This austere bookplate was one used in the thirties by the library of the Columbia University School of Library Service, a library collection that always suffered an embarras de richesses. Even in 1887-1889, when the Columbia College School of Library Economy was newly established, a collection of books and pamphlets existed. These materials were moved to Albany in 1889 when the school moved and became the New York State Library School. Winifred B. Linderman reports (Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, vol. 5, New York: Dekker, 1971) that although in 1911 a fire destroyed the collections along with the school’s facilities, James I. Wyer, the school’s director, was extremely successful in his rebuilding efforts. Thus in 1926, when the collection was moved back to Columbia University with the establishment of the professional school there, it contained approximately 6,000 volumes as well as three special collections: the Alumni Collection, Annual Reports Collection, and Historical Collection of Children’s Literature. The New York Public Library’s library school, founded in 1911, moved to the Columbia University program in 1926 too, and its collections were also acquired. The relocation of the two schools’ library collections at Columbia resulted in an outstanding resource.

            Almost immediately after arrival at Columbia the newly merged collections began to expand, first with the addition of the Mary Louisa Sutcliff Collection of Private Press Books. However exemplary the burgeoning collection was, its housing was not; the collection was in seven sections in three locations. This situation was rectified in 1934 when Butler Library was built with facilities for the library school and its library collections. By 1936 it was determined that there were 21,000 books and pamphlets, 200 periodicals, and 7,000 annual reports. The collection had its own librarian and extended its reputation when its outstanding holdings of foreign language materials on librarianship were recognized. In 1972 the riches of the collection were made more widely known with the publication of the seven volumes of the Dictionary Catalog of the Library of the School of Library Service, Columbia University (Boston: G. K. Hall), which were followed in 1976 by a four-volume supplement.

            Olha della Cava, Walter Barnard, and Beth Posner provided us with the history of the library of the Columbia University School of Library Service in their 1991 article (Library Quarterly 61: 41-60). The details provided in that article clearly established the library of the Columbia School of Library Service as the foremost library school library in the world from 1887 to 1990. The 1990 collection they described was the most impressive indeed with 100,000 volumes of monographs, periodicals, and pamphlets, and 4,000 microforms, the latter including over 900 doctoral dissertations on librarianship from other universities to complement their complete holdings of their own dissertations. The library held 3,000 current serial subscriptions. Its serial holdings went far beyond the basic journals and included newsletters and other serial publications from libraries, library schools, and other library-related groups such as library supply companies. The library’s pamphlet collection, with some dating from the early nineteenth century, included such important historical ephemera as publications from library dedication ceremonies. The collection of library school catalogs, even the foreign ones, extended back for thirty years, with some going back to the turn of the century. The library annual reports collection, always one of the library’s strengths, contained over 800 titles. It is appropriate that della Cava’s article was titled “Resources for Scholars,” for the library of Columbia University’s School of Library Service was exactly that. 

Judith A. Overmier

School of Library and Information Studies

University of Oklahoma