A TEACHING LIBRARY

Baker Stands At Heart of Both Campus and Curriculum

A GOOD SIGN DURING the Hanover summer, we say, is thick fog in the . early morning; it will "burn off" before noon. In the evening after just such a perfect day, when the mists have settled in the Connecticut valley, we often find ourselves scuttling along beneath the huge image of lighted Baker Tower reflected on the cloud bank directly overhead. The omnipresence of the tower is weird. This strikes anyone who roams out into the Hanover countryside. There is a certain favorite country road from Union Village, via Goodrich Four Corners, along which one discovers Hanover Plain set down in a fold of hills, with Baker Tower solidly poked skyward above the tops of the elms. And one who makes his first visit to Hanover, possibly retracing the steps of Eleazar by approaching from the south, is confronted when but one hill from town by Baker Tower and its dominant position.

As Mr. Goodrich, the present librarian, has said: "every achievement of the human spirit is based chiefly on faith. Those who planned this library planned it with faith, worked into its fabric certain beliefs which none can prove, which I will not argue. They believed that more and more Dartmouth will teach that all things interlock about a central reality—therefore they planned so to place the building that it be at the heart of the campus, yet so that related buildings could be grouped about it, to draw in all the books of the College; to keep the books for the most part central in the building, not dispersed. Of the background of these beliefs —of a central reality, of beauty, of the best of the heritage of the past, the tower is the symbol—for Dartmouth ,an inspiration; for the world a sign."

This symbol which so dominates the upper Connecticut valley is astride a collection of books which has passed the halfmillion mark. This is a living collection, a potential workshop set in most gracious surroundings, administered by an exceedingly efficient and friendly staff. These books with their yearly additions have an articulateness, they tell what Dartmouth College has been and much of what it is striving to do, they reveal in no uncertain manner that the College is aware of its position in and responsibility to society.

Any book collection truly reflects much concerning its builders and its users whether it be the collections of a state, an individual or a college. Witness the flood of scholars to the Alexandrian Library, this to preserve portions of the Greek contribution to civilization during crucial centuries; the revelations of the Renaissance which emerged in large measure from the activities centered about the monastery libraries and early university collections; the great centers of research of the present day which flourish in such rich symbiotic relationship with great book collections. So too a personal library reflects much of the individual, the growth of his interests and his ideas. There was the library of Thomas Jefferson, some fifty years in the gathering from the capitals of Europe "so that the collection, which I suppose is of between nine and ten thousand volumes, while it includes what is chiefly valuable in science and literature generally, extends more particularly to whatever belongs to the American statesman." It was this personal library of Jefferson's, appropriate and broad in scope, which became the nucleus about which the present Congressional Library was built.

The story of the acquisitions made by the Dartmouth College Library together with accounts of the use of the books by the students reveals much concerning the place of the College in society, the interests and activities of its faculty and students. Preserved in the Treasure Room of Baker Library is a long-hand list of books owned by Eleazar Wheelock, a catalogue of the Library of 1774, of 1809 (about) and of 1825. From Dr. Wheelock's correspondence we learn that packages of books were sent from England while the Indian School was still located at Lebanon, Connecticut. Samson Occom, among others, was instrumental in securing gifts of books. When the scene of activity was shifted to Hanover we find references to

"the books" among the other goods that were brought at the time Mrs. Wheelock came and we learn that these formed a part of "the stuff" that was "housed" with the "females" in the "hut." In 1771 the Trustees appointed the first librarian of the College, Mr. Bezaleel Woodward, and assigned to him an acre of ground near the spot occupied by the present southeast corner of Baker Library. In one room of the house which he erected here was shelved the library of the College, described by Jeremy Belknap (1774) as "not large, but there are some good books in it." This collection of about five hundred volumes is preserved in Baker together with a drum and the Gradus ad Parnassum of paean fame. About 475 of these volumes pertain to matters theological, the remainder to all other fields combined. The field of the Humanities is represented chiefly by the works of the classicists, the Social Science shelf contains histories, a scant half dozen volumes suffice for the Sciences.

The rapidity with which the interests of the College- were broadening during the early 1800's is manifest in the book collections of 1809 and 1825. While books pertaining to theology predominated in the library of 1809 those representing other fields of endeavor were appearing on the shelves, to wit, some three hundred histories, one hundred scientific books, fifty law books, fifteen dealing with economics and government. The decade which opened with the year 1825 was one of great commotion in this country, rampant social changes followed industrial mutations, some thirty-six colleges were founded in this interval, it is the prelude to the period recently depicted by Bernard De Voto in his Year of Decision. Such titles in the college library as the following bear witness to the stirring of a great diversity of interest at Dartmouth: Blackstone's Commentaries on the Lawsof England, Bowditch's Practical Navigator, Buffon's Natural History, Dana's Outline of Mineralogy, Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Rousseau's Treatise on the SocialCompact, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations apd Priestley's History of the PresentState of Electricity. While the theological collection had increased by barely onefifth, the law collection had doubled. Interestingly enough, during an approximately comparable interval the graduates of the college who entered the ministry had declined from 40 to 30 per cent and those who had entered the law increased from 25 to 36 per cent.

EARLY RULF.S SEEM STRANGE

The use of books, no less than the number and subject matter contained in the collections, reflects much concerning the curriculum and the educational policy of the College. Certainly in the early days the book collection was so quarantined that the student could have been exposed to little more than a textbook acquaintance. The library rules of 1794 indicate that seniors then were allowed three books at a time, juniors and sophomores two, and freshmen one. Members of each class were allowed one hour in two weeks for drawing books "provided not more than five be in the library chamber at a time, and that no one shall remove a book from its place except by consent of the librarian." Perhaps as a result of these restrictions the two student societies, organized as rhetorical and literary groups, began competitive book collecting. So sufficient were these collections that the College in 1818, possibly in the face of financial stringency, saw fit to offer the library for sale for a sum not less than $2,100. Fortunately no sale was consummated and in 1840 we find the collections of the literary societies, combined with that of the College, totaling 15,000 volumes; this the nucleus of the collection of present day Baker Library.

The College collection thus started has continued to expand in size and scope. From the 122,000 volumes in 1912, the year Mr. Goodrich became librarian, it has increased to 570,000 in the present year. The bequest made in 1929 by Edivin Webster Sanborn for the purchase of books has served to place Baker Library in a position eminent among the colleges of the country. Largely as a result of this fund the library is able to add about 15,000 volumes each normal year to its collections. If the books added are alive, use-the existing collection, it is because their selection is a joint enterprise of staff and faculty. A great share of credit is due to Mr. Goodrich whose sound guidance has served to assemble a collection of books distinctive among the liberal arts colleges of this country. The gratifying response by visitors who use the library during the summer (in a recent year there were some seventy-five of these) perhaps best serves to attest to the excellence of the book collection. Gunnar Myrdal, in the preface to his recent book An American Dilemma,the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy mentions that "much of the library work was done during the summer of 1941 in the excellent Baker Library of Dartmouth College." The following excerpt from a letter of Mr. Myrdal to the Librarian aptly expresses what so many of us feel. "I just wanted to drop you a note and tell you again how much I enjoyed working in your magnificent library and how greatly I appreciate this beautiful instrument for scholarly work which you and your colleagues have built up. I think your library is a great achievement and a great opportunity for anyone like me last summer, who wanted to work hard with books. As I have told you before, the library exceeded all my expectations. Actually, I was working in a rather special field, and it was just a marvel to me that there were very few books, which I deemed to be of any real importance, that I did not find in your library. There was also something in the atmosphere of the library and the attitude of its staff which made work pleasant and easy, a thing which could not be said of all libraries."

USED ON THE SPOT

Those administering the affairs of the library, while interested in the development of its girth and proportions, have been no less concerned about its pulse. An observer at the circulation desks in a normal year would have seen some 330,000 volumes being loaned. The library is no less proud of the use made of books "on the spot." Undergraduates enjoy the rare privilege of being able to wander and explore through the stacks, they are encouraged to browse with the best of literature in the congenial surroundings of the Tower Room, to study in the 1902 Room, to avail themselves of the student studies in the stacks, of which thirty more were provided with the recent stack addition. Prof. George C. Wood, chairman of the Faculty Committee on the Library, reported to the faculty in 1943: "The building and equipment of these studies represent of course a conscious desire to further in any way possible the use and understanding of the book as an instrument of education, the' many uses of which should be unfailingly indicated to our students. They should be encouraged to greater and greater curiosity and to greater and greater independent personal satisfaction of that curiosity within the library."

Instruction has become a definite function of the library and from all indications this may be expected to augment in the future. To wander in through the west door and explore the main corridor will suffice to convince one of this. Here the new accessions are displayed; today there is Sforza's Contemporary Italy, Cantril's Gauging Public Opinion, Caverly's Primerof Electronics, Beardsley Ruml's Government, Business, and Values-, "Books about Normandy" appeared almost simultaneously with the invasion. During a recent week when the Third Conference on Inter-American Relations was being held here the exhibition cases appeared replete with representative books and information concerning the culture of Latin America; one saw the first of a series of translations of standard histories of the Hispanic-American republics, samples and guides to the literature of these countries, and a generous display of contemporary Latin-American art served as a gentle reminder that Dartmouth was one of the first to tender recognition to the Mexican muralists. The pathway of any visitor to Baker is thus beset and not fortuitously so; there is design to it, it is there to instruct.

Just off the main corridor of the first floor is the Treasure Room with its several unique collections of books. Here one may examine and leisurely peruse fine editions of great literature. It is these items, significant reminders of the sustained interest and generosity of numerous alumni and friends of the college, which will serve to mark the book collection in Baker as distinguished. Almost within the week a first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves ofGrass has been received, and appropriately so. Beside it is a thin volume with the Commencement poem Whitman read fiere in Hanover on June 26, 1872:

"As a strong bird on pinions free, Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,

Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America, Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day, for thee."

The discriminating taste and assiduous collecting of Harold Rugg has placed here in the Treasure Room a noteworthy group of items illustrative of the history of book-making. Whether it is a consciousness of the scarcity of these books, their fine paper bindings, print, illustrations, their proportions or perhaps only the heft when held in the hand, though not easily described, the experience is real. Certainly this experience can only serve to enhance the sort of book appreciation so well described by George Wood: "Books as I have indicated are a kind of especial variety of persons and like some persons we come to love them for what they are. Some we love for the sustained relevancy of their dress and some for the richness of their personal and continuing revelations. Some we like in one mood; some in another. With some others we become involved in a kind of Platonic relationship that surpasses the bonds even of conventional understanding drawing us into a kind of four dimensional contact with life. It has long been a commonplace among men that some of their best and oldest comrades were come upon suddenly and by chance upon the shelves of a wellstocked bookshop. There is no thrill quite so enduring as to walk home of anfternoon arm in arm with a new-found, hidebound friend who is to remain unobtrusively but loyally with you for all your days. It is as much the duty of a college to bring this kind of friends together as it is to throw them into the dormitory, classroom, playing fields relationship, whose values we are too often told in this romantic age of ours are to be the ones which will carry them through life."

Here in the Treasure Room is also assembled material pertinent to the history of the College: books, pamphlets, pictures and letters. An important adjunct, and one which perhaps more than any other reflects the role played by the library in the past, is the Alumni Alcove with its collection of works produced by the graduates of the College. A recent acquisition which was caught in the very process of being placed in the Alcove was Paul Sample's gift of several folios of his sketches and drawings, valuable both for their artistic worth and the use which others will make of them in studying the artist's approach to the problem of planning and composing a painting. Thus the Treasure Room, while reflecting distinction upon the library by virtue of its rare items, is poised and ready to assume- an increasingly active role in the process of instruction. Here is a potential workshop, filled with valuable source material, records illustrative of what has gone into creative effort, specimens to be enjoyed for their aesthetic value.

Few college libraries are equipped as is Baker for sustaining and extending the budding interest of students in fine books and the art of book-making. One such opportunity became available with the setting up of a printing press by Ray Nash in 1936. Since then a series of distinguished publications have emerged. One thinks of the Ticknor print, the format for which was designed here and the more recently published Fifty Years of RobertFrost. Here too, seniors, with the cooperation of Mr. Nash, have enjoyed the rare opportunity of designing, setting up and printing the results of their research and writing in the library. The individual who would complete this process of bookmaking must seek out the bindery where he may witness the creation of a fine binding, or what is more likely these days, the application of bindings to unbound periodicals which have been received by Baker. Some 30,000 volumes, now on the shelves of Baker Library, have been bound at this bindery since its establishment in 1937.

FILM LIBRARY OUTSTANDING

Quite a different story of activity is that of the audio-visual department. Here films are kept and made available for showing. With the admirable collection of movie scripts given by Walter Wanger '15, there thus exists the wherewithal for a close tie-up between this department and those interested in the use of the films as a literary medium. It may be said of all of these departments that they derive added significance when one considers the possibility of their reaching out and tying in with various departments of instruction in the College. As the chairman of the library committee has expressed it: "What an opportunity it would be for any college man to become aware of the using, writing, printing, binding, and owning of books all under the contagious guidance of people who are both sympathetic and intelligent with regard to their interests and all in a place that is as much a place of beauty as it is a hive of industry. Let us make the Baker Library not only the best library of any liberal college in the land but let us also make it unique in the sense that it plays an active, vital part in personal education for Dartmouth men."

President William Jewett Tucker, at the laying of the cornerstone of Wilson Hall in 1884, said: "The college Library stands for inspiration. It is the one great stimulating, quickening, energizing force in the college life. Naturally it is the center of that life, and its whole relation to it is positive and active. The college library is not a repository, but a workshop, a workshop where the silent machinery of thought may go on day by day—." Perhaps more than ever before the library at Dartmouth College stands in this relation to the college. Certainly the workshop idea has taken root in the campus, in large part nurtured by the enthusiasm of DeanBill. We now have in our midst the workshop of Virgil Poling, the studio of Paul Sample, the office-museum of Douglas Wade, the college naturalist. Each in its own way expresses a firm conviction in the belief that great value is to be gained by active participation of the student in creative effort, that this is concommitant with the development of student initiative, ingenuity and ability to plan and accomplish. An alumnus now with the Army in Italy has written concerning educational policy: "It is not a matter of how many three-hour courses a fellow has taken in college; what counts is how he handles himself afterwards with each new situation which confronts him."

When it comes to the use of books as records for the study of thought and action of others we here have tacitly admitted our desire to have the student conduct independent forays of exploration and discovery. The practise of using several reference books instead of a single textbook in connection with recent teaching at Dartmouth would imply this. Our Tower Room, with its selected books and comfortable chairs, is one effort to this same end. It is just possible that the fostering of elementary research would lead still others to forage through source material quite on their own; some undoubtedly would experience the thrill of independent discovery, many would exercise their powers of judgment and critical selection, develop initiative, the ability to plan and accomplish. Alexander Laing, in one of his many provocative articles which have appeared from time to time in the Baker Library Bulletin, has referred to advanced study as that stage "when the initiative in the adventure of knowledge passes from the professor to the student." Participation in browsing, spontaneous exploration in the library, and independent investigation are likely to engender satisfaction and enthusiasm, to call forth and give play to individuality; this it is hoped may become an autocatalytic reaction that will continue after college.

President Hopkins, in his recent convocation address to the civilian students and naval trainees, emphasized his belief in the importance of student initiative in the educational process. "Neither this college nor any other college educates a man. The best that it can do is to offer the facilities and the opportunities for a man to educate himself more easily and to. greater degree than otherwise might be possible for him. In the educational process the acquisition of knowledge is a means to an end but it is not an end in itself. The great purpose of education is the development of intelligence and this purpose can be realized by the individual man only through his own effort."

Baker Library has enjoyed a high priority rating among those who have guided and directed the expansion and development of the College. The grave concern felt by the President and the Trustees for the development of the library is evidenced by the statement of Henry B. Thayer '79, for many years chairman of the Trustee committee on development of the plant: "By 1925 we had arrived at the point where we were ready to mortgage Dartmouth Hall, the Campus, or the Charter, or all of them if necessary, to get a suitable building." No meager role has been taken by President Hopkins in evolving this pattern of things: "There is no conviction which I hold more definitely than that the value of a college education is contingent upon an adequate and wellrun library and the more completely adequate the library can be made and the better it can be run the greater potentialities of the educational opportunity which the College offers."

Thus Baker Library stands today, a workshop with a soundly built collection of materials, ready to play an increasingly important role in the post-war college. In so far as the library maintains its vitality and persists as a source of potential service in the educational scheme of the College—then let it be "a symbol—for Dartmouth an inspiration; for the world a sign."

DARTMOUTH'S LIBRARIAN, Nathaniel L. Goodrich (left) displays a rare old atlas to Prof. George C. Wood, chairman of the faculty library committee, in the Hough Treasure Room. The table shown is said to have come from Eleazar Wheelock's Connecticut Indian School.

OPEN STACKS AND READING COMFORT are features of student use of Baker Library. At the top, trainees pick out their own books while a shipmate uses one of the study cubicles in the stacks. Middle: The 1902 Room provides popular and well-equipped study quarters. Bottom: Browsers find the most comfortable spot of all in the library's famed Tower Room.

OPEN STACKS AND READING COMFORT are features of student use of Baker Library. At the top, trainees pick out their own books while a shipmate uses one of the study cubicles in the stacks. Middle: The 1902 Room provides popular and well-equipped study quarters. Bottom: Browsers find the most comfortable spot of all in the library's famed Tower Room.

OPEN STACKS AND READING COMFORT are features of student use of Baker Library. At the top, trainees pick out their own books while a shipmate uses one of the study cubicles in the stacks. Middle: The 1902 Room provides popular and well-equipped study quarters. Bottom: Browsers find the most comfortable spot of all in the library's famed Tower Room.

IN BAKER'S HANDSOME MAIN LOBBY, against the backdrop of an exhibition case and one of the troughs of present-day books, Harold G. Rugg '06, Assistant Librarian and the "Alumni Magazine's" long-time literary editor, pauses smilingly in his round of library duties.

THE AUTHOR of this article, Prof. Norman K. Arnold, leafs through a volume from the original Dartmouth library of 1775, now preserved in the Woodward Room, honoring Bezaleel Woodward, first College librarian.

TWO NERVE CENTERS OF THE LIBRARY are the reserve desk (left) where books are stamped out for short-period use, and the main delivery desk timely and

(right), at which Assistant Librarian Alexander Laing '25 is shown explaining his Book-of-the-Hour plan whereby copies of important books are made available. At left, Miss Ellen Adams, also an Assistant Librarian, answers a student's question.

PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY

Professor Arnold is a member of the Faculty Committee on the Library and has long had a vital interest in the all-important role which Baker Memorial Library now plays in the educational life of Dartmouth and will increasingly play in the postwar College. A graduate of Wesleyan, he has taught at Dartmouth since 1932.