Raymond C. Davis, the librarian of the University back in 1893 started what our Library now calls its "University of Michigan Collection" by sending some two hundred books and 125 pamphlets written by faculty authors, to the Chicago World's Fair. Brought back to Ann Arbor, it was made a permanent feature of the Library and much increased by further solicitation and current additions.
The University of Michigan Collection is now made up of official University publications, publications by faculty members, students. University organizations, affiliated organizations, and alumni, printed material about the University and its faculty, students, and alumni, Michigan song books, published these prize winning books (such as the Hopwood Awards), class albums, and programs. Among its choice items are early novels by James Oliver Curwood, '08-'00, Stewart Edward White, '95, and Clarence S. Darrow, '77-'78; works by Eliza M. Mosher, '75m, Alice Freeman Palmer, '76, Harry Franck, '03, Justice Frank Murphy, '14l, and all the University's presidents and acting presidents from President Tappan to President Ruthven; files of the Palladium and Michiganensian, and scores of Union operas from the second, in 1908 to that of 1927, with programs of many of them. In one of these, written by Russell Barnes, '20 now war commentator for the Detroit News, Thomas E. Dewey, '23, played a leading part.
From its original modest proportions the University of Michigan Collection has now grown to approximately 8,000 titles. Successive librarians have promoted its growth, and successive generations of students, alumni, and faculty members have aided by their contributions. This help is still needed, and anyone who sends to Dr. Warner G. Rice, the present Director of the University Library, an item or items which will augment the Collection will receive, at the very least, a cordial vote of thanks. How appropriate and how important it is for the institution to maintain a collection of everything in print that concerns itself and its family hardly needs to be argued.
The Michigan Alumnus
Nov 14 1942, Page 132
