June 11, 1935 p.4: Library Has Large Daily Circulation from Main Desk

“Reading Room Is Furnished with Easy Chairs for Restful Hours”

LOBBY CONTAINS DISPLAY

“Reserve Room Shelves Open to Students for Parallel Reading Assigned by Each Teacher”

The library of Woman’s college, a large two-story brick building, conveniently situated between classrooms and dormitories, contains 75,000 volumes of books, with an average circulation at the main desk of 200 per day. Its staff consists of ten trained librarians and thirty student assistants. This building has four large rooms, the periodical room, the reading room, the reference room, and the reserve room.

The reading room or fiction room is an attractive place to students. One-half of it is artistically furnished with easy chairs and sofas, while the other half has comfortable chairs and tables for reading. There are 2000 volumes of fiction here. Two or three shelves are set aside for interesting non-fiction books: this group is frequently changed. All of the most recent books also have their separate nook. One of the main features of the reading room is its interesting display. Every Friday afternoon teas are given at which time some faculty member or a speaker outside the college, reviews a book that is related to his field of work. There is always a display of books related to the subject of this talk. This past year an exhibit of pictures from the Grand Central Galleries of New York was shown here.

The reserve room contains the books which are most in demand by the students. This group of books cannot be checked out except from 9 o’clock at night until 8:30 the next morning. The college uses a different system concerning reserve books from most colleges. Here the stacks are open and the student finds his own book, rather than signing a slip and having to for someone else to get it. The circulation of this room alone is from 500 to 1,000 per day.

The periodicals room is very popular with the students. It contains practically all of the worthwhile magazines and newspapers. The library subscribes to 12 daily papers and to 683 magazines and weeklies. In addition to the current publications, the back issues are bound and kept in this room. Many of the sets are complete back to the very first issue ever published.

There is a small periodical room especially for freshmen who take current events. None of the upper classmen are allowed to use it.

Then there is the reference room where over 15 different sets of encyclopedias may be found. Its contents total at least 1,500 reference volumes, including dictionaries and books on many subjects.

In addition to the books in these four rooms there are three floors of stacks at the back of the building.

Upstairs in the lobby there are showcases were there is always an interesting display. This past year there were displays of old pewters, rare books, rare letters, etchings, pictures, Russian costume, etc.

This year the library staff conducted for the first time a book contest among juniors and seniors. A prize was given to the student who owned the best collection of books. This contest is to become and annual affair.