“…the Library, the culmination of all.”

Both Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White understood the importance of libraries. When his investment in Western Union began to pay off, Cornell’s first major act of philanthropy was the creation of a public library for Ithaca. In the New York State Senate, he first met Andrew Dickson White when the bill for the incorporation of the Cornell public library was referred to White’s Committee on Education. White also believed in the power of great libraries. In his 1862 letter to Gerrit Smith, he envisioned “a truly great University... It must have the best of Libraries….” And in his Report of the Committee on Organization, presented to the Board of Trustees on October 21, 1866, White noted that the new university would need “physical equipment, an experimental farm for agriculture, workshops for engineering, museums for the various departments.... And the library, the culmination of all.”

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White began developing the University’s library, with University funds, through his own purchases, and by encouraging the gifts of others. The trustees and Ezra Cornell also provided funds for books. Daniel Willard Fiske became Cornell’s first University Librarian.

In 1872, the library of 15,400 volumes moved from Morrill Hall to McGraw Hall, a new building funded by trustee John McGraw. Fiske organized it after the European model, as a non-circulating reference library. Cornell’s may have been the first American university library intended for extensive use by undergraduates as well as by the faculty. The Cornell Library was open nine hours a day, longer than any other library in the country.

White was also responsible for the creation of Cornell’s first unit library. As he later reminisced in his Autobiography, “I proposed to the trustees that if they would establish a department of architecture and call a professor to it, I would transfer to it my special library and collections.” The trustees complied, and appointed Charles Babcock as the first professor of architecture in the United States in 1871. Accordingly, White donated to Cornell his architecture library, containing about 1,200 volumes, including the major journals of the day.

In 1882, the Library published its first Library Bulletin, with notes, articles, and lists of collections and new acquisitions, including the new Architecture collection.

By 1885, the library was taking advantage of new technologies. Cornell had pioneered in the use of electricity for lighting, having created the firstoutdoor electric-lighting system in the country with the use of arc lights on the towers of McGraw Hall and Sage Chapel. In his 1885-1886 Annual Report, the new president Charles Kendall Adams wrote:

A very noteworthy contribution to the availability of the general library has been made in the course of the year by the lighting of the library room with electricity and the opening of the room during the evening. It was found early in the year that the electrical apparatus already in use would be sufficient to supply the necessary light, and that the putting in of the lamps and connections would involve an expense of not more than a few hundred dollars. The opening of the library in the evening was hailed with satisfaction by students and professors. The number of readers in the evening has not been large, but it has been sufficient to encourage the Library Council in regarding the experiment as successful.

Andrew Dickson White resigned as president of Cornell University in 1885, and offered to present his historical library to the University if the University would provide “a suitable fire-proof room in any building which shall be erected for your general library, and proper provision made for its maintenance and usefulness....” The trustees agreed to provide a new building for the growing library. Meanwhile, the United States Supreme Court had ruled against Cornell in the Fiske lawsuit; but promising that “Jennie shall have her library,” Henry Sage agreed to endow the library at a cost of more than $500,000. The new University Library building (now Uris Library) opened in 1891, with a tower for Jennie’s bells. Andrew Dickson White presented his historical library of 30,000 volumes, 10,000 pamphlets, and many manuscripts.

Harris Classification System

In 1882, the Library Bulletin had promised that “a complete alphabetical author catalogue and a subject catalogue are now in preparation, but their completion will necessarily require a considerable period of time.” With the move into the new building, University Librarian George W. Harris created his own classification system. Based on the British Library system, “it was a fixed location device, consisting of shelf numbers which followed a loose systematic arrangement.”

20^th Century Expansion: Library Handbooks

By 1904, the Cornell Library contained 286,000 volumes. After surveying the practices of other libraries in 1908, Cornell agreed to allow books to circulate to undergraduates for the first time. Space and funding were continuing problems. As economic conditions in the country worsened, so did the state of the library. Some relief was obtained in 1937 with the addition of a nine-story stack to Uris Library. Finally, after World War II, the Library’s fortunes began to improve. College and department libraries joined the University Library; a Union Catalog was established. A massive reclassification project changed the catalog from the Harris to the Library of Congress call number system. In 1957, university trustee John M. Olin provided a gift to build a new research library. Olin Library was officially dedicated on October 10, 1962, along with the newly-remodeled University Library, now renamed Uris Library. Space continued to be a problem, and the Library built its first off-site storage facility in 1979; a second unit, a high-density warehouse, opened in 1998.

In 2014, the many libraries that comprise the Cornell University Library are nationally known for their innovative services, extensive collections, and staff expertise. The Library integrates digital with traditional resources and services, and promotes access to its physical and online collections through a variety of programs, including instruction, tours, and exhibitions. It continues to play a vital role in the life of the university.

Unit Libraries

Following the Architecture Library, Cornell’s second unit library was Law, established for the new Law School in 1886. The College of Veterinary Medicine developed its library in 1897, with the support of former New York State Governor Roswell P. Flower. The State of New York established the New York State College of Agriculture in 1904; it had a rudimentary library in a room set aside for the purpose, but many departments maintained their own libraries. In 1915, the library moved to Stone Hall and hired a full-time librarian. Thirty years later, two additional unit libraries accompanied the creation of their respective schools: in 1945, the first four-year school of Industrial and Labor Relations in the country, and in 1946, the Business School. From the 1960s on, the college libraries have dramatically expanded. Fine Arts moved into Sibley Hall and later Rand Hall, Management into Malott and then Sage Hall; Physics and Chemistry were combined as the Physical Sciences Library in Clark Hall; the ILR Library moved to new quarters in Ives Hall; the Music Library moved into the new addition to Lincoln Hall, and a major addition to Mann Library opened.

Special Collections:
“The Great Living, Growing Historical Workshop”

Cornell’s rare book and manuscript collections date from the founding of the University. In the earliest years, White and Fiske acquired major scholarly collections, including the classical literature library of Charles Anthon, the Franz Bopp philological library, the library of Goldwin Smith, the Kelly Collection on mathematics, the Samuel May Antislavery collection, and the Jared Sparks collection in American history. White’s own collections on witchcraft, the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, and the Civil War came in 1892. In 1904, Willard Fiske bequeathed his Dante, Petrarch, and Icelandic collections.

The Wason Collection on China and the Chinese came in 1918, from Charles W. Wason, Class of 1876. In 1925, trustee Victor Emanuel purchased the Wordsworth Collection for Cornell. A grant from the Rockefeller Foundation founded a Collection of Regional History in 1942. Marguerite Lilly Noyes presented the Nicholas H. Noyes Collection of Historical Americana, including a copy of the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln’s hand, the original manuscript of the Emancipation Proclamation, and a presentation copy of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In 1952, the University officially established a University Archives. The History of Science Collections began with the purchase of Professor Howard Adelmann’s library in 1961. The Library’s Human Sexuality Collection was established in 1988, the Rose Goldsen Collection of New Media Art in 2002, and the Hip Hop Collection in 2007.

The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives, Mann Library, the Law Library, the Music Library, and the Medical Archives of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center also house important collections of primary research materials.

In 1990, under the leadership of University Librarian Alain Seznec, Cornell built a new library to house its special collections. The trustees designated space on the Arts Quadrangle, but decreed that the library must be underground. The Carl A. Kroch Library opened in 1992, combining the Rare Books Department, the Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, the History of Science Collections, and the Icelandic Collection to form the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. Kroch Library also houses the Library’s distinguished Asia Collections: the Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia, the John M. Echols Collection on Southeast Asia, and the South Asia Collection.

As part of a nationwide movement towards library cooperation and resource sharing, the Cornell University Library began contributing records to OCLC in 1973. Cornell implemented its first online integrated library system in 1988, with the purchase of NOTIS, which was later replaced by Voyager. During the 1990s, Cornell was a leader in the application of digital imaging technologies to library and archival holdings and the development of networked access to electronic resources.

The Library of the Future, 1964

Morris Bishop, a professor of Romance Literature and the University Historian, published this prediction in the Cornell Daily Sun in 1964. At that time libraries had adopted large-scale microfilming for preservation only recently; computer technology was confined to a few gigantic mainframe machines; and 1990 was a distant dream.

In 1990 the library system, long inadequate, will be supplemented by a storage library in Etna. In view of the development of reading machines and of Conceptual Implantation, many will question the value of book-reading, or Still Reading. The controversy will generate much passion and eloquent argument, which will be recorded on microsensorfilm.

Morris Bishop, “Cornell’s Next Hundred Years: A Witty Commentary on Many Changes Which May Visit the University,” Cornell Daily Sun, Volume LXXXI, Number 16, October 9, 1964.

Additional Resources

• Cornell University Library
• Cornell University Library History: Cornell’s University Librarians
• The Passionate Collector: Willard Fiske

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