Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/164

 136 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO The system was flexible so that, if deemed advantageous, a group of closely allied departments, like the biological or classical depart- ments, might bring their books and journals together into one library for the group. In the original plan Affiliation was not one of the general divisions of the University. Making it one was an afterthought. It appeared as such in the first Register, issued in 1893. The general organization, therefore, included these five divisions : The University Proper. The University Extension. The University Press. The University Libraries, Laboratories, and Museums. The University Affiliations. It may be said of three of the general divisions that they were new features in the organization of an American university. In these three University Extension, the University Press, and University Affiliations President Harper was deeply interested. The other divisions were common, in one form or another, to all universities. These three were his own conception, and he con- fidently believed that they promised, if wisely and successfully administered, to increase immensely the University's scope and usefulness and power. Hitherto American universities had concentrated and confined their work within their own precincts. It was President Harper's purpose to extend college and university instruction to the public at large, to make the University useful to other institutions, and to expand its influence and usefulness, through its press, as widely as possible. He believed there were large numbers of people who could spend little or no time at the University itself who would welcome and profit by the instruction of its professors in genuine college and university courses, if that instruction could be sent to them through lectures, afternoon and evening classes, correspondence lessons, and books loaned to them from the libraries. He had learned of the success of the extension movement conducted in England by the University of Cambridge, and expected wide usefulness for the enlarged and varied work in the