Chapter 2: Inciting Incident, Inciting Building

Before the construction of Rand Hall, Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University, gifted his architectural library to establish the Department of Architecture in 1876. That same year the American Library Association was formed. It marked a turning point in the way university libraries managed their collections and controlled access of their materials to faculty, students, and the public.

The book has been historically connected with the institution of education. The first academic libraries in the United States had small collections to support the training of clergy since most colonial colleges had been founded to teach theology. The books were limited and their access was highly restricted, so much so that students relied on campus literary societies to supplement the inadequate selection of books that were available at their university libraries.

With the expansion of higher education and the emphasis on research in the educational reform movement following the American Civil War, academic libraries grew in size and importance. Advances in publishing and the demand for books with higher figures of university enrollment continued to push the growth of academic libraries through the next century. But by the 1970’s, declining space and strained budgets began to force librarians to consider alternative methods to store and manage their collections. Emerging computer technologies allowed libraries to save space and cut down on their budget while improving efficiency and access to their patrons. While digital catalogs and internet accessible content have made the library more invisible, its importance as the university’s knowledge center has grown. 

The modern library has evolved towards a pervasive networked database, yet nearly all libraries remain associated with a traditional physical place. Its role has shifted towards the efficient organization of vast quantities of information both digital and physical. Today’s libraries are neither one or the other but a hybrid of bookshelves filled with printed books and multimedia resources available online.

With the construction of the new Fine Arts Library at Cornell just beginning to break ground, the library faces much different circumstances and contexts from when Andrew Dickson White created the department of architecture from his donation of the largest collection of architecture books in the nation. The prestige or success of the contemporary academic library can no longer be ranked or quantified in terms of the size of its collection. The new Ho Library must grapple with the overabundance of information by prioritizing the curation of relevant information and streamlining of intuitive interfaces through both a consolidated physical space and interactive digital platforms. 

This is the second part of a series of small essays that recount the history and present of Rand Hall at Cornell University. The first part can be found in the inaugural issue of Ed, "The Architecture of Architecture," available for purchase here.