More Alden Library, through the years

This is the last post about Alden Library, I promise. I thought that this being a history blog and all, I should include some, well, history about libraries on campus. So here's what I've dug up:

• The first hundred years or so is a little hazy. Sometime in the 1830s, accounts by travelers describe a library with an estimated 2,000 volumes.
• In the late 1870s, several literary societies combined their separate libraries with the university’s. (Below are bookplates identifying volumes collected by two such literary societies.)

• The first official library building on campus was the Carnegie Library (1905-1931), which is now Scripps Hall. Andrew Carnegie, who donated $30,000 toward its construction, required that the library be open to “all Athens citizens, school teachers, and children.
  
• Once the university began to outgrow Carnegie Library, the Chubb Library was built (1931-1969). Now known as Chubb Hall, it houses administrative offices. (Students fill the main study room, below, sometime in the late 1940s.)

• When Ohio University’s fifteenth president, Vernon R. Alden, stated in his 1962 inaugural address that the university’s greatest need was for a new library, he wasn’t exaggerating. His administration saw a doubling of enrollment and faculty, and OU had literally outgrown Chubb Library. Says Dr. Alden, “We had Chubb Library, which was very nice, but even with 8,000 students in those days it wasn’t adequate. And it certainly wasn’t adequate for graduate programs and for the research activities of faculty members.”
  
• Construction on Alden Library began in 1966. (Below, a group of students talk to President Alden near the construction site.)

• Alden Library officially opens in 1969, but the east and west wings weren’t completed until 1972. (Below, students fill the current periodicals area in the early 1980s.)

• In 1979, the library acquires its one-millionth volume, a Bible that dates back to the 13^thcentury.
  
• Goodbye card catalogues. ALICE, the online catalogue, is adopted in 1983.
  
• Hwa-Wei Lee Library Annex on Columbus Road opens in 1998.
  
• Wireless Internet access is made available throughout Alden Library in 2003.
  
• In 2004, the 2^nd floor Learning Commons (pictured below) is created, which remains open to students 24 hours a day.

Photo credits - Bookplate images: Scanned from “Ohio University, 1804-2004: The Spirit of a Singular Place” by Betty Hollow. Images of Chubb Library, Alden Library under construction and Alden Library during the 1980s: Courtesy of Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, published by Ohio University Libraries, University Archives available at http://media.library.ohiou.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/archives.