City in Sound; Crerar & Newberry Libraries

Well, the name here is John Creerar, John Creerar Library. The name is also Hermann H. Hinkle, who was librarian of this fine and rather vast library, and I wonder if you could detail its purpose to us, sir? I think the purpose of the library is best described in a sentence or two about how it came to be founded. Mr. Creerar was a very successful Chicago industrialist in the 19th century. He left the bulk of his estate at the time of his death in 1889 to the establishment of a free public library for the city of Chicago. He named the trustees and left them the decision. And after very careful decision or study, they decided to establish a reference library for science and technology. So even though this is a public library, it is in a sense a private library. It is a private library legally, but a public library and so far it's a

availability of his concern. I see. Anyone from anywhere can use it. But it's of course a totally technical in nature. Exclusively scientific and technical. Well, how about availability then, Mr. Hinkle? Hinkle does a person come in, pick up a book and use your reading room or does he take the book home? We mean by a reference library that readers use the material in our reading rooms rather than has a circulating, has to differentiate from a circulating library. You don't take books home? No. How many books do you have approximately? Well, we use a round number of a million books and pamphlets. Well, now these million books, Mr. Hinkle, are there any that are particularly rare or unusual? The history of science, as the history of every other subject, has its great classical works. And our collections are particularly rich in some of the really great books of the world.

Harvey, on the circulation of the blood in 1628, the first modern anatomy in 1543 by Visellius. And all of the great names that so many people are familiar with, Kepler and Galileo and the nature, the great naturalists. Are these originals? They're original editions. No, these are not circulated for reference, so are they? Oh, yes. Any reader who has a serious need for the book can see it. We do not have any closed doors to the books. How about some of the other services that you render here? Our research information service, which is almost unique, I think, in public library fields. And the photo duplication service and our translation center, which we manage for the Special Libraries Association, are three really very

interesting special services that are ordinarily found in public libraries. In connection with this translation center, I've heard that the Russians, for example, gobble up ball our technical and scientific literature, read it exhaustively, teach English in the schools, particularly the scientific personnel. And pretty well, keep abreast of what we're doing here, technically and scientifically. Is there any effort on our part to reciprocate to gather in Russian journals, technical data? At the time of Sputnik, and it's getting so people don't like to talk about Sputnik, but at that time, there was a great deal of material in the papers, you know, and you get the general impression from news stories that no one was doing anything in this country about getting Russian technical literature. That all the libraries and research institutions had been asleep. That was actually not the truth. A great deal has been done. It is

true that we hadn't done nearly enough. But this particular center was established by the Special Libraries Association, and we operate for them, operated for them under contract. It now has about 23 ,000 translations of technical papers from foreign languages, about 40 % of which are from Russian scientific literature. How many people do you have working here, Mr. Hegel? About 65, exclusive of the building force. Are they all librarians? No. Any library has a good many clerical persons and some specialty persons. We do our own printing and our photocopying work takes people skilled in photography and things of that sort. But we have perhaps 20 people on the staff who are definitely professional librarians. Well, Mr. William Buddington is the associate librarian, and

I'd certainly like to ask him about some of the reference material that we've seen in such great abundance here. The way in which most people use our library is by coming into our reference departments, of which we have two. One is the technology department on our 14th floor, which deals with all subjects such as chemistry, physics, engineering, mathematics, and the rest of the non -medical areas. Our medical department on the 12th floor deals with all branches of medicine, surgery, nursing, dentistry, psychology, and psychiatry. Mr. Buddington, just looking around, I noticed so many large type of reference books. In other words, you of course have the standard normal sized books that were accustomed to seeing in public libraries and whatnot, but you have so many fast compendiums there. What are those? They can be almost any type of compendiums. Some of them are lists of libraries, which specialize in different subjects. Many of them are bound

volumes of periodicals. Now, this is a scientific library, and any scientific library depends to a great extent, perhaps 70 % on magazines and periodicals. At the end of the year, we bind these so that they'll be permanently filed and very easy to use. That's why we see such big volumes because it encompasses a whole year's worth of issues. Are you ever going to run out of space here? We have run out of space several times, and we've made space by shelving our books, tipped up on edge, and we have stored some of them in a cooperative storage center out on the south side. We've had to dispose of some materials too, which are not any longer of much use. Is somebody interested in some technical field just come in here and look up a librarian and say, I want to find out something about rocketry or nuclear fusion? Yes. We have questions like that coming up every day. As school kids will come in with a paper to write, or we'll have a PhD candidate from a university, all levels of education.

What our usual procedure is, may be described as follows. We try and help them find their own material. There are so many of them that we can't do it all by ourselves. So we try and show them the indexes and the lists and the biographies so that they can look up their own materials. They can copy it down here, but not take it with them. This is true, although we can provide them with photocopies of anything that they want. Mr. Roger Martin has a title of Assistant Manager of Research Information Service, and there must be a lot of information to research and vice versa here, Mr. Martin. That's quite true. This department, which we also refer to as RIS, is a department that does extensive library research projects in the subject fields covered by the library. That is, we do those projects, which are too big or too extensive, or would take too much time for the regular members of our staff to handle. These are services that

you render to anyone who wants to use them, may use the service. Most of them, I suppose, are companies, rather than individuals, though we do have a very large number of individual clients. Could you give us an example of some company writing for some type of specific information? Well, a company may write in and want to know what adhesives are used for binding, say, aluminum foil that would stand up with stand -high temperatures. Our company may write in wanting to know how ice cream is made. They want to get all the background literature on it, or something like that. No, do you research this with your own staff? What do you call them specialists? I don't know a little bit about ice cream. In most cases, we use our own staff. However, where the project is large enough to warrant it, or if the subject is such that requires the use of a specialist, we will use outside specialists. But you certainly do cover of just a tremendously vast field when people can write in or call in and say, give me some information about this technical

field or that technical field. You can usually do it. We can usually do it. It's almost impossible to imagine that anything that has been written about, at least, that we can't provide here in the library. Suppose I could ask you how you get to the elevator here. You could do that, too, yes, sir. Dr. Stanley Pargullis is a librarian of Newberry Library. That's the chief executive office, isn't it, sir? That's right. In some places, they call him by the title of director, but we prefer, as with the librarian of Congress and the librarian of Yale, to stick to the old title. Now, how does Newberry Library differ from the ordinary public library, which is an ordinary at all, of course, but... We are not supported in any way by tax funds, either from the city or from the state. We were incorporated in 1893 as a free public library. We're governed by a self -continuing

board of directors, 13, 13 in number. And I suppose also that we differ from the ordinary public library in that this is a reference library only. No books are loaned. And our emphasis has been since the library began in 1887 on scholarly books rather than the kind of book which one must have in a public library today, such things as contemporary novels, and how to do it books, and so on. Well, how does the library find itself sustained without public support? The library is still continuing very largely upon the original endowment made by Walter Lumis Newberry, who was a Chicago businessman from 18... The early 1830s to

his death in 1868, he made his money in first a warehouse business, then got into finance, railroads, and real estate. He amassed a very considerable fortune for Chicago, even in its booming, growing days of the mid -19th century, and half of that fortune was left to us by his will. How does this distinguish itself and function from the public library? Of course we have, as the John Crierar has, a great number of books which will not be found in the public library. The public library reference section today, I suppose it may run up to 200 ,000 volumes. We've got 750 ,000, and none of them are duplicates. These are scholarly books, first editions of, shall we say,

16th century French and Italian classics, and scholarly collections of letters, and mostly for the use of scholars. Are these available for anyone to peruse? Anyone who's capable of perusing them and who wants to look at them, may certainly come in. We are a free library open to the citizens of Chicago. Do you have any idea how many people use the library? It runs about 50 ,000 a year. Do you have any other famous specialties? I know you're strong on Americana books and literature. Very strong indeed on Americana. We're very good in English history and English literature. We're good in American literature. We are probably, as good a library, is going to be found in the Midwest on French history. We have, I suppose, one of the three or

four or five best libraries in the country on music, musical scores, which is unusual. We're beginning to get interested in 19th century Russia and have made the beginnings of a splendid collection in that field. It's very difficult, you know, to tell you off hand where all the specialties fall. I imagine that's enough for the moment. It certainly is. And I'd like to go from here to examine some of it. Good. Well, there's one thing more that I want to say. You'll get it perhaps from the John Krierar. This library began in 1887 with an attempt to collect things in all fields. And when Krierar was begun in 1893, it did not take us long to make an agreement. It's the first library agreement in the history of American librarianship. The John Krierar to specialize in the sciences and technology and we to

stay with the humanities. So we turned over to the John Krierar, all of our medical books. We had a very good library for the 1890s in medicine and our books in science. Well, I never occurred to me that a library would have a book vault similar to a bank vault, but we're in such a place right now complete with combination door and all the locking mechanisms inside the room as a tremendous collection of books under glass. And with me is Mrs. Ruth Lapham Butler, who's the curator for the Edward Air Collection, which I understand is in part in this room. The rare books of the air collection are in this vault. The rare books. The rare books. There are four other rooms full of books, research books. And I understand that some of these books are indeed incredibly rare. Yes, some of them are seedingly rare. Some of them are unique. And that's why you have them under lock and key. That's the reason we have them under lock and key. All together the collection has about 90

,000 pieces. How old are some of these books? Well, the earliest one is 1475. And how do you keep them bound and intact during this period? Well, the paper was so good. You see, they really made paper out of quality material. And I mean, the paper is just as beautiful as the day the books were printed. Much better than paper that we ordinarily print books on now, of course. And the books have been cared for. I mean, these books haven't been tossed around very much. And we bother to keep the vault humidified. And we try to keep it dusted, but Chicago is a bad place to keep books dusted. And we certainly have them oiled the leather bindings about once every five years. We have them all in case tearing. They're all in cases. And well, we don't let them fall down very

much, you know. And break their bindings. And if a binding is damaged, we have it fixed immediately. So actually a book, 500 years old, is still readable and legible? Oh, beautifully so. If it's kept. Beautifully so. Oh, yes. And 500 years isn't very long. Well, how about people who want to come in and look at some of these? Well, we obviously let them come in. And if they want to use any of these books, they use them in the reading room. Well, this is not just a rare prize that you keep under lock and key. You told me that you refer to these books. And they're actually a great historical source. Oh, they are. They're the greatest historical source. And most of our readers are people who come from away and stay for a week or two to use the books. They just come into the library room. They stay in a hotel or their fellows of the library. And they stay here until they finish their work. And they come here for the things that they have not been able to find somewhere else. Well, it must be an incredibly interesting job to pour through these old manuscripts and realize

what part of history is part of being held in your hands. Well, it is. It's fun to have people come in who know a great deal more about it than I do because they're working on a particular subject. And I managed to scrape off a little. I got a little veneer of what the things are about. But most of the time, we spend in trying to add things. We haven't as much money as Mr. Error was able to spend. But we keep trying to improve the collection and watch for things that make it better. We keep talking about it better. Mr. Error here. Let's give him a real name credit. Who was he? Edward Error. He was a lumberman. So that he had a large part in this frontier of business. He went overland when he was a young man, 1860 himself, in an overland journey wagon, you see. And joined the army in California. He was

put on guard at the cold mind down near Flagstaff, Arizona. And there he read Prescott's Conquest of Mexico. And that started the whole thing. I mean, he got a perfect craze to know all that he could possibly know about the Indians. And he wanted to buy all the books and manuscripts he could about Indians. Well, the Indians led him into discovery, pre -discovery, and exploration. And as I say, in 1898, he decided to add the Philippines and the Hawaiian Islands. And we now buy books on Indians, clear to Tierra del Fuego, into the Arctic Circle. So it's the whole American area. So all that this incredible man did is fallen into your hands? Yes. Not your fortunate. Very. His niece was the first custodian, and I'm the second. And there will be a new one one of these days. And that person is going to be a very fortunate person. I mean, it's fun to add to a collection like this. Mr. James Wells is here at Error of the Wing Foundation here at Newbury Library. And I wonder if he'd explained to us

exactly what it is. The Wing Foundation is devoted to the history of printing, of writing, of lettering, of stone carving, all the elements which have gone into making up printing types. You don't have the Gutenberg press here. We've got a few leaves and a couple of books. We don't have the Gutenberg Bible last. You just about go back that far, though, don't you? Well, we go back further than that since we have Korean printing types that are at least 150 years older than the Gutenberg Bible. Do you gather this chronologically or how do you go about getting these things together? Well, you inevitably organize it chronologically. What we try to find are books which are important either as examples of fine printing all through the ages or as early examples of new processes. The first book set on the line of type, the first book produced by Photo Off set, the first book printed in more than one color and so forth.

That means you attempt to find works of all the great printers and of all the great printing centers. Is this the only foundation of its type that you know of? Other libraries have similar departments. I think this is the only one which has more or less independent status. There are very fine similar collections and Columbia at Harvard, various other places. But yours dates all the way back to how far did you say? Well, I think the oldest thing we have in the collection is a Japanese charm printed in the eighth century from a woodblock. All the way from the eighth century to yesterday or tomorrow.