities might be made available to all. The
purpose being the spread of information, not executive
action, the meetings could be kept within time limits, committee
discussions and administrative conclusions coming
to this group merely as reports. With a touch of persiflage,
this body had been dubbed the Board of Aldermen. Its
meetings were at first held fortnightly and afterwards
monthly; and in course of time the minutes of its meetings
were made available for all members of the Library Staffs
and for the members of the Faculty Library Committee.
The Board of Aldermen thus became a sort of reportorial
body, and its minutes a bulletin of current information.

Since the individuals composing this group were carrying
the major part of the executive responsibilities of the

University of Virginia Libraries, brief personal statements
will be given concerning the personnel of the Board as
constituted at the end of this period. It seems the more
fitting that this be done because at that stage those individual
responsibilities would have compared not unfavorably
with those borne by the first nine Librarians.

The three department libraries were represented by
their Librarians, Miss Frances Farmer for the Law Library,
Miss Elizabeth Frances Adkins for the Medical Library, and
Miss Nellie Imogene Copps for the Engineering Library.

Miss Farmer held B.A. and LL.B. degrees from the University
of Richmond, where she had been Law Librarian
prior to her appointment in 1942 as Executive Secretary
of the Law Library Committee at the University of Virginia.
In the latter position she had organized and supervised
the cataloguing of the law collection. Becoming Law
Librarian in 1945, she had extended the usefulness of the
Law Library by offering reference and other services to the
alumni and to the legal profession in general. She had, for
example, arranged for the cataloguing of the State Law
Library in Richmond. She had also taken over the instruction
in the required course in Legal Bibliography, the
manual for that course having as joint authors Miss Farmer
and Judge Malcolm Ray Doubles. She was a member of
various legal societies, and was Secretary of the American
Association of Law Librarians.

Miss Adkins had been a college student at Hollins College
and the University of Virginia, and held a B.S. degree
from the University of Virginia and a B.A. in Library Science
from the University of North Carolina. Prior to becoming
Medical Librarian in 1947, she had had a varied experience;
as a high school librarian in Alexandria, Virginia, as
assistant in a legislative reference library in Baltimore, as a
cataloguer at the University of Virginia and at the University
of North Carolina, at the latter being in charge of

Latin American materials, and as a war service librarian
at Fort Monroe, Virginia.

By way of an aside, it may be noted that, while Miss
Farmer had been preceded as Law Librarian by Mrs.
Graves who had a notably long term of service, extending
from 1912 to 1945, and while Miss Copps had been the
first to hold the post of Engineering Librarian as a full
time position, there had been eight Medical Librarians
between the removal of that Library from the Rotunda to
the new medical buildings in 1929 and the appointment
of Miss Adkins. The eight had been Mrs. Margaret Otto,
Mrs. Anne Ashhurst Gwathmey, Miss Caroline Hill Davis
(formerly of the Columbia University Library), Mrs. Dora
Mitchell Browning, Mrs. Miriam Thomas Buchanan, Miss
Anne Lewis Morris, Miss Mary Elizabeth Mayo, and Miss
Mabel Cook Wyllie (sister of the Curator of the McGregor
Library). The difference at the Medical Library had arisen
from the effect of marriage upon tenure of office. Four on
that list had departed when their husbands took positions
away from Charlottesville, and three (in a row) had
resigned to become married. For clarification it should
perhaps be added that only two of the seven husbands were
doctors of medicine.

Miss Copps had taken courses at Stratford College,
Columbia, and the University of Virginia. She had become
Engineering Librarian in 1945. For a considerable period
prior to 1942 the engineering collection had been under
the supervision of Professor Charles Henderson, later to
become Dean. In 1942 Professor Edwin Claire McClintock,
Jr., had assumed the supervision; and after the appointment
of Miss Copps, he became Chairman of the Engineering
Faculty Library Committee. Miss Copps had previously
held the post of Extension Librarian in an interesting
attempt on the part of the University of Virginia to cooperate
with the Virginia State Library in giving public library

service to counties in the State where no local libraries
were available. In accordance with the understanding
when that cooperation began in 1928, as soon as the state
appropriations to the Extension Division of the State
Library seemed to be sufficient to enable that Division to
take over the entire responsibility for fiction material, the
University's part became limited to the regular service of
the Reference Division of the Alderman Library. It was
at that point that Miss Copps had been transferred to the
much needed full time post of Engineering Librarian.

The other members of the Board of Aldermen were
drawn from the Staff of the General Library.

Miss Mary Louise Dinwiddie had been a member of
the General Library Staff since 1911 and had been Assistant
Librarian since 1912. She had taken courses at the University
of Virginia, and in 1913 she had attended a summer
course in Library Science at Columbia University. Her
store of information from the past had been valuable in
phases of the clean-up job, an example being her supervision
of a squad of federal relief workers in the laborious
task of handling the accumulation of thousands of dusty
volumes strewn over the dome floor of the Rotunda. Such
services were carried over into the supervision of the
exchange and binding routines, and into the assembling,
arranging, and storing of stocks of the various university
publications. The hours spent in this last project gave
promise of a saving of time for many years after 1950, the
date of her retirement. Miss Dinwiddie had been prominent
in the activities of the Virginia Library Association; and
during World War II she had been Director for Virginia
of the collecting of books for the soldiers and sailors.

As has been noted, the major problem of cataloguing
had resulted in an increase of the Staff of the Preparations
Division somewhat out of proportion to the other Divisions.
As an early attempt to facilitate the adoption of the Library

of Congress classification by appointing as over-all supervisor
an expert Cataloguer who was retiring from the
Library of Congress had failed, because of the prolonged
illness of that expert, the four senior members of the
Cataloguing Staff had joined forces to master the problems
involved, and gradually, with generously granted counsel
from the Library of Congress, had worked out a manual
of procedure. The four consequently became known as
the Manual Committee. The Library had benefited greatly
by having the continuous services of these four during the
prolonged special cataloguing campaign. It had seemed
appropriate, therefore, that all four be members of the
Board of Aldermen, more especially since each had taken
charge of a section of the general task. The division of the
responsibility had been the result of a voluntary arrangement
by the four concerned—and it had been indicative of
the spirit that characterized that undertaking that the
selection of types of work had been along lines of interest
and recognized difficulty, not along lines of least resistance.

Mrs. Grigsby Farrar Bailey (Mrs. Thomas Dallas
Bailey) had studied at the Packer Collegiate Institute in
Brooklyn and at the Brooklyn Public Library Training
School. She had been in charge of circulation at the
Rotunda during the session of 1922–1923, had been Acting
Librarian of the Charlottesville Public Library for the
years 1923 to 1925, and had returned to the University of
Virginia Library as Cataloguer in 1926. In the later division
of the work she had elected to take charge of serial cataloguing
—and thus incidentally became one of the noble band of
contributors to the successive Union Lists of Serials.

Miss Marjorie Dunham Carver had begun her connection
with the Library in 1920 as Secretary to the Librarian
but had almost immediately been transferred to a special
position as Secretary to the General Chairman of the Centennial
Committee, a post she held for two years. In 1922

she had returned to the Library, as Secretary (until 1927)
and as Special Cataloguer. She had been placed in charge of
the recataloguing group in 1929, and it was she who had led
that group in the excursion to Minor Hall and in the
preparation of the “nucleus library.” After the moving into
the Alderman Library building, Miss Carver had continued
in charge of special cataloguing projects. One of those had
been the development of the pamphlet collection at Mountain
Lake. Early in the process of acquiring this varied
experience, Miss Carver had profited from the University's
extension courses in Library Science.

Miss Lucy Trimble Clark had taken summer courses
at the University of Virginia and had had some experience
in teaching, in the work of the University Press, and in the
circulation service of the Charlottesville Public Library
before becoming in 1924 an assistant in circulation at the
University of Virginia Library. In 1927 she had transferred
to cataloguing. Work on books for which there was no
prospect of obtaining Library of Congress printed cards
had appealed to her, and she went on to train herself in the
intricacies of rare book cataloguing, thus fitting her efforts
into the programme for developing a research library.
Appropriate recognition of her achievements had come in
her election as a member of the Council of the University
of Virginia Bibliographical Society.

Miss Olive Dickinson Clark had studied at Roanoke
College and at Sweet Briar. At the University of Virginia
Library she had started in 1923 as assistant in circulation,
and had been in charge of circulation from 1924 to 1928.
She had, however, felt the appeal of the cataloguing type
of library work and in 1928 followed her sister into what
was to become the Preparations Division. In the work of
that Division Miss Olive Clark had assumed the responsibility
for new cataloguing—that is, of books which, whatever
their date of publication, were new to the University Library,

and for which Library of Congress printed cards
were available. To her had come also the responsibility for
cataloguing the music collection.

Miss Louise Savage, the Acquisitions Librarian, had
joined the Staff in 1930. It had been an act of faith—she
had had such confidence in the probable developments at
the University of Virginia Library that to take charge of its
acquisitions duties she had at considerable financial sacrifice
left a post as Librarian and Dean of Women at Elon College
in North Carolina. Her earlier college studies had had to
be interrupted by periods of teaching—her teaching subjects
had been mathematics and science—but two years at the
Randolph Macon Woman's College and some summer
quarters at the University of Virginia had gained for her a
degree of B.S. from the latter. In 1932–1933, while on leave
from the acquisitions position, she had acquired also a B.S.
in Library Science at the George Peabody College for
Teachers in Nashville. One of the outstanding achievements
of this whole period of the Library's history had been
her successful effort during the second world war—specifically
from September 1942 through December 1945—to
carry the double responsibilities of the Acquisitions and of
the Rare Book and Manuscript Divisions. As for the Acquisitions
Division, which had been continuously in her charge
from 1930, except for the session spent in Nashville, when
Miss Bertha Cornelia Deane had capably substituted, that
Division had been developed to a notable degree in extent,
in efficiency, and in economy in the business operations of
the library administration. Miss Savage's services had meantime
been increasingly in demand from outside organizations
—library, educational, bibliographical, social, religious
—and it had been noticeable that none of the tasks for which
her aid had been sought had fitted into the classification
of sinecures. Her recreations also had been active—hunting,
fishing, gardening, and spotting air planes.

Miss Helena Craig Koiner, who was in 1950 Senior
Assistant in the Acquisitions Division, had been Secretary
to the Librarian when the meetings of the Board of Aldermen
had been started, and she had shared with Miss Carver
the secretarial duties for the Board. In 1942, at the time
when Miss Savage had taken on the rare book and manuscript
responsibilities along with those of acquisitions, Miss
Koiner had been transferred to the Acquisitions Division.
She had taken college courses at the Stonewall Jackson
College in Abingdon, Virginia, at the University of Virginia,
at Columbia University, and at the University of
North Carolina, and she had taught in Virginia, Massachusetts,
and China—a wide range of training and experience.
In 1947 she and Miss Ruth Evelyn Byrd of the Rare Book
and Manuscript Division had passed with distinction the
Virginia State Board examinations for professional library
certification.

Miss Roy Land, the Circulation Librarian, had, like
Miss Savage, joined the Staff in 1930. Also as in Miss Savage's
case, her college undergraduate work had necessarily
been interrupted by teaching. She had completed the junior
college course at Averett College in Danville, Virginia, had
had a session at Westhampton College at the University of
Richmond, and then had progressed to a B.S. degree at the
University of Virginia. It was as a graduate student that
she began part time work at the University of Virginia
Library, her early assignments being in various phases of
the library routines. Directly after gaining an M.S. degree
in English—that was in 1931—she became a full time circulation
assistant; and three years later she was promoted to
head the circulation work, following the resignation of
Miss Virginia Cloud Jacobs. The rapid extension of the
circulation services after the removal to the Alderman
Library building was under the leadership of Miss Land;
and notwithstanding the increased burden of responsibilities,

she maintained to a degree widely and favorably recognized
the quality of those services to the Library's public.
In 1942–1943 a special grant from the General Education
Board enabled her to spend a session in library study at
the University of Michigan, her post at the Alderman
Library being admirably carried by Miss Elizabeth Dillard
Waterman. At Ann Arbor Miss Land made a distinguished
record and added the degree of B.A. in Library Science to
her collection. Meantime she had interested herself in the
University's courses in dramatic art, and, particularly in
the decade from 1929 to 1939, had taken leading parts in
many of the productions of the Virginia Players. She had
also been an organizer of the Extension Division's Bureau
of School and Community Drama. That her ability as an
organizer and speaker had been widely recognized had been
evidenced by the calls upon her services by social groups
and various library and literary organizations.

From the Board of Aldermen was to come the eleventh
Librarian; and the next chapter in the history of the University
of Virginia Library, beginning with July 1950,
will be, using the Roman formula for Consuls, in the librarianship
of Jack Dalton. With Jack Preston Dalton the practice
of appointing an alumnus of the University to the
library post was to be resumed. He had begun his college
course at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, but his B.S.
and M.S. degrees had been gained at the University of
Virginia. During the four sessions from 1930 to 1934 he
had been an Instructor in English at the Virginia Polytechnic
Institute, and he had seemed well on his way to a
professorship in that subject when he was persuaded to
return to the Rotunda to succeed Randolph Warner
Church as Assistant Reference Librarian, Mr. Church moving
on to Richmond to become Assistant State Librarian.
During 1935–1936 Mr. Dalton studied Library Science at
the University of Michigan on a special grant from the

General Education Board—and thus had opportunity to
observe in Dr. William Warner Bishop how wide a range
of possibilities there could be in constructive library leadership.
During his absence at the University of Michigan, the
expanding reference services had been ably performed by
Anthony Vincent Shea, Jr., a graduate student who, unfortunately
for the library profession, was not sufficiently
attracted to make library service his life work. On Mr.
Dalton's return in 1936, his position had been given the
full title of Reference Librarian; and during the years
immediately following, Mr. Dalton had employed his
trained judgment in the selection of material appropriate
for a university reference collection. In 1942 he was promoted
to Associate Librarian, while retaining the direction
of the Reference Division; and from that date, to him had
gradually been entrusted the chief responsibility for state,
regional, and national library relationships. Another grant
from the General Education Board in 1949 had enabled
him to make a nationwide study of postwar developments
in library techniques and administration. It is doubtful
if many University Librarians on their first assumption of
that post have been equally well equipped—or have been
as capable of profiting by that equipment.

Francis Lewis Berkeley, Jr., Curator of Manuscripts
and University Archivist, had in 1945 returned from war
service to continue the various phases of the work which
had been begun by Dr. Lester J. Cappon. His postwar
activities as collector of manuscripts had been one of the
prime causes of the urgent need in 1950 of an extension of
the library building; and his creation and performance of
editorial opportunities had done much to expand the usefulness
of the manuscript collection. Previous to his enlistment
in the Navy in 1942 he had amply proved his fitness
for a type of library service that would undoubtedly have
met with the warm approval of Mr. Jefferson. He had taken

a B.S. degree at the University of Virginia in 1934 and an
M.A. in History in 1940. He had been an Assistant in
English at the University, he had taught school in Gloucester
County and in the City of Roanoke, and in the summers
of 1933 and 1934 he had come to the attention of the
library administration through his performance of the
duties of an assistant in connection with the Virginia Collection.
At the time of the removal into the new building
in 1938, Mr. Berkeley had been wooed from teaching to
become Senior Assistant in Charge of Manuscripts; and
from October 1941 to September 1942 he had served as
Acting Director of Rare Books and Manuscripts and Acting
Curator of the McGregor Library.

As for his war service, it was in the Navy and in two
parts. As Ensign and Lieutenant Junior Grade he had been
in the Naval Armed Guard, and the operations in which
he took part had penetrated into all the naval war theatres.
As Lieutenant he had been assigned to the Amphibious
Forces, and he had been in command of LSM 171 during
the later stages of the operations in the Pacific—facing
Japanese Kamikaze planes and the Fifth of June Typhoon
with equal success. After discharge from active duty in
October 1945 he had continued in the Naval Reserve and
has since then been promoted to Lieutenant Commander.

In 1950 John Cook Wyllie was Curator of Rare Books
and Curator of the McGregor Library. We have seen that
his regular connection with the University of Virginia
Library had begun during the 1928 Christmas holidays. A
concise statement is given of the steps between those two
dates. This is a factual statement. Such a record is peculiarly
inadequate, because the material for a true biography of
Mr. Wyllie would be ideas. To a limited degree it may be
possible for the reader to catch the glimmering of such part
of the story of ideas as lay behind these particular facts.

Mr. Wyllie received the B.A. degree from the University

of Virginia in June 1929. He was Assistant Reference
Librarian from 1929 to 1933. It was “Assistant” merely
because it was deemed wise to reserve the full title of Reference
Librarian until the infant Reference Division could be
more adequately developed. During 1933–1934 he was on
leave for an adventure in tramp travel in Europe, special
attention being given to libraries, binderies, and booksellers.
On his return he became Curator of the Virginia
Collection, holding that office from 1934 to 1938. Meantime
in August 1936 he attended a University of Chicago Graduate
Library School Institute, and in the summer of 1937
he did apprentice work under the master binders at the
University of Michigan and at the New York Public
Library. From 1938 to 1941 he was Director of the Rare
Book and Manuscript Division and Curator of the McGregor
Library; and during those years he virtually created
the rare book collection by an exhaustive examination,
book by book, of the collections in the general library. He
was on leave of absence for war service from 1941 to 1945.
It was when he came back at the end of 1945 that he took
his present title. During the major part of 1948 he added to
his regular duties, at the request of President Darden,
the reorganization of the University Press. He took a leading
part in the founding of the Albemarle County Historical
Society and of the University of Virginia Bibliographical
Society, and he had meanwhile been made a member of
many other organizations, including the American Antiquarian
Society. When the University of Virginia in 1948
conferred on him the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award,
the citation tersely stated that he had

Such in 1950, together with the tenth Librarian until
his retirement on July first, was the membership of this
representative group. There had also been in existence
since 1942 a more comprehensive organization which had
included all the members of the General Library Staff. This
had delegated to a small, elected committee the arrangements
for staff gatherings, the care and improvement of
the staff room, and matters of social welfare, its financial
basis being moderate annual dues. The natural tendency
to over-organization had been successfully resisted, and
this Staff Association had done much to engender and
preserve a sense of family solidarity, which found its most
lively expression, perhaps, in the annual Christmas parties.

Through the greater part of this period members of
the Staff were also concerned, some as teachers and some as
students, with the summer quarter and extension courses in
Library Science. Such courses had been started by Librarian
Patton in 1911, Miss Dinwiddie joining him as an Instructor
in 1915. Requirements for the training of librarians in
high schools had been established by the State Board of
Education about 1928; there had consequently been a
considerable increase in the number of students, and new
courses had been added. At that time the Faculty Library
Committee had given serious consideration to the advisability
of establishing a degree-conferring Library School at
the University of Virginia. The decision had been that the
library science curriculum should be strengthened in order
that the courses might be given credit towards the B.S.
degree in Education; but that it seemed wise not to plan
for a separate school offering a degree in Library Science.

Within the limits thus set, the effort had been successful.
The courses—they had been increased to twelve by the
summer of 1934—had been granted the desired credit, and
they had been approved for teacher-librarians in high
schools by the Virginia and Pennsylvania State Boards of
Education and by the Southern Association for Colleges
and Secondary Schools.

But during the second world war the summer courses
in Library Science had quite innocently got caught in the
line of fire from two directions. The reduced supply of
teachers had compelled a relaxation of standardization requirements;
and the three months summer period between
regular sessions had been eliminated, shortening the normal
four years of college to a continuous effort of thirty-six
months and thereby crowding out a number of the customary
summer quarter subjects. Since these library courses
were thus without place and practically without students,
they had quietly been numbered among the war victims.
And when postwar action by the State Board of Education
emphasized instruction for high school teacher-librarians
at Madison College in Harrisonburg, the decision was
accepted with equanimity.

As a matter of historical record, since the General
Library had been involved in the administration of those
library science courses, a faculty list is given for the 1925–
1950 period. Miss Dinwiddie had continued as Instructor
throughout the activation of the courses. Other members of
the Staff who had offered instruction were Mr. Dalton
(1936–1943, 1945, 1947), Miss Land (1947), Miss Savage
(1931–1943, 1945, 1947), and Mr. Wyllie (1930–1932). To
the Library Science Faculty had been added, for the summers
indicated, Miss Lula Ocillee Andrews of the University
of Virginia Extension Faculty (1929, 1930), Miss
Georgia May Barrett of the University of Miami, Florida,
Faculty (1929, 1930), Mr. Randolph Warner Church of

the Virginia State Library (1933–1935), Miss Ethel Ruby
Cundiff of the Faculty of the George Peabody College for
Teachers, Nashville (1931–1933), Miss Mary Virginia
Gaver, Librarian of the George Washington High School,
Danville, Virginia (1934–1938), and Mrs. Dorothy Storey
Watson, Supervisor of School Libraries, Roanoke, Virginia
(1939–1943 and 1947).

To make the record complete, it should be added that
during the 1930's some courses were offered outside those
in the University's summer quarter. From 1931 to 1935
Miss Dinwiddie had conducted library science classes during
the regular sessions at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton,
Virginia; and in 1935–1936 she had been joined by
Miss Savage in giving such instruction. For several scattered
years these two and Mr. Wyllie had also been in charge
of extension offerings in Library Science at Charlottesville,
Lynchburg, Ashland, and Richmond.