Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - 16 Years (Edmund James) [PAGE 110]

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Libraries and Museums

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all possible and at all consistent with due regard for other interests. Roughly speaking, it will take about $1,000,000.00 to house a million books; and either in the form of a new library building which might be put up in four $250,000.00 sections, or in the form of an addition to and an enlargement of the present library building, at a somewhat similar expense, we must make provision for such collection. 11 Speaking from an experience of eight years as your executive officer, I think I may say that I have had more people whom I have approached to consider positions at the University of Illinois decline the proposition because of the lack of library facilities than for any other reason; even more than because of the inadequate salaries which we offer for many of our positions as compared with the salaries which other institutions offer for similar positions. " I have asked the University librarian, in consultation with the Senate committee on the library, to prepare a statement showing the maximum sum of money which year in and year out can wisely be devoted by the University of Illinois to the purchase of books and the cataloging of the same. In view of this fundamental need of all departments alike, I think the trustees should accept this figure, after it has been properly checked up and tested, as the sum which the University ought to ask for in the form of a specific appropriation for the purchase of books in the permanent budget of the University, until our collection numbers at least one million volumes. "No one who has not actually attempted to answer the numerous questions arising in every library and seminary room, as to what is known about this, that or the other subject, can have any conception of how inadequate our facilities are. To give a slight instance of the imperative need of this material on the one hand and the absolute inability of the University to provide it on the other, I may say that the Governor of the State telegraphed to me one day saying that a bill had been passed by the Legislature and submitted to him for approval or for veto, providing that the milk which was shipped into cities of a certain size in this State should be limited to that which was obtained from tuberculin tested cows. He desired to know first