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Columns::November 10, 2003
$1.8 million award will help monitor ultraviolet radiation
Charter lecturer will discuss studying ‘unpredictable past’
ICAPP report: UGA graduates pump $211 million into state’s economy
Poll: Economy is top concern among Georgians
Inside tract: Parasitologist looks for new way to combat drug resistance of gastrointestinal parasites of goats
History professor journeys to past to find her place in today’s world
Retirees
Kudos
Re-engineering education: Engineering education on verge of major paradigm shift
Heading for a fall (eventually)
Campus News
A ‘Little’ anniversary
Main library building turns 50
By Jean Cleveland
jclevela@uga.edu
The UGA Libraries are celebrating this fall with the opening of the Electronic Teaching Library in the new Student Learning Center and the observance of the 50th anniversary of the original main library building.
The Little Memorial Library was officially dedicated Nov. 19, 1953, with distinguished visitors, speeches, a symposium, a dedicatory poem and a special commemorative booklet.
University Archives, a division of the Libraries, offers a Web gallery featuring the booklet, complete with contemporary photographs and prose that recreates some of the excitement of the opening of UGA’s then state-of-the-art library. To view the “virtual exhibit,” visit www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/archives/libraryintro.html. A complementary exhibit in the main library lobby will be on view this month.
Fifty years later, many of the comments being made about the new Student Learning Center and its electronic library echo the acclaim lavished on the “university’s magnificent $2 million bookcase.” University officials declared that the openings of both buildings “mark the beginning of an era of expanded study and research on the university campus.” At their respective openings, both were proclaimed “state-of-the-art”--the Little building included an air conditioning system that, in 1953, had been used by only three other libraries in the country.
“College libraries have changed, as you’re bound to notice if you haven’t been inside one since you got your last report card,” reads one 1953 newspaper article. “Today they are designed to make you WANT to read. Librarians don’t say sh-h-h any more. Libraries are lush, instead of hush-hush.”
Named the Ilah Dunlap Little Memorial Library in honor of the woman who left the university approximately half a million dollars when she died in 1939, the building has always been commonly called the main library.
“It is Little in name only,” reads a news account. “The tremendous building has more than three acres of floor space, seats for almost 1,000 students excluding the auditorium, and room for at least 600,000 books.”
Little left explicit instructions that the library, planned as a memorial to her family, be constructed on the site of the former Chancellor House and of “colonial” architectural style. It should be “of red brick with white columns all around it. The Athens, Ga., building has six free-standing columns at the entrance, plus three dozen pilasters or attached columns around the four sides. This is a total of 42, or four less than the number supporting one of the few other buildings in the world completely surrounded by columns, the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.”
It took three years to build the facility, which was furnished with modern birch furniture with “gaily colored leather” chair backs and walls “done in restful pastel shades.”
The third floor was an exemption from the modern style. A “memorial room,” now a part of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, is still outfitted with Victorian furniture and art belonging to Little.
The university hired Alfred M. Githens, a New Yorker who specialized in library construction and had planned more libraries than anyone else in the country at that time, as architect. Considered by its designers to be the most modern library in the nation, the building used a newly developed style of construction called modular, intended to make the space flexible to accommodate future growth.
“In an attempt to break down the barriers between students and books, as few restrictions as possible on the use of the library will be made,” said W. Porter Kellam, director of the libraries during the construction. “Thus a greater responsibility will be placed on the students to consider the rights of others.”
The change in design was such a dramatic departure from traditional libraries it caught the attention of the state auditor, who questioned whether the proposed layout was a wise use of funds.
The dedication address was given by Ralph Ellsworth, director of the Iowa State University Library, considered the “dean of library architecture.” He spoke on “The University Library, Center of Study and Research.” Gov. Herman Talmadge presented the building. An afternoon symposium was held on the availability and use of research materials. The symposium continued the following day at Georgia Tech and a new library there was dedicated Nov. 21, 1953, with many of the same speakers and dignitaries attending. |
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