That the college library of the middle of the last century was little more than a storehouse for books, in which the undergraduate had very little interest, is amply substantiated by the reminiscences of older graduates. "To those of us who graduated thirty, or forty, or more years ago," said the late William Frederick Poole, "books, outside of text-books used, had no part in our education. They were never quoted, recommended, or mentioned by instructors in the class-room. As I remember it, Yale College library might as well have been in Wetherfield, or Bridgeport, as in New Haven, so far as the students in those days were concerned."
In the old days at Columbia College, freshmen and sophomores were allowed to visit the library only once a month to gaze at the backs of books; the juniors were taken there once a week by a tutor who gave verbal information about the contents of the books, but only seniors were permitted to open the precious volumes, which they could draw from the library during one hour on Wednesday afternoons. In 1853, the salary of the librarian of Columbia was raised to three hundred dollars! Professor Brander Matthews, who graduated from Columbia in 1871, says that the library was at that time small and inconvenient and that he never entered it to read a book and never drew one from it during all the time he was an undergraduate.
The rules of the old days forbade the use of any lights in the Harvard Library, "excepting only when the librarian is obliged to seal official letters with wax he may with proper precautions use a lighted taper for that purpose." This recalls an entry in the diary of John Langdon Sibley, who records spending "four hours with a lantern and cloak in the chilly cellar" where he found many books and pamphlets not in the College Library.
Mr. Sibley, who spent 36 years in the service of the Harvard Library, has frequently been pictured as typical of the old style collector and custodian of books. The story is told of his having once completed an inventory of the library and, when seen crossing the yard with a particularly happy smile, was asked the reason for this pleased expression. "All the books are in excepting two," said he. "Agassiz has those and I am going after them." Exaggerated as this picture of him undoubtedly is, it must be said that he did lay much more emphasis upon the collecting and preservation of books than upon their use.
His successor, Justin Winsor, was the author of the remark which has come to be regarded as one of the truisms of modern librarianship: "A book is never so useful as when it is in use."
In his second annual report (1879) Mr. Winsor thus summed up his idea of library management: "Diligent administration, considerate forbearance, care that no rule is enforced for the sake of mere outward uniformity, and the establishment of reciprocal confidence between the government and the users of the library, open the way to many relaxations of old established prohibitions, which could not be safely allowed if a less conciliatory spirit prevailed. There should be no bar to the use of books, but the rights of others, and it is to the credit of the mass of library users that, when a librarian manifests that single purpose, he can safely be liberal in the discharge of his trust."
Mr. Winsor had an exceptional faculty for organization and administration. For some time after he left the service of the Boston Public Library it was hardly noticeable that there was no librarian. This was due to the fine organization which Mr. Winsor had effected and did not prove, as Alderman O'Brien of Boston argued, that Mr. Winsor's services could easily be dispensed with. He found time for writing history during the years of his librarianship at Boston and at Harvard because he knew how to administer. No doubt in his later years the historian in him overshadowed the librarian.
The salient feature of Mr. Winsor's administration of the Harvard College Library lay in the fact that he extended very materially the use of books by students. He instituted the system of "reserved" books by which the instructor is enabled to have gathered in an accessible place the reading which he required of his classes,—a device absolutely essential in the new method of teaching which substitutes the reading of authorities for the old time study of text-books.
And what as to the buildings in which these libraries are housed? The earlier ones like those of Harvard and Yale, were suggestive of Gothic chapels, while the later ones, like Michigan, Illinois and Cornell, are based upon an ecclesiastical motif, and have the questionable addition of a clock tower, the usual accompanying chimes helping to break into the quiet which it is so desirable to maintain in any library. Harvard's Gore Hall was an attenuated copy of the chapel of St. John's College, Cambridge, England, and necessarily ill adapted to the needs of a library. It was poorly lighted, poorly ventilated, hard to warm in winter, damp in parts during the spring and autumn. There were no private rooms, no working room, no conversation room, and no reading room worthy of the name. The only saving thing about the management was that the advice of old John Hollis was not followed and both students and professors were allowed to draw books for use in their rooms and homes.