Beals, Ralph A. (Ralph Albert)

The period when Ernest D. Burton and J.C.M. Hanson each served as Director of the Library brought the construction of Harper Library, and a formal review and planning process for the library system. Despite these efforts, the University of Chicago Library remained decentralized and administratively unstable for much of the first half of the twentieth century.

The long and often conflicted process of evaluation and planning continued under M. Llewellyn Raney, who assumed the position of Director of the Library in 1928. In the early 1930s, Raney led an effort to comprehensively survey the library. In the process, faculty and administrators were solicited for their evaluations and suggestions in terms of the effectiveness of the library's service to the departments, divisions and schools of the university. The results of the Library Survey were published as part of a multi-part series of administrative reports that surveyed the University of Chicago as a whole.

Beginning around the same time, Associate Director A.F. Kuhlman began a project to aggressively search and acquire "fugitive materials" for library collections - resources needed by researchers in the humanities and social sciences, but difficult to acquire and manage in library collections. "Fugitive materials" were defined in intentionally broad terms: Annual reports, newspapers, government documents, archives and manuscripts, organizational records, maps, audio-visual material, and print ephemera are just a few of the types of materials that Kuhlman considered as part of the collecting scope. While Kuhlman's project required a major dedication of staff time and resources over several years, it helped build many of the library's collections of non-book materials, and contributed to cooperative acquisitions efforts with other institutions.

The struggle to centralize the library system and unify its operations continued through the end of Raney's directorship. Departmental libraries, often managed independently and without operational relationships with the larger library system, persisted through their value and convenience for faculty.

Raney was succeeded by Ralph A. Beals, who served as director from 1942-1946. The position was then held by Allen T. Hazen from 1946-1948. With the directorship of Herman H. Fussler (1948-1971), the library began to manifest the lessons learned from a long period of evaluation, experimentation, administrative debate and uncertainty.