HERE are three distinguishing marks of a university: a group of students, a corps of instructors, and a collection of books; and of these three the most important is the collection of books. By the interaction of these three factors the university manifests its twofold activity to the world. Its scholars, by means of the books provided for them, advance the cause of knowledge and the reign of truth, and so make of the university a seat of learning. In the second place, this corps of instructors mediates between the books and the students, and, by teaching the art of reading, puts a new generation in touch with the stored-up thought of the world. Without books-without, that is, the recorded thought of the past-no university and, indeed, no civilization is possible, and for that reason it is necessary to be always repeating the familiar truths that the object of an education is to learn to read and тер that a university is a collection of books. For that reason it was that when our fathers wished to found a college in this colony they provided it with a collection of books. Yale was cradled in a library. YOU A Beneficiary May Be Frank. OU have all, therefore, I make no doubt, a very comfortable feeling respecting the future, since we are about to build the finest of libraries. There will be no peer to it among all the universities of the world, and even if we include the great public and national libraries, we need not fear comparisons if fairly made. You now desire to hear about those plans more in detail, and to enjoy a warm and perhaps lethal sense of our forthcoming supremacy. But of this you shall not learn from me. To what you have all read of the plans for a new building I have nothing to add, partly because I do not know any more about the plans than you do, and partly because I am here this morning to make a plea and not a promise. If there be any reason why I have been chosen to make this address rather than the distinguished Librarian who presides over our destinies, it is this, that it may thus be possible to bring sharply to the attention of the alumni of this University the fact that this is no merely departmental affair, that we are not speaking merely of one of the component parts of the University, but rather of the center and source of its intellectual life, which is in contact and coöperation with every humanistic department in the place. It was thought that a mere professor of English, even if he spoke with less authority than the Li Exchange Yale University JAN 2 '40 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 5 brarian, could speak with a conviction that none could attribute to self-interest or a desire to advertise. The beneficiaries of an institution may sometimes speak with a frankness that is denied to its directors. YET The Library and the Library Building. ET the task before me is so subtle and so large, and the ignorance regarding the Library is so extensive, that I may well be excused for feeling apprehensive. Some persons conceive of the Library as made up of such books as the students may wish to read in the long hours of their leisure, or of such books as the more ardent among them may need to supplement their textbooks. Others think of it as a splendid building, a symbol of Yale's expansion and prosperity, where those so disposed may get away from the real concerns of life, graduate and undergraduate. Of course my analysis is a little cynical. It is meant to be, for there will be cause for little but cynicism if we erect a library which is remarkable rather for its architecture than for the scholarly life which is sheltered in it. I am reminded of the sentence which the Librarian has playfully suggested for a motto above the main portal, "This is not the Yale Library. That is inside." In these words Mr. Keogh has given a hint of the great fear and the great hope that are in the mind of every friend of the Yale Library; for we are hovering purgatorially between the fear of having just another fine building and the hope of seeing here one of the greatest libraries of the world. For if you really desire it, it is now possible to have not merely a fine house for bookish folk to live in, but a great treasury of books to put in it as its soul and its center. There is, I opine, no use of launching the most luxurious of ocean liners, if there is no coal or oil with which to set it going. Are you aware that, for all the millions appropriated for the erection of a new library, no cent can be appropriated from the Sterling money for either books, binding, or service to readers? IN A Lodestone for Scholarship. N this the heyday of our material expansion, in this carnival of building and reconstruction, intellectual interests deserve an equally obvious attention. Many of you think that we ought to have a fine body of teachers here to instruct our sons and brothers, but that the interests of investigation and the advancement of learning may be left to other places, or at least left to shift for themselves. But, dear friends, you cannot have one without the other. If you want your sons and brothers well taught you must have teachers here who are men and learned men; if you are to keep learned men here, you must have a still and quiet place for them to read and think in; but, above all, you must have books for them-not merely a standardized fiftythousand-foot shelf, warranted sufficient for running a university, but a library of millions of volumes, with strange books in it, out-of-the-way books, rare books, and expensive books. If we are not willing to compete with the best libraries in this country, it is folly for us to attempt to be one of the great universities, for scholars and teachers, graduate students, and, at last, undergraduate students will go where the books are. THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ང་ 7 When we of the faculty are engaged in the attempt to persuade some distinguished man to join our ranks, it is of the Library that we are accustomed to speak. It is the only sure bait. Therefore I think that it would have been astute on the part of the administration to have summoned to this platform some recent recruit to our numbers who might have done the entire job assigned to the present speaker in two sentences, to wit: "I came to Yale because of the chance to be near a great library. Your best chance of attracting other scholars is by increasing the attractiveness of your Library." T A Liner Needs Fuel. HIS is the argument which the Librarian has just used in his appeal for coal enough to keep the ship running: A great scholarly library is not built up chiefly or largely by honoring requests for individual books or sets that may be lacking. The Yale Library was not built up in that way, but by scholars who were foresighted enough to meet coming demands. In the field of the humanities, in particular, the richness of the library is often the determining factor in the acceptance of a professorship or the coming of a graduate or professional student. The continuance of research depends in a high degree upon the resources of the library, and necessitates a constant increase in resources which may not be of everyday use but are quite necessary to have at hand. I have myself known of cases where the ownership of unusual sets of peri |