THE LIBRARY OF THE MEDICAL SCHOOL
[ln adapting itself to new conditions the Medical School has shown resource and initiative. One of the by-products of readjustment has been the restoration of the old museum into a distinctive and beautiful reference library. The process is described in the following closely related articles.—EDITOR.]
In pursuance of their intention to concentrate the resources of the Medical School on the development of the courses of the first and second years, the Trustees have authorized the establishment of a department of Pharmacology in the School. The new department is to be in charge of Dr. Walter L. Mendenhall, formerly of Drake University, more recently engaged in teaching and research at the Harvard Medical School, who comes with the rank of associate professor.
To provide accommodations for Dr. Mendenhall's department, various plans were discussed, the final decision being to make use of the rooms in the Nathan Smith building heretofore devoted to the secretary's office and the reference library. The work of preparing this space and equipping it with laboratory furniture is now virtually complete, and the department will have a student's laboratory and three smaller rooms, in every way equal to the remainder of the building in facilities and convenience.
The reference library, thus apparently done out of existence, had been equipped from the proceeds of a generous gift by Dr. E. H. Peaslee, who, however, gave his full assent to the necessary transfer of the library to other quarters. For the past year what the older graduates of the school will remember as the gaunt desolation of the museum in the old building has been giving place to a more orderly and convenient rearrangement. Electric lighting has been installed and the models and specimens have been placed on the shelves of the cases in the gallery, while the lower cases have-been given over to the less used and less useful books of the medical library, catalogued and classified by departments. It was to this room that the reference library has now been transferred, provision for it being made by the addition of new cases matching the room in design, and constructed of the same black walnut.
The library, numbering some seven or eight thousand volumes, is now provided for in a way that leaves little to be desired. The attractiveness of the room as a place for reading and study is already showing its effect in a much greater use of the books than has previously been noted. Finally, there has been preserved for the College, a room, unique in design, consistent in detail, and so well preserved that it is hard to realize that it is something more than forty years since it was opened to the public.
