Princeton - Weekly Bulletin 05/03/04

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The Bulletin is published weekly during the academic year, except during University breaks and exam weeks, by the Office of Communications. Second class postage paid at Princeton. Postmaster: Send address changes to Princeton Weekly Bulletin, Office of Communications, Princeton University, 22 Chambers St., Suite 201, Princeton, NJ 08542. Permission is given to adapt, reprint or excerpt material from the Bulletin for use in other media.

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Deadline. In general, the copy deadline for each issue is the Friday 10 days in advance of the Monday cover date. The deadline for the Bulletin that covers May 17-30 is Friday, May 7. A complete publication schedule is available at deadlines or by calling (609) 258-3601.

Editor: Ruth Stevens
Calendar editor: Carolyn Geller
Staff writers: Jennifer Greenstein Altmann, Steven Schultz
Contributing writers: Patricia Allen, Karin Dienst, Dimitra Kessenides, Eric Quinones, Cynthia Yoder
Photographer: Denise Applewhite
Design: Mahlon Lovett, Laurel Masten Cantor, Margaret Westergaard
Web edition: Mahlon Lovett

B Y T H E N U M B E R S

Princeton library system

According to the University Library's Web site:

• The first students of the College of New Jersey (as Princeton was known from 1746 to 1896) used books from the personal collections of College Presidents Jonathan Dickinson and Aaron Burr Sr. In 1750, a gift from Gov. Jonathan Belcher of 474 books made the library the sixth largest in the colonies.

• The library's first home was a second-floor room in Nassau Hall, which it shared for a time with the Continental Congress. Soon after President James McCosh came to Princeton in 1868, he reported to the trustees that he found the library "insufficiently supplied with books and open only once a week ... for one hour."

• Modern library philosophy had its start at Princeton when McCosh arranged to have the library open every day but Sunday, hired Princeton's first full-time professional librarian and obtained a new building, designed solely for library purposes. The Chancellor Green Library opened in 1875 and was considered by many to be a model of future library space.

• By 1897, the library was filled to capacity and Pyne Library was added to Chancellor Green. It took 50 years for the collections to reach 1.2 million volumes and for them to outgrow these two buildings.

• In 1948, the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library opened its doors. The collections now total more than 6 million printed works, 5 million manuscripts and 2 million nonprint items.

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Princeton library system