Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Library Sixth Stack [PAGE 2]

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Mr. President and Mr. Chancellor, other members of the family of the University of Illinois, our neighbors from Champaign-Urbana and perhapsfromaround the State. I had been provided, by those who advise me, with significant amounts of material for this morning. But in deference to our setting and in response to your patience, I think I will try to elaborate on the major themes of this address without giving you all of it. And I was going to dedicate the manuscript to the University of Illinois, but I thought that might provoke an eighth stack so I'm going to take it with me. This is the second time within recent months that I've had the privilege of visiting this campus for the purpose of a dedication. The last visit was the dedication of a new facility in the ongoing program of Food for Century III, which has brought much progress and much advancement to the College of Agriculture on this and other campuses throughout the State of Illinois, and which I count on as part of the renewal of Illinois' economic base in the important sensitive area of agriculture and agri-business. Today's dedication ceremonies are much more fundamental. They probably can't be repeated too often, but the importance of a library to a great university and in the case of the University of Illinois, the world's greatest public university library to the world's greatest public university, cannot be overstated. And yet we must remember as we dedicate the sixth stack to* day, that as impressive as brick and steel and glass and stone and wood combined with the newest in retrieval technology are, still the men and women who's creativity the library houses and the men and women who will be served by the library on this campus, on other campuses and throughout the community of Illinois, is even more important than the magnificence of the structure. Sometimes that thought gets lost in dedication ceremonies. For all of us are rightly impressed by and pleased with technological progress, whether on a university campus or elsewhere. I suspect that thought is not lost on, nor will it get lost in, today's ceremony, or on this campus. Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon observed a profound. short and simple truth that "Knowledge is power." And so for my State of Illinois, your State of Illinois, for the United States, knowledge and skilled intelligence are the raw materials of international commerce and of course, beyond that, the foundation for world peace. 1