Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Nevins) [PAGE 310]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

290 ADMINISTRATION OF THE UNIVERSITY crowded. The whole book collection may be expected to grow at the rate of from 35,000 to 50,000 volumes a year in the next decade, which will bring it not far below the total of 1,000,000 volumes which a Senate resolution recently set as the University goal in that time. Special effort is made to interest students in reading by keeping before them a "gilt star" collection of fiction, and other open shelves of readable books, while small traveling fraternity libraries have been proposed. The new Library Building is designed to give, room, when complete, for as many as 5,000,000 books. Aside from the library, the most prominent general collections are those of the old art gallery, the classical museum, the museum of European culture, and the group of scientific museums. The art collection has been dispersed since Gregory's time, eight of the large casts being in the' foyer of the Auditorium, a large number of busts in the seminar rooms of Lincoln Hall, other objects in the art and design quarters, and some of the engravings in various offices. With other paintings and prints recently acquired, it is hoped to give it suitable housing and room for expansion in the Gregory Memorial Building. The museum of European culture was opened in Lincoln Hall in 1913 with an address by Kuno Francke, and has grown rapidly, though it has thus far emphasized the medieval period. $|There are copies in it of Romanesque, Gothic, and Italian and German Renaissance sculptures, reproductions of paintings and ivory carvings, of several suits of armor, and of seals of the middle ages; a collection of original implements and weapons of the stone age, early printed books, some illuminated books of hours, and a number of models of theaters, with several hundred rare coins