Library History |
Rabinowitz Room History
HISTORY: Andover - Harvard Theological
Library
The Divinity School Library began with
duplicates from the College Library that in 1812 were set aside
for the use of the School’s students.
By 1852 the collection numbered only 3,495 volumes.
The School’s first separate library was built in 1887. It
was designed by Boston architects Peabody and Stearns. Today the
building is the Farlow Herbarium. In 1887, the collection of
20,000 volumes was still modest. The Divinity School’s ability
to rely on the central collection had inhibited its own library
development. The first librarian to provide continuous service was
not employed until 1889.
What we know today as the
Andover-Harvard Theological Library was formed by an agreement in
1910 that brought together the collections of the Harvard Divinity
School and the Andover Theological Seminary in the fall of 1911 in
the newly completed Andover Hall. This new facility included a
reference and reading room (now the Sperry Room), library staff
workspace, and a five-story, fireproof stack for about 200,000
volumes, said to be capable of indefinite enlargement. On opening
day, there were about 100,000 books (62% Andover and 38% Harvard),
not including the extensive pamphlet collections.
When the educational partnership of the
schools was dissolved in 1926, Andover's books stayed in this
library. They remain here today as the property of the Andover
Harvard Theological Library under the terms of an agreement that
is renewed every 30 years by Harvard University and the Andover
Newton Theological School.
Harvard
Books on religion at Harvard have had a long and important
history. Almost three-fourths of John Harvard's gift in 1638 of
400 volumes were theological. In the first printed catalog of the
College Library (1723), two-thirds of the 3,500 titles were on the
subject of religion. When the Library burned in 1764, half of the
404 books that were saved were books on religion. The theological
section was thirty percent of the College Library’s collection
in 1830.
A reading room ("at all times open") for theological
students was established in 1812 with duplicates from the College
Library. When Divinity Hall was completed in 1826, this library,
enhanced by purchases for the newly established Divinity School,
was moved there. Because of problems with the maintenance of
Divinity Hall in the early 1830's, the Corporation moved the
Library back to the College Library in Harvard Hall. After
negotiations by Dean John G. Palfrey, most of the library returned
to Divinity Hall. Though the collection totaled only 3,495 books
in 1852, it grew quickly, largely due to gifts of faculty and
alumni (Francis Parkman, Convers Francis, Jared Sparks, James
Walker, and Thomas Hill) and by the purchase
of 4,000 books from the library of Prof. G.C.F. Lücke of Göttingen
(made possible by a gift from Col. Benjamin Loring).
Conditions for the library, which then occupied six rooms in
Divinity Hall, were far from ideal. There was no reading area and
the library was open for only two hours a day. By 1870, the
library included 16,000 volumes.
It was managed, however, only by students and graduates.
Security was an important issue. The Report of the Dean for
1871/72 noted that Students were about as familiar with the
Library and its contents as with those of their own rooms, and
regarded them with a feeling too much the same. About this time,
the first permanent librarian was hired. A new fire-safe building
to house the library (as well as lecture rooms) was finally
completed in 1887 (this building is today incorporated into the
Harvard Herbarium). In 1889, Robert S. Morison was appointed
librarian.
Andover
The library was always important to the Andover Seminary. Monetary
gifts in 1808 from Samuel Abbot and others provided for a building
with an apartment for a library (along with a chapel and lodging
rooms). In 1818, the new chapel building included space for the
library. In 1866, Brechin Hall was constructed as a separate
library building.
Its growth in volumes was faster than at Harvard. Around 1840,
there were 12,000 volumes, including important purchases made in
Germany by Edward Robinson, the archaeologist, linguist,
professor, and librarian. In 1847, the theological portion (about
1,250 volumes) of the library of John Codman of Dorchester was
purchased. In the 1850's through the Civil War, the collection
included about 22,000 volumes. Aided by the purchase of the
library of Prof. C.W. Niedner of Berlin (7,000 volumes) and the
gift of about 8,000 pamphlets collected by Rev. W.B. Sprague
(compiler of Annals of the
American Pulpit), the library grew to 30,000 volumes in the
1870's. In 1885 the widow of John C. Phillips added more than 300
volumes. In 1886 a separate reference library was opened. In 1894
there were over 50,000 volumes, and in 1908 there were over
60,000. Important librarians at Andover were Samuel Farrar
(1808-30; 1833-44), William L. Ropes (1866-1905), and Owen Gates
(appointed in 1905), who became the first librarian of the joint
Andover-Harvard Library.
Today the Library contains 450,000 volumes and is recognized as a
major research library in the field and a leader among theological
libraries.
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