History of the University Library

The University of Michigan was founded in 1817 and established in Ann Arbor by the Organic Act of 1837. That state law also promulgated the idea that a good library is an intrinsic part of a university. This notion had its first principal elaboration in 1838 with the commissioning of Professor Asa Gray to acquire a library collection in Europe with an allocation of $5000. Thus, unlike most comparable libraries, the core of the U[niversity] of M[ichigan] collection consisted of a purchase rather than a major gift.

During President Tappan's term, the precept was enlarged and its character refined. Included was the notion that continuous development of a well-selected and broadly based collection of monographs and journals serving numerous disciplines was essential to the health of scholarship. To ensure such growth, a sufficient annual allocation from General Fund revenues was necessary. In addition the Library needed adequate and suitable space, a current catalog of its holdings, and a full time librarian. Separation of the collection into a General Library and divisional libraries according to varying organizational arrangements was also introduced. Finally, the importance of user access to the collection was underscored.

The post-Civil War period was marked by extensive growth and diversification both in the University and in the Library. The first major gift from a private donor (Mr. Philo Parsons) was received in 1870. The library of Professor Rau, the gift consisted of material on economics and political science and accounted for a 35% expansion of the Library collection. Other important gifts followed: McMillan (Shakespeare, 1883); Buhl (Law, 1885); Ann Arbor German residents (Goethe, 1886); Ford-Messer (general, 1894); Coyl (general, 1894). Investments from the latter three continue to yield dividends and underwrite acquisitions. Overall, though, the collection remained inadequate. Despite the efforts of President Angell and Raymond Davis, Librarian, funds were never sufficient to acquire all the material that was needed or desired to support rapid growth and diversification in the academic programs. To ameliorate this, Davis initiated an exchange program whereby the Library offered duplicates, copies of doctoral dissertations, and faculty and administrative publications to other institutions and received material from them. Between 1870 and 1900, the University demonstrated that Library growth and development could occur despite vagaries in the national and state economies.

As had occurred previously, collection growth fast outstripped the physical plant assigned to the Library. The first General Library building, erected in 1883, was augmented by stacks additions in 1899 and 1910. A new General Library (the present north H[arlan] H[atcher] G[raduate] L[ibrary]) was constructed and dedicated in 1920. To satisfy the growing need for specialized collections, divisional libraries located in other buildings were established. Among the first were the Engineering Library and the Chemistry Library. Some, such as Dentistry, were begun as reading rooms and subsequently joined the University Library. Others, such as Museums, were established by the merger of private collections and transfers of appropriate material from other libraries (i.e. Natural Science and General Library) when a new building was constructed. The most resplendent new library, however, was the Clements whose collection and building were the gift of Regent William Clements.

From 1915 to 1941 the dominant force in library development was William Warner Bishop. Library director, builder and bookman, Bishop exerted an influence over the size and character of the Library which was equaled only by that which President Tappan had exercised in the previous century. Assessing the collection's weaknesses to be serials, government documents, history and literature other than English-language and German, Bishop systematically set about redressing the deficiencies. Together with the University of Minnesota Library and the Crerar and Newberry Libraries, he inaugurated a program of cooperative collection development to acquire proceedings of European provincial academies and scholarly societies. His book-buying trips to Europe produced handsome additions to the collection, and established special beneficial relationships between the U[niversity] of M[ichigan] and book dealers (e.g. Harrassowitz, Nijhoff, and Sotheran) which persist today. During Bishop's tenure the Library switched from Dewey to Library of Congress classification, began the subscription sale of its original cataloging on printed cards and introduced photoduplication and microfilms to the Library.

The Great Depression had serious consequences [for] the Library. Acquisitions plummeted, staff were laid off and library hours of opening were reduced. As the economy recovered, some relief occurred but certain problems persisted. Included among these were financial constraints affecting collection development; physical deterioration of the collection because of reduction in the quantity and quality of binding; and insufficiency of space for both books and readers.

Barely recovered from the Depression the Library faced the disruption caused by World War II. With European and Asian materials largely inaccessible, the Library turned to Canada and South America to satisfy its need for collecting foreign material. A mass of information on the war added to the collection, a special reading room was established for the Far Eastern collection, and interlibrary loans were made to secure information needed by faculty, industrial firms and government departments doing research in conjunction with the war effort. Staff turnover in the Library was high as employees left for military service or work in industry.

The immediate post-war years saw somewhat of a return to former conditions. Swollen university enrollments caused heavy use of library materials and compounded a critical lack of reader space. Despite the recent establishment of more divisional libraries (Music, 1941, Public Health, 1943), space for the burgeoning collections grew scarce. Shelving was installed in the General Library attics, newspapers were shipped to storage in the Health Services Building and planning begun for a westward addition to the General Library.

To these familiar problems was now added difficulty in collection development. For the Library's first hundred years, selection of materials had largely been handled by the faculty with the Librarian supplementing those decisions with his own selections to achieve consistency and balance. The system of fund allocation supported this arrangement. Allocations were made to specific academic units either directly or through the Library budget and a small allocation was reserved for the Librarian. Only faculty could authorize purchases on their library accounts, although in some of the divisional libraries librarians increasingly were authorized by the faculty to act in their behalf. Major post-war changes in the university and in the publishing industry disrupted this arrangement and threatened the continuity, consistency and timeliness of acquisition.

To mitigate these difficulties the position of Chief Bibliographer was created in 1947 and Rolland C. Stewart appointed to it. Stewart's selection program for the General Library and some divisionals was broad and included both current and retrospective publications. No summary authorization was given him to charge acquisitions to the accounts of various academic units. Rather, such authorization was afforded him gradually by the units as he proved his skill and reliability through his selections.

A similar pattern of authorization for other book fund accounts also evolved. The first designation of a divisional librarian as primary selector formally authorized to expend book funds occurred when the Bureau of Government Library was re-established after the 1950 Haven Hall fire. Formal assumption of this same responsibility in other libraries occurred gradually over the next two decades. During this same period changes in the method of fun allocation were also occurring. By the mid-1960's library allocations to support the professional schools were made and accounted for within the Library. Concomitantly, faculty committee involvement in review, emendation and approval of allocations to the various LSA departments atrophied.

Reflecting the growth in the University, the enrichment of the collection during the 1950's was unprecedented in scope and magnitude. Notable additions were made to English and American literature, history of art, music, American history, botany and rare books. Area programs, supported by PL480, were established and flourished. An Undergraduate Library collection, consisting largely of newly purchased works, was created and housed in a new building. Other libraries added to the system included Phoenix, Mental Health Research Institute, IST and Art and Architecture. Collection expansion also led to the creation of a storage facility on North Campus augmented in 1964 by space in the Argus Building. The capstone for expansion in the Library's physical plant was the 1970 addition of the South Building to the General Library which was renamed the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library. Financed by federal funds and alumni gifts, the $5.5 million structure nearly doubled shelf capacity for the G[raduate] L[ibrary] collection and provided more space for readers, services and staff. Similar improvements were realized when renovation of the North Building was completed in 1975.

(The majority of this history was taken from the abstract of the Collection Analysis Project, the University of Michigan, prepared by Mona East and Patricia Yocum and the staff of the University Library in 1983.)