Yale university. Library

Eli Whitney was born in Westborough, Massachusetts in 1765. Even as a child he showed an aptitude for mechanical work, repairing violins and taking on other mechanical work as it presented itself. Whitney set up shop making nails and when the demand for nails declined, he changed his business to manufacture hat pins, a commodity with increasing demand. Whitney eventually enrolled at Yale College in May 1789, and graduated three years later. He intended to further his education and become a lawyer. While studying the law, Whitney applied for a job as a tutor for Mrs. Nathanael Greene just outside of Savannah, Georgia. When he arrived at Mulberry Grove Plantation, he discovered that someone else had already been hired. Mrs. Greene asked Whitney to stay at Mulberry Grove as her guest, and in return he began repairing machinery around the property. During his stay at Mulberry Grove, Whitney learned that plantation owners were looking for some method to make the farming of short staple cotton more profitable. Whitney and Phineas Miller formed a partnership and Whitney developed the cotton gin and patented his invention on March 14, 1794. Whitney and Miller tried to build a monopoly in the cotton gin market by not selling their machines, but rather by ginning the cotton themselves. Unfortunately, several other machines very similar to Whitney's became available on the market and Whitney and Miller struggled with the battle over patent rights. While working on protecting his patent for the cotton gin, Whitney sought new avenues to make money. He received an order to manufacture ten thousand firearms for the United States military. Whitney was poised to break new ground in manufacturing. His process for the manufacture of these firearms proved to be revolutionary. His system involved using interchangeable parts for the firearms, meaning the same parts would work on different guns, a process that revolutionized modern manufacturing.

The African Collection contains significant materials on southern Africa and the Anglophone African countries, and French-speaking West and Central Africa. The collection includes books and periodicals and extensive holdings of manuscripts, maps, photographs, and postcards.

Babb was a librarian at Yale library, and Faber du Faur was Associate Curator of German Literature.

The Managerial and Professional Staff Association became the Library Staff Association (LiSA) in 2003.

The Communications Committee of the Yale University Library was formed in 2003 by the Library Management Council and the Microcosm Group. Its charge and mission is to support and promote an environment of two way communication by recommending, advising on and facilitating the exchange of ideas, the availability of information, and the use of good communication methods and skills.

The Public Interfaces Committee (PIC) of the Yale University Library is charged with improving the usability of the library's electronic interfaces, with particular emphasis on the maintenance, ongoing evaluation, and design of the library's online catalog and web site.

The Yale Library has been the heart of the university ever since, according to tradition, ten ministers met at the house of Reverend Samuel Russel in Branford in 1701 and contributed 40 books to found Yale College. The books were taken to Killingworth in 1704 where the Rector Abraham Pierson resided and then upon his death in 1707 to Saybrook, the seat of the College, where they remained until 1718. At that time the College was to move to New Haven but the people of Saybrook forcibly resisted the transfer of books. Many volumes and papers were lost in the scramble.

The Senior Tutor acted as Librarian until 1805 and received an extra five pounds to his yearly salary for sorting and cataloguing the books. The tutor's efforts at book acquisition were aided by several large gifts of books from prominent people such as Jeremiah Drummer, Elihu Yale, and Bishop George Berkeley so that by 1742 when Rector Thomas Clap and Tutor John Worthington compiled the first library catalogue, there were 2,600 volumes. This grew to 4,000 volumes by 1765.

During the Revolution three quarters of the Library's volumes were removed from New Haven for safe keeping from the enemy. Although they were painstakingly reassembled after the war, only 2,448 books had been recovered by 1782. After the war, donations picked up again. There was increasing need for book storage space because of aggressive acquisition on the part of early librarians and faculty members.

The librarians acted as the guiding force in the library's development. Prior to 1805 the Senior Tutor acted as Librarian. Prof. James L. Kingsley was named the first librarian in 1805 and remained in that position until 1824. Prof. J. W. Gibbs succeeded Kingsley until 1843. Edward Herrick served as Librarian from 1843-58 and D. C. Gilman from 1858-65. Gilman's resignation in 1865 brought in Addision Van Name until 1905. John Christopher Schwab was Librarian from 1905-16 and Andrew Keough was Librarian from 1916-38 through the 1930 move to the Sterling Library. The Records of subsequent librarians can be found in Records of the Librarian 1904-to the present.

A series of sites were used by the library after the college moved to 'New Haven. In 1718 the books were housed in a library on the 2nd floor, south end of the original Yale -College building at the corner of College and Chapel Streets. As new buildings were constructed and the old deteriorated, library apace was provided on an upper floor af the First Chapel (Athenaeum) in 1783, in the rhetorical chamber of the Connecticut Lyceum in 1801, and in the attic of the Second Chapel in 1824. It wasn't until 1842 that the first separate library building (now Dwight Chapel) was constructed by architect Henry Austin.

The early library collected primarily in the sciences, classics, theology, English literature, mathematics, and philosophy, and restricted borrowing to the college officers, faculty members of the professional and scientific schools, and Junior and Senior classes. As a result literary society libraries were founded (Linonian 1753, Brothers-in-Unity 1768, Calliopean 1819) to supplement the college library. Their books on languages, modern history, literature and the arts were brought together with the Yale Library books under one roof upon construction of the Old Library. The central nave was used for the Yale Library and the two wings for the society libraries. This brought the aggregate number of books available to the Yale community to 35,000. By 1871 when the society libraries were brought under Yale library control this number had grown to 95,000 volumes and 20,000 pamphlets and expanded to 161,000 by 1884. By 1886 six thousand volumes were being added every year and a new library to house them was planned. In 1887 funds were provided for construction of the Chittenden Library designed by architect J.C. Cady. It was not many years after its completion in 1889 that more space was needed. Linsly Hall was built by architect Charles C. Haight in 1905 to connect the Old Library (Dwight Hall) with the Chittenden Library. As early as 1918 a new library was under discussion. In 1919 the Yale Corporation decided to construct the Sterling Memorial Library as the principal memorial to be erected from the John Sterling bequest. Construction was under the direction of James Gamble Rogers. The massive centrally located collegiate gothic library was built to house three and one half million volumes and allowed them to function truly as the center of the university.