Trinity College (Durham, N.C.). Library.

In 1887 the Trinity College Library was created when two rival literary societies combined their book collections and added them to the few books already owned by the school. The Columbian Society, founded in 1846, and the Hesperian Society, founded in 1851, maintained libraries for their members and competed in acquiring books. According to the Trinity College Catalogue, by 1860 each society held 2,200 volumes, while the school itself held only 650. In 1887, new president John Franklin Crowell persuaded the literary societies to merge their collections with that of the college, creating a combined library of 10,000 volumes. The new library was housed on the second floor of the old Trinity College chapel, and Crowell claimed to have catalogued each of the books himself.

After Trinity moved to Durham in 1892, the library occupied a large single room in the Washington Duke Building, the main building of the campus. One student from each of the two literary societies served as librarians. The Washington Duke Building burned in 1911, but by that time, the library had moved to a new location.

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