To Expand Library

CONSTRUCTION OF additional stack space, nearly doubling the 500,000-volume capacity of Baker Memorial Library, will be started this summer, it has been announced by President Hopkins. Four levels, one below grade, will be added on the north side of the library extending from the present east wing to the corridor leading to Carpenter Hall. The new space will be roofed in by winter and will be ready at just about the time when the present library's rapidly diminishing space is exhausted.

Plans for the addition have been approved by a special committee of Trustees, under the chairmanship of Victor M. Cutter 'O3, in accordance with a vote of the Board of Trustees at its spring meeting. With the library very close to the saturation point on books, the Board decided that the addition would have to be built at once or the College would face a real problem on the storage and distribution of its more than 500,000 volumes. Since Baker Library was opened in 1928 the College has approximately doubled its collection of books, and if the present rate of increase continues, the number of volumes will be doubled again in fifteen to twenty years.

Only part of the new stack space will be equipped with bookshelves at the start, the rest being fitted out as the need arises. The new levels will be extensions of the stack levels in the present library structure, thereby eliminating the need for administrative changes when the added space is put in use. The addition has also been designed by J. Fredrick Larson, College architect, so as to allow later expansion of Baker Library when needed. The original plans for Baker were drawn so as to allow for just such an addition as has now been decided upon by the Board of Trustees. In this respect, as well as in many others, the Dartmouth library has a flexibility and a longrange usefulness that is lacking in some of the college and university libraries in the country.

Baker Library was built during 1927 and 1928 through the gift of more than a million dollars from the late George Fisher Baker in memory of Fisher Ames Baker, of the Class of 1859. Mr. Baker later contributed an additional million dollars for endowment of the library, and in 1929 there became available, for the purchase of books, another million dollars by bequest of the late Edwin Webster Sanborn, of the Class of 1878.