before 1895. Shelf-lists for inventory purposes were begun equally early. Technically, the Library's methods were in conformity with modern practice, but the force was always too small to permit the application of these methods with full satisfaction either to the Library staff or to the University.
Further service to advanced students was attempted in the upper Reading Room following the removal of the art collections to Alumni Memorial Hall after it was completed in 1910. The limitations of the Library Building, however, prevented any considerable enlargement of the service in either direction.
Perhaps the most significant of various changes and improvements was the adoption in 1913 of the principle of segregating rare and costly books in the Rare Book Rooms, with consultation rooms adjoining the storage space. This was accomplished with some difficulty by enclosing the southern half of the third floor of bookstacks and providing metal doors and metal window coverings. The principle was undoubtedly sound, but implementation was difficult because the more valuable books were locked up, and every time they were needed it was necessary to apply at the loan desk or the Librarian's office. Until 1917 it was not possible to provide special service for the rare books, to keep the room open, and to give expert supervision. Professor Isaac N. Demmon ('68, M.A. '71), who had been instrumental in acquiring many of the rare books for the Library, was made Curator, and Miss Eunice Wead (Smith '02, New York State Library School [Albany] '03, A.M. Michigan '27), Assistant Curator. On Professor Demmon's death in 1920, Miss Wead, later Associate Professor of Library Science, was made Curator, resigning in 1924 to become Assistant Librarian of the William L. Clements Library of American History.
A new building was imperatively needed long before the insistent efforts of President Hutchins finally secured from the Legislature of 1915 an appropriation of $350,000. The sum was far too small. The legislature added $200,000 and later provided another $65,000 for furniture and equipment. Only the genius of the architect, Albert Kahn, of Detroit, an expert in concrete construction, permitted building with this comparatively modest sum a structure which, despite great increases in the student body, in the faculties, in the number of books, and in the service itself, proved to be adequate for two decades. The architect was obliged to keep the old bookstacks, which were weakly built but fireproof, and to limit his designs. Before the plans had passed beyond the stage of preliminary sketches, Koch's illness resulted in his resignation, and William Warner Bishop was called from Washington to succeed him in September, 1915.
The University of California, early in the century, had built a library of stone embodying a central stack, a large reading room on the second floor across the front of the building, offices, and special reading and study rooms situated on either side of the main entrance. Harvard, in 1915, because of its greater need for book storage and for space for diverse classes of readers, had carried the principal features of this design much further. Kahn, in developing the design, used the central axis for the approach of readers and the delivery of books to the main loan desk. The design is simple in the extreme, and years of experience have shown it to be thoroughly workable. The cruciform stack with a book conveyor in the center provided a means of rapid service along the shortest possible lines.
A faculty committee composed of Professors Wenley and Demmon and Dean Guthe aided the Librarian and the architect in perfecting the designs finally
