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.

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