Category: 25 Year Timeline

The interior of Harwood Library. On the table at the center of the image is an issue of Current History magazine. The man on the cover is Adolph Hitler.

(Picture of Harwood Library Interior)

On April 6th, 1926, Harwood Library is officially opened. The collection has now grown to about 37,000 volumes. The building is popular with students, although the Librarian, William Daggett, later laments that some of them “seem to wish to consider the library as a social center.”

(Picture of Harwood Library)

After Drury’s Semi-Centennial celebration, President Thomas Nadal announces that a new library building will be erected. Judge Charles Harwood donates $50,000 dollars for the construction of a library to be named in honor of his wife. The architectural firm Ferrand and Fitch of St. Louis produces this rendering of the proposed Harwood Library.

(Architectural Rendering of Harwood Library)

The Library is moved from the West Academy Building to the first floor of Stone Chapel. It will remain there for the next thirty-two years.

(Picture of Stone Chapel)

Professor Edward M. Shepard becomes the College Librarian. The collection now contains 21,000 volumes, and Professor Shepard boasts that the Drury College Library is “the sixth largest between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean.”

(Picture of Professor Edward M. Shepard)

The Library’s collection now contains about 15,000 books and 17,000 pamphlets. The collection can no longer be contained in Fairbanks Hall, and is moved to the second floor of Drury’s original building, now known as the West Academy Building. By 1888, the collection is so large that there is concern that its weight might collapse the second story floors, so the collection is moved to the first floor.

(Picture of the West Academy Building )

The Drury College Library is now about 5,000 volumes strong. The Library is moved out of the Model School Building and into the basement of Fairbanks Hall.

(Picture of Fairbanks Hall )

The College starts a “One Book for the Library” drive. 3,600 Congregational ministers across the country are each asked to donate one book, or $2, which is the average cost of a good book at the time. This is followed by other book-donation drives that continue on into the 20th Century, including the “Book-A-Year-Club.”

(Picture of “One Book” bookplate.)

On one of his frequent fundraising trips to Boston, President Morrison meets Mr. Knapp of the Boston Public Library, who offers to donate duplicate and withdrawn books to Drury College. President Morrison accepts about 2,000 titles from the Boston Public Library, and ships them back to Drury.

(Picture of Bookplate)

The College Library is moved to the Model School Building, which once sat where Bay Hall is now located.

(Picture of The Model School Building)