Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/422

 368 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO room for as many more. It might be supposed that it would take several generations to accumulate so vast a number. But when it is remembered that in the first twenty-five years of its history the University had accumulated more than six hundred and sixty thousand books and pamphlets and at the end of that period was every year adding to the number more than thirty thousand bound volumes, and more than two thousand different periodicals, and every year or two purchasing or receiving donations of special collections, some single collections aggregating many thousand volumes, it will be seen that it will take little, if any, more than a single generation to fill every stack and every shelf. After the completion of the Harper Library there was a great increase in the use of the libraries. The number of books taken out for reading and study and the number of readers in the great reading-rooms multiplied. For the year ending June 30, 1914, the total number of readers in the Harper Library alone was two hundred and ninety-two thousand. The Director estimated that the number in all the libraries was probably fully twice the figures given for the Harper Library. The increase in the Harper Library the following year was forty-five thousand. Of the Laboratories and Museums something has already been said in telling the story of the erection of the buildings. Pro- fessor Thomas C. Chamberlin was Director of Museums almost from the beginning. No director of Laboratories was appointed until 1913, when that position was filled by the appointment of Professor Julius Stieglitz. To write at all adequately of the col- lections in the museums, and of the vast amount of research work done in the various laboratories would require a separate volume. A list of the more important collections in the museums may be found in the appendix. Little has been said thus far in this history of the Graduate Schools. They have been mentioned incidentally more than once, but something more is necessary than incidental mention of these two Schools which formed so great a part of the University's life. It was a part of the plan on which the institution was organized to put the main emphasis on graduate work. President Harper said in the Report to the Trustees which he began in 1892 before the