University of Virginia Library

Section A. General Reference Materials.

The most comprehensive collections on bibliography in Virginia
are at the Virginia State Library, the College of William
and Mary, Sweet Briar College, and the University of Virginia.
The largest, at the State Library, contains 3,220 volumes. Bibliographical
material of some note is scattered through thirty
or more libraries in the State. This scattered condition, which
is characteristic of all divisions of research material, may be
illustrated at the outset by reference to certain foreign encyclopaedias.
For example, various Larousse publications are located
at the Coast Artillery School at Old Point Comfort, at the
College of William and Mary, at Randolph-Macon College at Ashland,
at the Randolph-Macon Woman's College, at the Richmond
Public Library, at Sweet Briar College, at the University of
Richmond and the University of Virginia, at the Virginia Military
Institute, at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, at the State
Library, and at Washington and Lee University. Copies of La
Grande Encyclopédie may be found at the Coast Artillery School,
at Hollins College, at the Richmond Public Library, at Sweet
Briar, and at Washington and Lee. Brockhaus' Konversationslexikon
may be consulted at Sweet Briar, the University of Virginia,
and the State Library; and Meyer's Konversations-lexikon
at the College of William and Mary, Randolph-Macon, Randolph-Macon
Woman's College, Sweet Briar, and Washington and Lee.
Copies of the Enciclopedia Italiana are at the Richmond Public
Library, at Sweet Briar, at the University of Virginia, and at
Washington and Lee; and the last three libraries have the Spanish
Enciclopedia universal ilustrada Europeo-Americana.

The collections of dictionaries offer another significant
example of the scattered situation in Virginia. There are many
libraries in the State which deserve consideration because commendable
beginnings have been made in the acquisition of the
fundamental materials. The present stage of development, however,
is one in which library after library repeats the more
ordinary works and very few have so far been able to acquire any
considerable number of items of distinction. The more comprehensive
collections of dictionaries are to be found at the Coast Artillery
School, the State Library, Sweet Briar, the College of
William and Mary, and the University of Virginia. The last, comprising
about 500 volumes, is perhaps the largest. That at the
Coast Artillery School[1] is useful and varied, and includes

dictionaries of sundry tribes of American Indians.