MORE ACQUISITIONS TO LIBRARY

The director of the University Library and Chairman of the Council of the College Library has just submitted his annual report covering the year, July 1, 1912, to June 30, 1913.

Two of the most significant events took place on February 11, 1913, when the first sod was turned for the foundation of the Widener Memorial Library, and on June 16, when the cornerstone was laid. For the College Library, the last year has been one of transition and of inevitable confusion in many respects. The chief work in the administration has been the moving of some 500,000 volumes from Gore Hall into the Randall Dining Hall and nine other buildings. There has not been at any time, however, an interruption in the use of the books. All have continued to be accessible, except a few rare ones which have been sent to a safe deposit vault. Although the lecture rooms in Massachusetts Hall have been fitted up into satisfactory reading rooms, the students and the Library suffer from the inconvenience of having the main building and reading room a quarter of a mile apart. But both Randall and Massachusetts have proved better suited to their purpose than was expected. The Trustees of the Andover Theological Seminary are housing in their new building more than 100,000 volumes for the Library.

The accessions of the year, though not equal in number or value to those of the preceding term, have been considerable: through the liberality of a few friends of the Library, a splendid purchase was made, and now the Library possesses a collection of about 7,000 pamphlets on English history between 1600 and 1800, rivalling that in the British Museum. The collection of Incunabala now numbers 800.

One important enterprise was the making of cards for books noted only in the official catalogue, and therefore as unknown to the public as if the Library did not possess them. In 8 months about 43,000 titles of this kind were added to the public catalogue.

Blue Hill Collection.

The Library of the Blue Hill Observatory appears this year for the first time as a constituent part of the University Library. It is a well-chosen collection intended for those engaged in research work in meteorology, climatology, and aerodynamics, and contains 8,000 volumes and 5,000 pamphlets. These were gathered together by the late Abbott Lawrence Rotch, who for more than 30 years of his life gave special attention to the acquisition of standard treatises, rare issues, and volumes of exceptional merit and interest.

Law School Acquisition.

In the spring of 1913, the Law School Library made another purchase, that of the Dunn Collection, comparable in importance to that of the Olivart Collection in the previous year. The process of the merging of the libraries of the Harvard Divinity School and of the Andover Theological Seminary continues. It is much to be desired that the libraries of Harvard College and Andover-Harvard shall arrive at some agreement as to the transfer of books between them and as to the division of fields in future purchases.

Wasteful Duplication.

The wasteful purchase of duplicates by the different departments of Harvard would be somewhat lessened if all instructors could be made to feel more at home in every branch of the University Library. It is true that they and also their students, when furnished with proper introductions, are usually met with kindly, if somewhat conscious, hospitality. But rather than ask favors, the professor often prefers to buy himself the books he wants. This feeling on his part, however natural, is not conducive to the most profitable use of the funds of the University.