Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - 16 Years (Edmund James) [PAGE 121]

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Libraries and Museums

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of Military Aeronautics located here in 1917 has caused a noticeable purchase of books of flying and aircraft. Books on all phases of the World War have been gathered from all sources. The recent appointment of a professor of Oriental languages, literatures and archeology has resulted in a notable increase of books on these special subjects, while for the past two years the literature of Italy has been developed thru the appointment of a head of the Department of Romance Languages whose chief work has been in the field of Italian language and literature. From all this it is evident that there has been built a story or two of a well rounded scholarly library structure. The foundation has been laid upon which such a library can be erected. Even a half million volumes will not give a necessary equipment. A university is not rated as such by the size and number of its buildings, nor by the charter-given privilege of granting advanced degrees, nor by the range of its instruction, be it from Babylonian inscriptions to the virus of smallpox. A university is judged by the completeness of its equipment of laboratory, library and learned men. The field of absolute knowledge may well fall within the range of the college. The university accepts this and works from known facts to unknown facts; until these new facts are either justified or denied by investigation and research. The investigator must first of all plow his way through the present knowledge of his special subject, must orientate himself, and noting its tends and tendencies, must progress to the end he aims at. His tools for all this must be in the library, as it is through books, journals, digests, reports, bulletins, etc., that he picks his way; and woe to him who neglects to learn what others may have done before him. To a large university, therefore, a large library is something absolutely indispensable. The collection at the University of Illinois has been and still is inadequate; only in a few lines does it approximate more than a primal working group of books. Hence the growth must be rapid, more so than it is now, if the University of Illinois is ever to come abreast in library resources with other institutions of its class."