The University Library: An Address on Alumni University Day

Front Cover
Yale University, 1924 - 11 pages

From inside the book

Selected pages

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 6 - ... 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.
Page 6 - 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 fifty-thousand 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.
Page 6 - 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.
Page 8 - Harvard, let me remind you, has been perpetually in the lead. It is a little galling for a Yale graduate to reconcile himself to Yale's being always second in the race; but even that is better than being fifth or sixth, into which grade we are now rapidly sinking.
Page 11 - What could be more delightful, what more worthy of a Yale man, than to make himself personally responsible for discovering one of the weaker sections in the Library and filling it?
Page 7 - ... 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 peri8 'THE UNIVERSirr LIBRART " odicals has kept teachers here who were called else" where, and where an inspection of the library was " the determining factor in deciding a teacher's com
Page 7 - of the humanities, in particular, the richness of the " library is often the determining factor in the accept" anee of a professorship or the coming of a graduate or :£ professional student.
Page 9 - ... even maintaining the pace which was set before the war, much less making good the deficiencies caused during the war.
Page 10 - It houses the finest collection of books for the study of Goethe outside Germany, and the finest Faust collection in the world.
Page 3 - 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.'1 These are heartening words but any university librarian worth his job knows that they are not true.

Bibliographic information