The Library: A Brief Historical Sketch

The university trustees established a set of rules and regulations for the university library in 1814, but for the first half-century of its existence it never amounted to more than 2000 or 3000 volumes. During the second and third quarters of the 19th century, however, the two main literary societies, the Athenians and the Philomatheans, maintained their own libraries, and each rivaled if not surpassed that of the university. The three libraries were combined in the early 1880's and served as the base for a university stronger library which underwent more development toward the end of the century.

The early university librarians were professors assigned this task in addition to their instructional work. As the number of volumes grew in the late century, an assistant librarian was employed to operate the library, increasing the levels of service in terms of hours and accessibility to the materials. Once the library became a distinct administrative entity, its staff began to grow from the librarian and the assistant librarian in 1905 to today's staff of 139 professionals, civil service employees, and student assistants.

During most of the university's first century the library was located in what is now known as Cutler Hall, but which was at the time called the Main Building or the Central Building. In the late 1890s it was moved to the Chapel Building, known later as the music building and still later as Tupper Hall (not to be confused with today's Tupper Hall).

The first building constructed to serve as a library was the Carnegie Library, recently named E.W. Scripps Hall. The Carnegie Library, erected in 1904 and dedicated in 1905, was built to hold 60,000 volumes. The next home for the library was the Edwin Watts Chubb Library, now Chubb Hall. Completed in 1931 at a cost of $350,000, Chubb was designed to hold 250,000 volumes.

The Chubb Library served the university until the late 1960's. Construction began on the present structure, Alden Library, in 1966, and the building was occupied in 1969. Built at a cost of $5.3 million, the seven story edifice was designed to hold 800,000 volumes. This capacity was expanded to 1.2 million volumes with the completion of the three-story east and west (5th-7th story) wings in 1972, bringing the total cost to $7.9 million.

The Libraries, among other notable highlights, was the first library to enter an online record into the OCLC database, in 1971. It acquired the Library Annex on Columbus Road in 1993. In 1995 it acquired its two-millionth volumes. It joined the Association of Research Libraries the following year.