History of the IUP Libraries

Eric Bonner, Courtney Dennis, Amy Loch, Wendy Lynn, Todd Miller, Amanda

Yasczak

Hist 606: Topics in Public History

5-7-04

It was the academic year of 1981-1982, the Year of the Library. On a

cool and breezy autumn afternoon a small crowd gathered on the Esplanade

of the brand new Stapleton Library, on the campus of the Indiana University

of Pennsylvania. While a new building itself, Stapleton had been joined onto

the old library, Stabley, creating a larger facility for the campus. The group

gathered there, on October 10, 1981, had come to witness the dedication of

the new library and to tour the building after the ceremony. Nearby, in front

of Fisher Auditorium, the University Marching Band, under the direction of Dr.

Charles Casavant, cheerfully played a variety of music while the crowd

waited with eager anticipation for the ceremony to begin.

The new building had been a long time in coming, over a decade for

this particular building while the library itself had struggled for a place on

campus. The University had its beginnings as a Normal School in the 1870s.

Over the years the library had moved from location to location, usually an

afterthought in placement, having to share its space with other departments.

Eventually it would occupy six different locations between 1875 and 1981.

With the opening of Stabley library in 1960 the library finally had a home of

its own. And now the size had grown to the point where an additional

building had to be constructed and it would be the largest academic library

between the one at the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State’s own Pattee.

Construction had begun in December 1978. Nearly a year before the

dedication the library had celebrated the acquisition of it’s 500,000 volume

on September 3, 1980, The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell. Excitement

was high as, at precisely 10:30 a. m. the band ceased playing and the first

speaker, Dr. John Worthen, President of the University, stepped forward with

the opening, followed by Monsignor Louis Doychak, who gave the invocation.

The keynote speaker that day was Richard Daniel Altick, a well-known

scholar of 19th century English literature and social history and at the time

Regents’ Professor of English at Ohio State University.

The library was then presented to University and to the people by Dr.

Robert C. Wilburn, Secretary of Budget and Administration and an

acceptance speech was given by Senator Patrick J. Stapleton, Jr., for whom

the building was named.

And then Scott Andreassi, President of the IUP Student Government

Association and other honorary representatives, cut the ribbon. A portrait of

Senator Stapleton was unveiled, the benediction given and tours of the new

facility began, including a periodicals room, government documents area and

an area for special collections being headed by newly hired Phil Zorich, who

would be the library and university archivist.

But the library, as mentioned, had its beginnings long before that

October day. In 1857 an act was introduced to create the Indiana Normal

School, though the school itself would not be built until 1875. The Board of

Trustees donated “a fine reference library” and the books were housed on

the second floor of Sutton Hall, a location that is now the home of the Vice

President for Administration.

Unfortunately little is known about the university library in the early

years. What is known is often not fleshed out with much detail. The library

had a humble beginning, as most institutions do. Still, for a university in its

fledgling years, the Indiana Normal School boasted of 1,000 volumes in the

1884-85 academic year. The collection consisted mainly of choice works of

history, biography and various departments of literature. It was a humble

beginning to what the library would one day become. But, it was just that, a

beginning.

In the summer of 1895, the Normal Herald reported a new program of

the library. July welcomed the beginning of the “Y Library.” The Y library

was a program that allowed young women access to 200 volumes every

Sabbath. It was a time for young ladies to further refine themselves.

The library was growing at this time and its growth was duly noted in

the Third Catalog of the State Normal School. It was referred to as a fine

reference library that was established mainly from donations by the Board of

Trustees. The students had free recourse of the materials free of charge.

The reading room, the catalog went on to say, held the leading daily and

weekly newspapers, magazines, journals of education and church and

Sunday School weeklies.

Merely one year later, in the 1888 catalog, a new need for the students

was being drawn. “Experience shows that student [sic] is almost helpless in

the presence of an abundance of the very material he desires.” The

students had what they needed; they were just not equipped to use what

was available.

The library aligned itself with the three purposes with which Henry

Ward Beecher read. First, one must have a definite purpose in reading.

Second, one must examine current magazines and current information that

is available. Third, one should read with a dictionary and atlas in hand.

Simply put, Beecher’s purposes could be summed up as: Whatever you read,

read it thoughtfully.

Also, at this time, the books of the collections were organized first by

department, then by case. As the library was getting organized, it still

continued to grow in its general collections, as well. By 1890, Philadelphia

newspapers were also added to the collection.

In 1896, the Y Program that had begun the year before finally had a

permanent home. The Y Library now consisted of two oak bookcases,

which flanked the mantle in John Sutton Hall’s reception room. With

programs such as this, the Normal School library was becoming more a

library and less a repository of reference materials.

Over the next fifteen years, the collection at Indiana Normal School

grew steadily and rapidly. A look at the collection from 1902 to 1910 shows

this increase.

Year Vols. Added Total Vols.

1902 288 46501903 515 51651904 210 53751905 311 55861906 364 59501907 206 16561908 ? ?1909 300 67151910 115 6803

Some problems persisted as the library continued to grow. One of the

more persistent problems was getting students up to a level where they

knew how to use the library and the resources within it. As early as 1912,

the school catalog offered a “brief course to each student in the use of the

library.” Later, in 1930, this course was expanded into a ten hour, one

semester course outlined by the State Commission on Curriculum Revision.

It should be pointed out that this same course is still offered today in 2004.

Despite any problems the library may have been having, it was still

defining itself in scope and in word. The 1911-12 Annual Catalog of the

Indiana Normal School offers this description:

“A good reference library is accessible everyday to all students.

Here are found the leading encyclopedias, dictionaries and other

standard reference books, historical charts, map and

conveniences so essential to successful student life. There is

also a large library of choice works of history, biography and

literature free to all students.

It is also the aim to mass books merely for the sake of

making a large library during the year will aggregate about 500

volumes.

In connection with the library is a reading room, supplied with

newspapers and periodicals . . .”

In 1915, the library added another new dimension to itself.

This new program was called the Red Star System. It was simply

three shelves of books marked with Red Stars. The star was a

“badge of honor.” The system was developed by Theo Koch

from the University of Michigan. Its purpose was not just to

increase the standard of reading, but also the joy of reading.

The Red Star system pointed out books that were admired for

their humor, attractive stories, and beauty in thought and

expression.

1917 saw a significant change in the college. It was the beginning of

the transformation from the Normal School to a State Teachers College.

Despite this step forward in the university, 1917 saw many of the library’s

books being sold. Three possible reasons (or combination of reasons)

accounts for the selling of the books. First, it could have come about as a

result of the change to a State Teachers College. Second, it could have been

due to a decline in enrollment because of World War I. Third, it could simply

have been because of financial problems. It must be pointed out, however,

that even more books were discarded between 1918 and 1930. Another

reason for selling books during this period could have been the Great

Depression.

For it’s first fifteen years, the library worked without a librarian on the

faculty roster. Very little is known about these first librarians. The first

librarian was George Feit who served from 1890-1891 and was the most

popular writer in Indiana. Miss Aramita McLane became the librarian in

1907. Before coming to the Indiana Normal School, she had been the former

public librarian in East Liverpool, Ohio. Throughout this period there were

several other librarians listed on the faculty roster including Ella M. Doutthit,

Jermome Clark Feyzer, Mrs. Walter Mitchell and Evelyn L. Matthews. Several

full time assistant librarians were also employed during this time.

The First librarian of whom we do know somewhat about is a very

colorful woman–Mrs. Katherine Jackson Brew. She had a parrot, 48 year old

Harry, which she kept in the library. Mrs. Brew was a poor southern lady,

but she knew books. Harry was once owned by a sailor and had some “salty

speech.” Male students would tease Harry to try to get him to use some of

more colorful language. It was times like this that Mrs. Brew threw the cover

over the cage.

For a short time Harry was thought to possibly be a Harriet. One time

an egg the size of a pigeon egg was found in his cage.

In the 1930s, due to the trials of the Great Depression, the librarians

took a 10% cut in pay. 1936 saw the birth of the first library publication.

Library Bulletin was used to keep both students and faculty aware of the

library and its resources. Such a publication was helpful when Dr. Samuel

Fausold, President of the College, began requesting textbook donations from

various publishers. Seven publishing houses responded. Among them,

Noble and Noble, Charles Scribner’s Sons, Foresman and Co., and the

American Book Company.

The textbook collection was begun in 1939. This collection would go

on to provide the core of the eventual Curriculum Materials Room. This room

would eventually include textbooks, courses of study, testing materials and

other teaching aids.

The decade of the 1940s was tumultuous not only for the world at

large, with the entrance of the United States into the Second World War in

1941, but also for the university and library as well. Efforts were made

throughout the university to make the students aware of world events and

the impact on student lives. The library noted that there were changes in

the types of information that students were searching for--for their own

interest and in relation to assignments from the faculty. The library made

use of posters and bulletin boards to draw attention to the materials

available, notably magazine articles and books. The emphasis was on the

privileges and obligations, which go hand in hand with being a citizen of the

United States, as well as being a part of the entire world.

During this time the library began to build a collection of war clippings,

pamphlets, pictures and other materials. In this manner, original sources on

WWII would be available for future students.

One of the effects of the war was budget constraints. In order to pay

for new fiction books a rental library was established in 1944. Students

would pay 2 cents per day when borrowing a book until the book was paid

for.

1941 was an eventful year with the achievement of accreditation for

the State Teacher’s College. This was the year that the library was moved

out of John Sutton Hall to Wilson Hall after the Training School Building was

remodeled for this purpose. There was space for 500,000 volumes and 255

students. This included four reading rooms on the second floor. The first

floor was the home of the circulation desk; a room, which combined

reference and reserve books, a room for curriculum materials, and a room

for periodicals. The Indiana Historical Society’s collection had it’s own room

here, along with material on Pennsylvania History. Extra storage could be

found in the basement.

But the students did not use the library as much as the faculty had

hoped. It had been expected that the monthly circulation would be

approximately 275 books, but in December the circulation was only 143.

During the faculty meeting of December 1941 a desire was expressed that

the library could be integrated with other educational processes of the

college, a desire that is, in some ways, echoed today. As time passed the

use of the library did increase. Between 1949 and 1955 there was a 25%

increase in the use of the library by the students. Despite this increase,

teams from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher education

reported in 1949, 1950 and 1951 that the library was under-utilized and

inadequately supported.

Still, the library pressed on in its goal of being a resource not only to

the student body but also to the public as a whole. In 1950 the book stacks

were opened to the public, not just students and faculty. Plans were

underway to include more storage space in the basement as well as typing

facilities and rooms where patrons could listen to phonograph records. It

was also at this time, in November of 1950, that head librarian Robert T.

Grazier resigned his position. He was replace by Joseph K. Hall who served

for two years before moving onto West Chester. In 1953 William Lafranchi

replaced Mr. Hall as head librarian. He would later be named “director of

libraries” and would remain in that position for 33 ½ years, until 1985. Mr.

Lafranchi, a native of Brookville, Pennsylvania, graduated from Clarion

Teachers College in Clarion, Pennsylvania. After a period of time in the

armed services Mr. Lafranchi then attended the University of Illinois. After

graduating from there he became the librarian for the Clarion area high

school and was later offered the job of head librarian at Indiana. He was only

twenty-six years old at the time.

In 1954 the Middle States evaluation team recommended a new

library. By this point the library contained 40,000 volumes and the reference

room had been redesigned and re-furnished.

Two years later the university and the library determined that the

collection of the library needed to be expanded and updated. The “60 by

60” program was instituted. The purpose behind this was to fill the library

shelves with a total of 60,000 volumes by the year 1960 with emphasis on

acquiring out-of-print books, foreign language material, microboard and

microfilm periodicals and expanding the humanities and philosophy

collections.

Due to the hard work of those involved, the goal of 60,000 volumes

was reached a year ahead of schedule, in 1959. That was the year in which

the word “Teacher’s” was dropped from the name of the college and plans

were being made for a new library. This building, named the Rhodes R.

Stabley library, was the first building built specifically for the purpose of

being the university library. The actual cost of the new library was $570,000,

$30,000 less that the estimated cost when construction began in 1960. Use

of this new library, which could accommodate 130,000 volumes, would begin

in April of 1961. In 1963 the library would become one of 612 depository

libraries in the United States for Federal Government Documents and

Publications. Items included publications from various departments

including Agriculture; Commerce; Defense; Army; Navy; Health, Education

and Welfare; Interior; Labor; Post Office; State; Treasury and the Women’s

Bureau. Other items selected for receipt include Census of Manufactures;

Home and Garden Bulletins; Soil Conservation; Foreign Agriculture; Children;

Higher Education; Education Office Bulletins; Geological survey bulletins;

Minerals Yearbook; Monthly Labor Review; Foreign Policy Briefs and reports

on committee hearings before both the United States Senate and House of

Representatives.

The designation as a repository library greatly increased the

opportunities for reference and research for students, faculty and staff in the

library as well as for the general public within Indiana and neighboring

counties. Some of the items became part of the main collection, but most

were separated into the Government Documents section of the library.

Automation finally began to take hold of the library in 1961. It was

then that a punch card tabulating system was instituted. Each book had a

card, which contained the call number, author, title and publisher for that

book.

The return of the Middle States evaluation team in 1964 brought good

news, not only for the library, but for the University as well. Dr. Crawford,

representing the evaluation team, informed the University that “Indiana is

number one among the state colleges as far as the library goes” and

indicated that the goal of 1,000,000 was not unrealistic. The first goal would

be to build the collection in order to support programs towards earning

Master’s Degrees. The next goal would then be to work towards a Doctoral

program. Both areas of higher education would focus on the Arts and

Sciences. Dr. Pratt, who was president of the college at that time took the

idea in hand and pushed for increasing the library holdings, which eventually

would result in the need for another library.

It was not long after this that Stabley was ranked fifth in the state of

Pennsylvania in the number of catalogued items, between the years of 1964

and 1966. By 1966 Stabley ranked number twelve among all academic

libraries in Pennsylvania with 200,000 volumes. These include 126, 000

volumes of books, 5200 in the Pennsylvania Collection, 20,000 volumes of

periodicals, 10,000 reels of microfilm, 2000 volumes of microcards, 12,000

phonograph records, 26,000 filmstrips and 10,000 government documents.

Each of the three branch libraries houses approximately 8,000 volumes and

projected growth to 25,000. The emphasis was on the humanities with

teacher training specific volumes now only making up 7% of the collection.

More than 250,000 people were using the library facilities yearly by this

point.

In 1966 Stabley received a grant for $5,000 from the Library

Development Division of the Pennsylvania State Library’s Title I Library

Services and construction Act, U.S. Department of Health, Education and

Welfare to help prepare a book catalog of the complete book holdings. The

bound volumes, totaling nine in all, were to be placed in nine public libraries

as well as selected agencies. The beginning of 1967 saw the installation of

$3000 machines, which allowed conversion to a more efficient charging

system, which used punched identification cards and IBM shelf-list cards.

In the 1970s it was determined that a new library was needed to fill the

needs of the growing university and also to house the growing collection of

the library. Plans began with the original intention of constructing a new

building on the campus where Sutton Hall was located. But due to the

desire to preserve Sutton, and also to budget constraints, plans were made

to attach the new library to the existing one, and the early plans for the

Patrick J. Stapleton Jr. library were begun. Part of Sutton Hall was

demolished to make way for the new construction, however. The new

building was to be a blend of old and new. Stained glass windows from

Sutton Hall were included in the design as was a beam made from a tree that

had been cut for space in the Oak Grove.

The new library was opened for students in the fall of 1981 with the

official dedication on October 10, 1981. At this time a new area was opened

in the library, that of Special Collections, the archives of the University. Phil

Zorich, who had previously completed his graduate work at the University of

Oregon, was hired as head of the department. Previously, Research

Librarian Richard Chamberlin, had taken on the role of Archivist, but Phil

would be the first person hired specifically for that purpose.

The result has been the organization of records relating to the

University from the time of the Normal School to now, the organization and

expansion of rare books and Pennsylvania historic papers and so on. Special

Collections at Stapleton has documentation of the United Mine Workers

district offices for the region, as well as the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal

Company.

After the retirement of William Lafranchi, Larry Kroah was hired as the

director of the library for sixteen years. Mr. Kroah felt that following

Lafranchi was difficult because of all the great things that had been

accomplished in his thirty-two years at the library. Richard Chamberlin

thought that Larry Kroah brought about one of the greatest changes in the

entire history of the library. Kroah took the funding for acquisitions and

divided it evenly between all the departments. Before, the money would

simply go to which requests the library received first. Potentially, all the

money could go to one department’s acquisitions. This way, every academic

department was growing equally. No more monetary emphasis would be

given to one discipline over another. According to Chamberlin, that’s exactly

what should have been done all along.

In 1998 IUP hired its first female head of the library, and first dean of

the libraries, Dr. Rena Fowler. Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, Dr.

Fowler had previously been the librarian at Humboldt State University in

California where she had been working on her Ph. D. One of the first

changes under her leadership was the reclassification of the collection from

the Dewey Decimal System to the Library of Congress System. Another

change was opening the journal collection to the public. She has also begun

planning for the future by organizing a strategic planning process titled

“Moving Ahead in the New Millennium”. Dr. Fowler still holds the position of

Dean of Libraries as of May 2004.

Bibliographic Essay

The information contained in this paper comes from interviews conducted by Eric Bonner, Courtney Dennis, Amy Loch, Wendy Lynn, Todd Miller and Amanda Yasczak. Additional resources came from Record Group 60 in Special Collections, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Archives.