September 23, 1983

William Augustus Banner
Graduate Professor of Philosophy
Howard University

     Dr. Woods, President Cheek, Members of the Board of Trustees, Administrative Officers, Distinguished Guests, Members of the Faculty, Alumni, Students of Howard University:

We meet today to observe a significant event in the life of this university, namely, the dedication of The Undergraduate Library. And we look back at this time to the dedication of Founders Library on May 25, 1939. On that occasion, the speaker was honorable Harold L. Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior. In the presentation of the building, Mr. Ickes made the following comment:

A library is more than a building; it is more than the volumes that rest upon its shelves. A library is a depository of ideas with which to sharpen the intellect, a source of ideals with which to satisfy the soul. The more it is used the more it is capable of being used…Let us hope that the library which we now dedicate, by ever remaining an inexhaustible well of human wisdom and experience, shall help one of the genuinely creative sectors of our population to achieve the more abundant life.

There is exhilaration and strength in high tradition, in that continuity of purpose that involves the satisfaction of the deepest human need and aspiration. The impulse to know, to read, and to discuss what has been read is the particular human demand that lies behind the creation and preservation of libraries. A library is first a collection of books and other materials for reading or reference. A library takes its character and its reputation from the quality and range of the books that are placed there and from the coming and going of the serious persons who make use of these books.

It stirs the mind and arouses the spirit to think of the part that libraries and reading rooms have played in 'sharpening the intellect' and 'satisfying the soul' of those who have come under the fascination of books. One thinks of Henry David Thoreau, being unimpressed with the course of studies at Harvard and taking refuge in the library, believing that it was the best that Harvard had to offer to a student; of Albert Einstein, reading on his own at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School (at Zurich) the original literature of physics in the writings of Kirchhoff, Hertz, Maxwell, and Mach; of Thomas Wolfe, at the University of North Carolina, carrying armfuls of books to his room for weekend reading while his friends were playing poker; and of James Baldwin, reading in the Forty-Second Street Library and elsewhere in New York and saying, in Notes of a Native Son :

"I read Uncle Tom's Cabin and A Tale of Two Cities over and over again; in this way, in fact, I read just about everything I could get my hands on…"

These are famous persons and they make up only a part of the full picture. To mention these individuals is not to ignore or to dismiss the great company of plain persons whose lives and careers have been shaped by the books that they have found time to read, often under an inner compulsion that is difficult to explain.

II

Much has been said and written in recent times about the spoken word and the written word as distinct and competing devices in the transmission of information and ideas and in the preservation of human memory. Clearly the spoken word has its own authenticity and power, as we are well aware when we recall things said to us or heard by us in conversation or at a public meeting. The sound of the human voice carries overtones of conviction and emphasis and subtlety of thought in the direct communication between a speaker and his audience. The written or printed word is not greater than the spoken word in its power to convey what is meant and to pass on from generation to generation what is worth preserving in human experience.

The written or printed word (as also the recorded voice) has the particular advantage of what can be set forth in many copies, with each copy having an independent existence and accessibility in the same place or in separate places. Thus the same text can be made available to many persons at the same time and it can pass anonymously from person to person, from place to place, from generation to generation, and (through translation) from culture to culture. A book or pamphlet, as a physical thing, can become the temporary or permanent possession of an unlimited number of persons, to be read and reread as time and circumstance permit. In this way there is generated a 'reading public' that crosses every social division, providing for every expression of thought access to all sorts of individuals in all conditions of life. The wide range of literacy is part of the meaning of democracy as the view that all persons have the right to all good things. There is the obligation in a democracy to promote literacy without snobbery or false pretension of any sort. A university, in its daily work, has the opportunity to advance the literacy of the world in making the reading of books both fascinating and fashionable.

III

The very idea of a rational and orderly social life is the securing of good things and the placing of good things within easy access of the members of a community. Accordingly, the idea of a library is the safekeeping of and the providing of easy access to the books, manuscripts, pamphlets, and journals that have become its property. For a long time it was believed that the safekeeping of books simply prevented the easy access to these books. Librarians through the centuries have devised ways, some quite ingenious, to keep the books safe and as far away as possible to keep the books out of reach and out of sight. In the late medieval period, the following regulation was laid down by the Chancellor at Oxford University:

"Since in the course of time the great number of students using the library is in many ways harmful to the books… the University has ordered and decreed that only graduates and people in religious orders who have studied philosophy eight years shall study in the library of the University,…[These persons] ought to take an oath… not to inflict any harm on [the books] by tearing out or ruining layers or single pages…"

We have come a long way from the restrictions and prohibitions of medieval Oxford to the open stacks and other amenities of this new undergraduate library.

The undergraduate is the primary university student and upon the quality of undergraduate performance rest both the pretension and the success of the more advanced university programs. That the undergraduate must not be ignored or slighted in the allocation of university resources was signified in 1949 with the opening of the Lamont Library at Harvard, the first such facility designed entirely for the benefit and comfort of undergraduates. The three major objectives of the Lamont Library were stated in 1949 by the University Librarian, Keyes Metcalf, as follows:

1) to concentrate as far as practicable the library service for undergraduates in a central location;
2) to make books readily available for the students; and
3) to encourage general and recreational reading as well as collateral reading.

These are reasonable and perhaps obvious objectives that would doubtless be proposed by or would be acceptable to the librarian or to the library committee of any university. The undergraduate library is now a part of the university scene as it is now a part of this university scene. It is good indeed that Howard University has had the resources to provide a facility that meets the needs of its students and in this way reflects the University's concern for the advancement of undergraduate education.

IV

There is much to be done. But much has been accomplished here in one hundred and sixteen years. The first library of the University was apparently a small room in the first building in which instruction was offered. With donations of books and gifts of money, from both private and public sources, the library resources have grown through the years to holdings at present in excess of 1, 250,00 volumes. Special materials for both reading and research have come through the acquisition of important private papers and collections. As programs of instruction have been introduced or expanded, branch and departmental libraries have been established within one library system. The undergraduate library that we dedicate today is the new part of this system.

Those who have worked within Founders Library and who have gazed upon it from without have often had occasion to think of and to praise the architect, Albert Irvin Cassell. We are disposed today with every good reason to praise and to extend our thanks to Robert Johnson Nash, the architect of this building. In its subdued elegance and appropriateness of design to function, this structure elicits a deep aesthetic response and a sure appreciation of the bearing of the science and art of building upon the realization of human purpose.

V

As one leaves the library of McGill University, one sees inscribed on the wall of an adjacent building words taken from one of the prose works of John Milton. The words are as follows:

"…beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies…"

It is fitting on this occasion to reflect upon these words of John Milton. And it is hoped that the undergraduate and all others who come to this library, from the University and from the larger community, will behold the bright countenance of truth and find in this beholding the resources of a studious and creative life. In the dedication of this building we recognize and celebrate today a creative advance in the noble work that the Founders began, a work that we, as their successors, have freely chosen as our work and our reasonable service.

Mr. President, I present to you The Undergraduate Library.

Related articles:
Philosophy and the Household of Reason, by William Augustus Banner
A Tribute, by Segun Gbadegesin, Ph.D.