University of Virginia Library

HARRY CLEMONS AND THE
TWENTIETH ANNUAL REPORT

TWENTY YEARS AGO when the first of these annual reports
was issued, Harry Clemons, then in his fourth year as
Librarian of the University, had recently set aside the southeast
wing of Mr. Jefferson's Rotunda as a "Virginia Room," dedicated
to the housing of and to research in Virginia manuscripts and related
materials. Aided and abetted by the late John Calvin Metcalf,
Dean of the Department of Graduate Studies, he was beginning
his planning and campaigning for the Alderman Library building,
which was to open its doors in 1938.

This twentieth report goes to press late enough for us to enclose
in it an issue of the University of Virginia News Letter (Vol.
XXVII, No. 15) which discusses some aspects of the collecting and
preservation of "Manuscripts in Virginia, 1930-1950," a subject
which in these reports must usually be confined to the manuscripts
work of our own library, Mr. Clemons' library. Readers of these
reports will recall that a cumulative index for the first fifteen
reports was issued several years ago. A similar index to the reports
for 1945 to 1950 will be issued shortly, and will be sent to libraries,
and also to individuals who request it.

The two decades which have passed since our first report have
witnessed extraordinary development, not only of the historical
collections and the other departments of the University Library,
but in libraries and librarianship throughout Virginia. It is more
than coincidence that this growth has taken place during the administration
of the University Library by Harry Clemons. His name is
linked directly or indirectly with so many library developments in
Virginia that it is particularly fitting that this introduction to the
twentieth report should carry at least a thumbnail sketch of his
career up to now. A happy feature of his retirement at the close of
the 1949-50 academic year is that he is to remain at the University
to do research in his library, where his wise counsel will be, as
always, available to us all.

HARRY CLEMONS, LIBRARIAN

Harry Clemons, who retired as librarian of the University of
Virginia on June 30, 1950, has served in that post since 1927.

During his incumbency, he has seen the University's enrollment
expand from 2,000 to 5,000, with especially heavy growth in the
graduate and professional departments. The collections of catalogued
printed books have grown during his administration from
150,000 to more than 575,000 volumes, the manuscripts from a few
thousand to over 3,500,000 pieces, while picture and print collections
of 50,000 and map collections of 68,000 items have been assembled.
Several developments during these years, including the
acquisition of some notable special libraries, have made the University
a center for American studies, with unusual strength in regional
materials of the southeastern states.

Mr. Clemons was graduated from Wesleyan University in 1902
with the B.A. degree, receiving the M.A. at the same university in
1905, and the Litt. D. in 1942. Pursuing post-graduate studies as a
Scribner fellow at Princeton University, 1903-4 (M.A., 1905) and as
a Jacobus fellow of Princeton at Oxford University, 1906-7, he later
studied in the School of Library Service at Columbia University in
1927. Beginning as a library assistant at Wesleyan in 1902, he served
as instructor of English at Princeton, 1904-6 and 1907-8, and reference
librarian of Princeton from 1908 until 1913. A year after his
appointment as professor of English (1913-1920) in the University
of Nanking, China, he became librarian of the same university, a
position which he held (with a brief "furlough" interlude in 1922
with the Chinese collection at the Library of Congress) until the
Communist uprising (the "Nanking Incident") of 1927, when he
returned to the United States and began his librarianship at Virginia.

During World War I Mr. Clemons served as official representative
of the A. L. A. in charge of library war service with the American
Expeditionary Force in Siberia. During World War II he made
room at the University of Virginia for the Library of Congress
Union Catalog and its staff as well as for manuscripts deposited by
the Library of Congress, and furnished special reference services for
various military organizations. He is the author or editor of several
books, and his memberships in library and other organizations are
not few. But these are enumerated in Who's Who in America, and
it is of more significance at this moment to suggest some of the
milestones in his library administration.

These included, at Princeton, the expansion of library service
coincident with the establishment of the Preceptorial System by
President Woodrow Wilson; at Nanking, the organization of a college
library, the development of its services in ways appropriate
to Chinese needs, and the training of a Chinese staff; and at Charlottesville
only a few items will be mentioned from a list that might
be greatly expanded. Such are the recataloguing of the printed
books in the Library of Congress classification; the appointment in
1930 of the University's first archivist as a library official, and the
creation of a regional collection of historical source materials; the
campaign and planning for the Alderman Library building and
the removal to it in 1938 of the general library from Jefferson's
Rotunda; the creation of a department of rare books; the compilation,
1933-1943, of the checklist of the surviving papers of Thomas
Jefferson; the development of a cooperative project for the preservation
of all newspapers published in Virginia; the acquisition by the
University of such special collections as the McGregor Library of
southeastern Americana and English literature, the Coles collection
of Virginia books and manuscripts, the Lomb optical collection,
the Mackay-Smith music collection, the Stone library on the history
of printing, the Streeter collection of material on southeastern railways,
the Sadleir-Black collection of Gothic novels, the Taylor
collection of American novels, and the Victorius collection on evolution;
the establishment of nearly a score of special endowment funds
for the purchase of books; and the activities of the University of
Virginia library as publisher of the Annual Report on Historical
Collections (twenty reports to date), of the University of Virginia
Bibliographical Series (nine volumes to date), and of the publications
of the McGregor Library (of which eight have already been
issued). Mr. Clemons would himself earnestly disclaim any part in
many of these and other projects except approval. To quote his own
words, he insists that he has merely "helped to create and maintain
an atmosphere in which new ideas would have free motion" and that
he had had "an amazingly alert and original group of associates."

During the second world war Mr. Clemons assumed a heavy
load of library detail. Postwar developments expanded more rapidly
than did the staff, and it seemed necessary for him to continue to
carry much of that detail. His work schedule (8:00 A.M. to 2:00
P.M. and 8:00 P.M. to 2:00 A.M., the morning portion being

omitted on Sundays) has attracted considerable local interest. Many
of the night hours have been devoted to the conduct of an extensive
correspondence, by means of which he has cultivated friends for
the library. The charm of Mr. Clemons' letters is something of a
legend.

Over all the twenty-three years of his librarianship at Virginia,
Mr. Clemons has striven untiringly for the development of the
library as a research institution and as an institution for willing
service; for the raising of the professional standards of his own staff
and of librarians throughout Virginia; and above all for the fostering
of the cooperative spirit among American libraries. Referring
recently to Mr. Clemons' assistance to Princeton's Jefferson publication
project, Julian Boyd wrote that "as an American and quite
aside from its effect on my personal plans, I felt proud of the
country that could produce such magnanimity of spirit at the head
of an important institution."

Note: This sketch, prepared for College and Research Libraries, Vol. XI, No. 4
(October, 1950), pp. 382-383, is reprinted here by permission of the Editor.

To do honor to Mr. Clemons' continuing work for the library, and to
guarantee the future of the library's publications, a group of Mr. Clemons'
friends have established the Harry Clemons Publication Fund. Future gifts to
the Fund from Alumni and other friends of the library can do much to extend
the library's usefulness beyond the walls. One hundred copies of the first publication
issued on the Fund, The Fry and Jefferson Map of Virginia and Maryland,
a facsimile edition, with an introduction by Dumas Malone, were presented
to Mr. Clemons on 11 May 1950, twelfth anniversary of the McGregor Library
and of the Alderman Library building.