© The contents of this finding aid are the copyright of the University of Chicago Library
© 2015 University of Chicago Library
The John Crerar Library Records were processed and preserved with support from the John Crerar Foundation.
Series IX contains personnel documents to which access is restricted until 2027. The remainder of the collection is open for research.
When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: John Crerar Library. Records, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
The John Crerar Library was the first great privately endowed research library devoted to science, technology and later medicine. It was established in 1894 as a free public library under the will of John Crerar, one of the pioneers who helped build Chicago into a great industrial city.
Born March 8, 1827, Crerar was a native New Yorker who moved to Chicago in 1862 where he made his fortune in the railway supply business. Through his firm, Crerar, Adams and Company, and its manufacturing division, Adams and Westlake Company, he helped fill the burgeoning demands of the national railroad network which was centered in Chicago. He was one of the organizers of the Pullman Palace Car Company and also served as president of the Chicago and Joliet railroad. He was a director of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank and the Liverpool, London and Globe Insurance Company. An elder of the Second Presbyterian Church and one of the founders of the Commercial Club he was also fond of books and liked to read, from which developed his interest in the Chicago Literary Club and the Chicago Historical Society.
A lifelong bachelor, Crerar died on October 18, 1889 at the age of 62. On December 22, 1889, a great meeting was held in his memory at the Central Music Hall, which at that time was the main auditorium in the city. At the meeting Franklin MacVeagh, one of Chicago's leaders, said of Crerar, "He has set us an example of the right use of wealth, the great uses of wealth, the permanent uses of wealth and the final uses of wealth."
In his will, Crerar bequeathed some $600,000 to his partners and friends and his mother's relatives; about $1,000,000 to some eighteen religious, educational and charitable institutions, and $100,000 "to be expended in the erection of a colossal statue of Abraham Lincoln." The bronze statue, designed by Augustus St. Gaudens, is mounted on a granite base within a great semi-circle flanked by two pylons in Grant Park opposite Van Buren Street. The architectural surroundings were designed by Stanford White.
In the final provision of his will, Crerar left the residue of his estate, some $2,500,000 for the ". . . erection, creation, maintenance and endowment of a Free Public Library to be called The John Crerar Library and to be located in the City of Chicago, Illinois I desire the building to be tasteful, substantial and fire-proof and that a sufficient fund be reserved over and above the cost of its construction to provide, maintain and support a library for all time . . ."
Crerar's will further specified that the first president of the Library should be his friend Norman Williams, and that other friends such as Marshall Field, Robert Todd Lincoln, T.B. Blackstone and George A. Armour should be members of the first Board of Directors. The first meeting of that Board took place on November 23, 1894, at the Prairie Avenue residence of Marshall Field. Three years prior to that meeting, in July, 1891 the Crerar directors had been instrumental in the passage by the Illinois Legislature of an act to safeguard privately endowed libraries which was entitled "An Act to encourage and promote the establishment of free public libraries in cities, villages and towns of this State." The John Crerar Library was incorporated on October 12, 1894 under that act.
The will made no mention of relatives on his father's side. His father had died in 1827 and his mother had little if any acquaintance with his father's relatives. However, there were living Crerars and a great legal battle took place. The case was carried to the Illinois Supreme Court, where in 1893 the will was fully sustained.
Faced with the problem of starting a new public library when the city already had a thriving public library as well as the recently established Newberry Library, the directors sought the guidance of Professor Henry Crew of Northwestern University. Crew recommended "a library which has for its aim the cultivation of science." In the letter suggesting this, he concluded: "The Crerar Board, by complementing the Newberry and Public (libraries) may do as much or more for the various institutions of this city. No other body of men have, within their own hands, so much power to make Chicago, as through the next 30 years, a veritable scientific center, as these gentlemen to whom Mr. Crerar has entrusted this foundation." Thus, the Board of Directors decided the new library would be a research library devoted to science and technology.
During the year 1894 and later, conferences were held by representatives of the respective boards of the three libraries and the librarians in order to avoid competition and wasteful duplication. In 1895, the following plan of division was agreed to:
*Chicago Public Library--"All wholesomely entertaining and generally instructive books, especially such as are desired by the citizens for general home use. Also, collections of newspapers, patents, government documents, books for the blind and in architecture and the decorative arts."
*Newberry Library--"Literature, Language, History, Sociology, Philosophy, Religion, Fine Arts in part, Medicine."
*The John Crerar Library--"Philosophy, the Physical and Natural Sciences; the Useful Arts (Technology); the Fine Arts in part; Sociology and Economics." (Ten years later, agreement was reached between the trustees of Newberry and the directors of Crerar for the transfer to Crerar of the medical collections which had been developed at Newberry, the central segment of which was the great collection of Dr. Nicholas Senn, a famous Chicago surgeon whose interests in military surgery and advanced surgical techniques were world renowned.)
As its first home, the Crerar Library rented the fifth and eventually the sixth floors of the Marshall Field store at Wabash Avenue and Washington Street. Building of the collection, and the recruitment of staff began immediately. The Library was opened to the public on April 1, 1897, with some 11,000 volumes and a staff of twenty-two.
The formal invitation to the opening read as follows:
The Board of Directors has the honor to announce the opening of The John Crerar Library, in its temporary quarters on the sixth floor of the Marshall Field & Company Building, 87 Wabash Avenue, Thursday, April 1, 1897. During the first three days, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., all the rooms will be open to the public for inspection, and the Librarian, with his staff, will take pleasure in showing visitors the Library. Thereafter, until further notice, the Library will be open to readers every day, excepting Sundays and legal holidays, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Attention is respectfully called to accompanying circular, which will explain, in outline, the organization, scope and plan of the Library.
Chicago, March, 1897.
The Board initially hoped to erect the Library's permanent building in Grant Park, between Monroe and Adams Streets. However, the rather complicated laws protecting the integrity of the lakefront required approval of all abutting property owners--which was not granted. In due course, property thought to be adequate "for about 120 years" was acquired at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street. Crerar's 15-story, modernized Romanesque building by Holabird and Roche was erected there, and was formally dedicated on May 28, 1921.
Since its incorporation at the end of the 19th century, it has been the policy of Crerar Library to acquire both current and historical materials in the sciences. This policy was proposed by the Library's first President, Norman Williams, who in a letter to the directors, wrote:
"I do not sympathize with the suggestion that only the newest and latest publications be selected. Such a library would have neither beginning nor end. The student, every student, requires and demands a knowledge of the history of the subject he pursues, and should have at hand the means of investigation from the beginnings."
By the time Crerar Library started its collections, more than three centuries of active publication had passed. Thus, an organized effort to acquire the most essential historical materials was made by the first librarian, Clement Walker Andrews. He compiled an extensive list of desired periodicals and concentrated on the acquisition, including the back issues, of titles on that list. By the time he retired in 1928, all such titles had, indeed, been acquired, including some where publication had first begun late in the 17th century. Many valuable older materials of major importance were obtained with the aid of gifts. In 1928, Jens Christian Bay assumed the position of librarian and led Crerar through the difficult years of the depression. Bay, an eminent bookman and biliophile, continued to build the collections and brought the library to maturity as a traditional scholarly library before his retirement in l947.
Because the collections were so strong in the history of science, Crerar Library functioned not only as a library for current but also for historical research. The history of man cannot be understood without some knowledge of the history of science. The breadth and depth of its collections in the history of science have been seen in the work of scholars and in exhibits. Two catalogs Science Through the Ages (1979) and Nature Disclosed (1984), revealed the richness of the rare book resources.
For perhaps the first 50 years in the history of Crerar, income from endowment was generally sufficient to maintain service programs and continue to build the collections. In the 1950s, it became apparent that new sources of support must be developed. Herman H. Henkle was selected as the new librarian. Under his bold leadership a membership program was established, encouraging individuals, institutions and corporations to share in the maintenance of the Library through annual contributions. Henkle also created specialized services and publications reaching out to industry. These provided pioneering examples which many libraries today follow.
During the first 40 years, substantial collections in philosophy, general history, economics and certain other subjects not closely related to the primary fields of interest were developed at Crerar. In 1951, the decision was made to eliminate these collections and devote the Crerar's resources to science, technology and medicine. This decision coincided with the explosive increase of scientific research and development in the United States during and following World War II. It enabled Crerar to concentrate on the acquisition of the rapidly increasing numbers of publications of scientific, technical and medical knowledge.
Crerar Library provided Chicago with a major repository of scientific knowledge attracting industry to this area in some instances because of the availability of such a resource. But not only Chicago benefited. Throughout the nation, very few other libraries were as famed for the richness and comprehensiveness of their scientific holdings. Scholars came to Crerar, and still do, from all over the United States and many foreign countries. William S. Budington, librarian from l962 until 1984, made Crerar a leader in resource sharing. During his tenure, Budington brought the National Library of Medicine's resource network headquarters for the midwest to Crerar. Through such cooperative arrangements Crerar's resources became easily available to scholars and scientists wherever they might be located. In the realm of scientific learning, the name Crerar gained world-wide recognition.
Crerar was officially established as a public research library and remained strongly committed to serving the public. The character of its users frequently led the Library to play very much the same role with respect to research and education that is typical of a university library. In line with the request of the founder, who believed that the future depended largely upon the training of our youth, Crerar Library put considerable emphasis on making its facilities available to young people who were interested in science and medicine. Over the years well over half of all Crerar visitors were students or faculty of educational institutions. This trend accelerated in 1962 after Crerar had outgrown its old building and decided to relocate to the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Chicago, with its great industrial base, required a steady increase in scientists and engineers and Crerar became an important factor in their education and training.
Because Crerar was a free public library, individual records were not kept of its users. However, through correspondence we do know of two major inventions that resulted primarily from study at Crerar. They were Lee De Forest's development of the vacuum tube--in a letter he stated "the value of the Crerar Library to me could not be overestimated"--and the invention of the dry cell battery by Charles F. Burgess, who spent countless hours in the reading room. His biographer reported that Burgess felt a tremendous debt to Crerar because of the financial rewards that came to him as a result of his work there.
Some infamous types of studies also took place in the Crerar reading rooms. The Chicago Tribune in 1978 published a story on Henry Ferneker, a noted bank robber in the 1920's, who, according to the Tribune, robbed a score or more of banks. After being apprehended by the police, Ferneker was asked how he became so expert in the use of explosives. He replied that he had studied bomb manufacture at The John Crerar Library.
While outside support continued to grow, costs rose, especially during the 1970's, at a much faster pace than income and outside support.
Due to enormous changes in scientific information and continuing financial pressures, the Crerar Board of Directors for a number of years studied the available options for fulfilling its responsibility to sustain the institution founded by John Crerar. This matter was resolved on April 13, 1981, when Robert W. Reneker, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago, and Oliver W. Tuthill, President of The John Crerar Library, signed a twenty-four page agreement which had previously been approved by each of the two boards.
The purpose of this agreement was stated in paragraph 1.01 as follows:
"The purpose of this Agreement is to provide for the establishment of a new research library on the campus of the University which will be devoted to the fields of science, medicine and technology, which will consist of a consolidation of the Crerar and University collections in these Fields, which will be known as 'The John Crerar Library' and which will be located in a new building having the same name."
Further, because the Crerar Will specifically called for a "free public library … for all time," the agreement contained the following provision--under paragraph 7.02 "Public Access":
"In recognition of the fact that Crerar has always been a 'free public library' and that Crerar has been supported by many corporations and individuals, the University agrees that the new Library shall be open to that segment of the public which has historically used the services of Crerar and that user privileges will be extended to such segment of the public on terms reasonably comparable to those established by Crerar as in effect on the date of this agreement."
The agreement also stated that all of the Crerar assets, both tangible and intangible, with the exception of a relatively small amount, were to be conveyed to the University. This took place in connection with the move of the Library in 1984. The exception related to the creation of The John Crerar Foundation, whose purpose is to enhance the stature of the Library and perpetuate the memory of John Crerar.
Because the Library was originally organized under an 1891 act of the Illinois Legislature, it was necessary to get court approval for the transfer of its assets to the University. Accordingly, testimony was given by the Library, the University and the Illinois Attorney General in the Circuit Court of Cook County which resulted in a finding, dated October 26, 1981, which stated that regarding the move of the Library to the University, "The plan for the continuation of The John Crerar Library … is consistent with the intention expressed in Article Fiftieth of the Will of John Crerar and that the Crerar directors had the authority to so act." Further, the decree stated that the transfer of the Crerar assets will become the absolute property of the University provided they "will be held subject to the terms and conditions of the Agreement, including the requirement of paragraph 7.02 of the Agreement that the Library be open to the public." Finally, the organization of the The John Crerar Foundation was approved by the court.
The merger of Crerar Library and the University's science and medical collections has created a library probably without equal, that neither library could maintain alone. It provides Chicago and the nation with the finest library of its kind, strengthening the Crerar's mission as it strengthens our nation's research community.
The decision to join with the University of Chicago achieved the fundamental objective of ensuring the continuity of a great intellectual and cultural treasure, a uniquely dimensioned resource of scientific, technical and medical information for use by the citizens of Chicago, of our country and of the world. The move also sustains and enhances the world-wide renown the Library has earned by providing bright opportunities for higher levels of service feasible with fast-changing technologies. Further, the institution will always be freely open to the public while continuing to be known as The John Crerar Library.
Oliver W. Tuthill, President, The John Crerar Foundation, March 1991
The archival records of the John Crerar Library comprise 191.5 linear feet (323 boxes and 186 unboxed volumes) of material including board minutes, financial reports and accounting records, librarians' correspondence and memoranda, bibliographic records, scrapbooks, and memorabilia. Also preserved here are correspondence and documents from the life of the founder, John Crerar (1827-1889), and the personal and professional papers of the four Crerar librarians, Clement Walker Andrews (1858-1930), Jens Christian Bay (1871-1962), Herman Henry Henkle (1908-1987) and William Stone Budington (1919- ). These records came to the University of Chicago when the John Crerar Library merged with the University of Chicago in 1984. Additional records were transferred and added to the collection in 1990.
The archival records of the John Crerar Library have been organized into nine series which reflect the administrative organization of the Library as well as the format of the materials. The series are:
I. John Crerar and his Legacies
II. Board of Directors
III. Finance
IV. Administration
V. Operations
VI. Secondary Materials
VII. Photographs, Oversized Items and Artifacts
VIII. Audio Tapes
IX. Restricted
This series has been divided into four subseries devoted to the life of John Crerar, the settlement of his estate, and the implementation of his two major bequests: the commissioning of a statue of Abraham Lincoln, and the founding of a public library.
The records which have survived from the life of John Crerar are sparse. The largest body of material is correspondence between Crerar and his mother, Agnes Crerar Boyd, and step-father, William Boyd. Crerar's letters home reveal details of his personal and business affairs. This subseries also contains correspondence concerning Crerar's work with the Chicago Relief and Aid Society following the Chicago Fire of 1871, trade catalogs published by Crerar's railroad supply company, and memorial tributes written after his death.
The second subseries contains copies of John Crerar's will and documents which relate to the settlement of his estate. It also includes correspondence and documents about his burial next to his mother in Brooklyn, New York. In the course of the settlement of the estate, meticulous inventories were taken of Crerar's personal property and that of his company. A building which Crerar had owned at 91 John Street, New York City, was managed for a time by the estate's trustees and eventually sold. An investigation into Crerar's ancestry was commissioned, resulting in two volumes of genealogical data and supporting documentation. Copies of correspondence generated and received by the trustees while carrying out their responsibilities were preserved and bound in four volumes. The bulk of the material in this subseries is the financial record of the estate in the form of ledgers, vouchers, bank books and scrapbooks of cancelled checks.
Section 44 of the will of John Crerar set aside $100,000 for "the erection of a colossal statue of Abraham Lincoln." The records for this portion of John Crerar's legacy have been grouped together in their own subseries. The so-called Crerar-Lincoln Trust entered into a contract with sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens on October 20, 1904, but it was not until Memorial Day, 1926, that the Lincoln statue was dedicated at its setting in Grant Park. Records include the original contract with St. Gaudens, four volumes of correspondence, receipts and newspaper clippings, account books, a scrapbook of cancelled checks, and a program from the dedication ceremony. The correspondence volumes are in only rough alphabetical order; the researcher should consult all four volumes. Undated plans and drawings for the statue's site are bound into the volume in Box 10, Folder 2, filed under the heading "photographs." A set of large, dramatic photographs of the statue is found in Volume 186 and in Box 275, Folders 1-2.
The last subseries contains documents pertaining to the process of establishing the John Crerar Library during the period 1889-1895. These materials include an incomplete set of documents from the court battles over John Crerar's will, and articles of incorporation for the Crerar Library as well as the Newberry Library. Correspondence and reports relating to the character and scope of the proposed Crerar Library were bound together in a single volume. This volume (Box 14, Folder 3) contains letters from leading Chicago citizens and members of the Crerar Library Board of Directors. It also contains a Dewey Decimal Classification table dating from 1896 and annotated by the librarians from Chicago's three largest libraries to show how they agreed to divide the city's bibliographic landscape.
Series II contains records which relate to the actions of the Crerar Board of Directors as a whole, Board action on buildings, committees of the Board, and information concerning individual Board members.
The first subseries documents the decisions and deliberations of the Board as a group; it also reflects the activities of the chairman of the Board as a shaper of Library policy. Official records include annual reports, lists of Board members, which were often published with the Library's by-laws, and minutes of Board meetings. The next group of records comprises correspondence between the Board and those outside the Library, among Board members, and between Board members (usually the chairman) and the librarian. The letters are arranged chronologically. Board correspondence which is limited to appeals for financial support follows the general correspondence. The reports and correspondence of outside consultants who advised the Board are grouped together and form the third major division within the subseries. Additional reports and correspondence of consultants are found in Series II with the records of their supervising committees, and in Series IV under the administrative function for which they were responsible.
The physical housing of the book collection as a matter of Library governing policy is the subject of the second subseries. Included are documents relating to the physical appearance and legal history of the various buildings and proposed sites of the Library. These records are arranged chronologically, starting with alterations to the Marshall Field & Company building in 1900-1913 and ending with the agreement signed with the University of Chicago in 1981. Among the files are a group of documents assembled by H. P. Sedwick, chairman of the Board, concerning the decision to move the Library to IIT in 1962.
Additional information on Crerar Library buildings is located throughout the collection. The records of the Board's Buildings and Grounds Committee, which handled the details of building policy formation including planning, construction, and maintenance, are located in the Subseries 3, Committees. Documents relating to the commercial management of the Randolph Street building, a source of income for the library, are in Series III. Occasionally the librarian became involved in the operation and maintenance of the building; this is documented further in Series IV. Specifications for the Library's various buildings and the architect's program for the building at IIT are in this subseries; working blueprints of the buildings, however, are housed separately in the University of Chicago Archives architectural drawing collection. Photographs of buildings have been moved to the Archival Photofiles, except for two bound volumes of photographs of the Randolph Street building under construction, which are in Box 270.
The third subseries contains records of the committees of the Board. The records are arranged alphabetically by name of committee. For each committee, formal reports to the Board are placed first, in chronological order, followed by correspondence and memoranda relating to committee business. During most of the Library's history the four major committees were the Committee on Administration, the Committee on Books (after 1969 called the Committee on Collections), the Committee on Buildings and Grounds, and the Committee on Finance (after 1953 called the Investment Committee). Additional committees were created as the demands of Library governance changed.
Board committee records document some of the most important aspects of the Library's history. For example, the Special Committee to Consider the Industrial Development of the Crerar Library was convened to address issues which led to the creation of the Research Information Service in the mid-1940s, and as early as 1950 the Future Planning Committee considered moving the Library to a different location. The Committee records also contain detailed information about the operational aspects of the Library. During the first half of the Library's history the chairman of the Committee on Administration corresponded almost daily with the librarian on personnel matters, and during the financial crisis of the late 1940s the Committee on Books, supplanting the usual prerogatives of the librarian, made decisions on the purchase of individual titles for the collections.
The fourth subseries in Series II contains files on individual members of the Board of Directors, and includes biographical information, correspondence not related to their duties as directors, and newspaper clippings relating to the directors' careers. The directors were leading citizens in the city of Chicago and prominent members of their professions. Photographs of most directors are in the Archival Photofiles. A complete chronological list of the directors will be found in The John Crerar Library, a short commemorative volume published by the Board in 1984 (Box 269).
Oliver Tuthill's own set of annotated minutes and reports, correspondence, and notes concerning his work as a director are filed under his name in this subseries. Also included is a collection of documents relating to the move of the Crerar Library to the University of Chicago, which Tuthill edited and presented to President Hanna H. Gray in 1982 (Box 46D, Folders 8-10).
The third series documents the institution's financial operations. Spending was controlled directly by the Board and supervised by an officer of the Board, the treasurer. In 1963 the position of executive director was created, and the executive director became responsible for preparing budgets and for financial planning and development.
There are eight subseries in Series III. The first contains budgets of the Library for the years 1951-1984. Additional information on budgets and spending can be found in the reports and minutes of the Committee on Finance in Series II and the "appropriations, authorizations and expenditures" account book (Volume 62).
Subseries 2, Reports to the Board comprises several types of financial summaries, including cash reports (1915-1940) and more substantive quarterly reports (1895-1983) issued by the treasurer, annual reports of the auditors (1895-1984), and quarterly and monthly reports of the comptroller (1954-1984). Beginning in 1970, monthly reports by the librarian and executive director were included with the comptroller's reports, which condensed financial information even further and tracked membership income.
Subseries 3, Account books, includes journals (1895-1953), general ledgers (1895-1954), cash ledgers (1895-1953), audited voucher records (1895-1941), trial balances (1895-1941), bills collectible (1896-1941), appropriations (1927-1941), income (1895-1916), maintenance (1921-1941), real estate (1927-1934), supplies (1934-1939), and the librarian's account (1925-1941). All account books received at the time of the merger have been retained.
Four boxes of vouchers from the years 1895-1896, 1912, 1940-1941, and 1965 have been retained in Subseries 4 as a sample to illustrate the way these Library records were kept. Vouchers were used to verify the expenditure of Library funds; attached to each is a bill of sale or similar document from the party to be paid. Throughout the Library's history both the librarian and the chairman of the Committee on Administration signed each voucher before a check was written by the treasurer. Information from the vouchers was summarized in the account books and the treasurer's and comptroller's reports to the Board.
Subseries 5, Office of the Treasurer contains resolutions relating to the service rendered by two Crerar treasurers. Since the treasurers of the Library were officers of the Board and were outside of the administrative hierarchy, their correspondence has not survived.
Correspondence of the assistant treasurer, Thomas R. Orr, between roughly 1916 and 1941, forms Subseries 6. Orr's files were bound on two different occasions: the first group contains his files "prior to 1933" while the second spans 1933 to 1941, the year in which he left the library. His files contain correspondence with suppliers, building management and maintenance firms, Library directors, and companies in which the Library had made investments. Also included here are tables and financial records on various Crerar investments.
Subseries 7 contains leases with various tenants who occupied the income-producing rental space within the Library building at Michigan and Randolph. The files have been arranged in alphabetical order by the name of the other party to the lease, although some leases were bound together in such a way as to make a complete alphabetical arrangement impossible. Among the leases is one granted to the Library in 1961 by the George F. Harding Museum, purchaser of the Crerar Library building, for the storage of books while the Library was moving to its new building at IIT. Additional leases are shelved with the oversized items (Volumes 181-184), including the lease granted by Marshall Field & Company for the Library's first quarters on Wabash Street.
The final subseries contains monthly statements of receipts and expenditures issued by G. R. Bailey & Company, a real estate management firm used by the Library between 1954 and 1961. The reports originally included the invoices from suppliers and service companies; in the interest of space these invoices have been discarded except for those of the last two years, which were kept as a sample.
Series IV contains documentation concerning the activities of the librarian, the executive director, and assistant and associate librarians. These activities included carrying out the directives of the Board, originating and implementing new programs, managing the growth and organization of the Library, raising funds through membership and development programs, publicizing the Library, engaging in cooperative efforts with other libraries, and handling personnel matters. Acquisition of books and journals, which was handled directly by the librarian during the first 50 years of the Library, is documented more fully in Series V.
Series IV is arranged in 31 subseries. The first is composed of reports to the Board from the librarian. Through 1963 these took the form of annual reports; after that date reports were issued in various forms including "monthly reports," "occasional reports," and "brief memoranda." Additional reports and memoranda produced by the librarian for the Board on specific issues are filed in Series II, either with the Board of Directors correspondence and memoranda or in the files of the particular committee for which the report was produced. Some of the memoranda and reports are part of the official minutes of the Board or its committees. The librarian's monthly fiscal reports and membership reports to the Board are filed with the comptroller's quarterly and monthly reports in Series III.
Subseries 2-16 contain the administrative correspondence of each of the four librarians followed by their personal and professional papers.
The office correspondence of Clement W. Andrews was destroyed when it became inactive, with the result that little documentation of Andrews' career survives. The material which has been preserved here was mainly acquired through the efforts of Herman H. Henkle in 1955-1956 (see Box 102, Folder 6). Correspondence from the Chicago Public Library, Harvard University, the Library of Congress, and the United States Army's Surgeon General's Library was acquired on microfilm and has been photocopied onto paper. Andrews' letters to Michael Bauer, a page, were preserved by Bauer and presented to the Library in 1963. The guarantees covering loan of books and all of the articles by and about Andrews were preserved by the Library.
Although J. C. Bay became Crerar librarian in 1928, the files of his administration before 1934 were discarded by the Library. Because of this, 1934 is the beginning point for most record groups in Series IV and V.
Bay's administrative correspondence is arranged alphabetically by the last name of the correspondent. In most cases letters are filed together under the name of the individual rather than the name of an institution. Bay was a conservative librarian suspicious of new ideas being promoted by an increasingly professionalized occupation. He once told his friend J. C. M. Hanson, "The only defense against all half-baked schemes is to keep one's library at its highest peak of benevolent activity and to point out the connection between this fact and the safe and tried methods by which the result has been reached." Bay corresponded extensively with other librarians, including W. W. Bishop, James B. Child, William S. Merrill, Jerome K. Wilcox and P. L. Windsor. Bay's extensive correspondence concerning the acquisition of materials for the Library is filed in Series V along with other documents relating to acquisitions, gifts, and exchanges.
In addition to being a rich source of information about library operations and issues, Bay's personal and professional papers document activities outside of the Library and reveal his attitudes toward professional matters, avocations, ethnic heritage, and world politics. Bay was an avid collector of Western Americana and Scandinavian folklore, and his personal papers include correspondence with collectors Herbert M. Evans, Joseph Halle Schaffner, C. H. Thordarson, and John Wilson Townsend, as well as booksellers Roger Boutell, Charles P. Everitt, Charles F. Heartman, A. S. W. Rosenbach, and Henry F. Schuman, among others. Bay was also active in the affairs of the Danish-American community, serving as chairman of the Dan-America Archives in Aalborg, Denmark, and as a director of the American National Park in Rebild, Jutland. His views on world affairs are expressed throughout his personal, professional, and business correspondence.
The final group of files in this subseries contains copies of Bay's numerous publications. The first items are manuscripts, including Bay's critical summary of events at the Library following his retirement in January 1947 (Box 90, Folder 10). The manuscripts are followed by published articles and essays on a wide variety of subjects, arranged in chronological order. Some of these pieces appeared in journals, others were published by the author himself, and others were reprints published by Bay. Articles about Bay and his activities are arranged chronologically following his publications. The final box in the subseries (Box 93) contains 46 small books published by Bay between 1920 and 1959 as Christmas keepsakes, some of which contain essays written by Bay. A few of the other publications in this subseries may also have been Christmas gifts, but they were not published in the same format as the "Christmas books" in Box 93.
The most complete body of extant administrative correspondence is from the tenure of Herman H. Henkle. These files are divided into four uneven segments, 1947-1954, 1955-1961, 1962-1965, and 1966-1968, following the divisions in which they were maintained. In contrast to the files of J. C. Bay, correspondence in this section is filed under the names of institutions rather than the individuals writing the letters. In a few instances files for a particular institution were brought together and an entry made in the inventory to indicate the inclusive time period (e.g., Box 96, Folder 2, "Engineering Societies Library promotion effort, 1953-1955"). Henkle was in the habit of using the verso of incoming correspondence for the carbon copy of out-going correspondence, so researchers should be careful not to overlook the backs of letters.
The administration of the Library became more diversified under Henkle's direction than it had been under Bay. The associate librarian and other assistants handled much of the correspondence which the librarian had traditionally handled himself. The correspondence of the librarian is interfiled with that of his assistants in this subseries. There are no separate correspondence files for Henkle's subordinates except for Ann Davis Henkle, the manager of the Research Information Service, and Viola Gustafson, head of the acquisition department. These records are in Series V.
During Henkle's administration the Library retained extra copies of all out-going correspondence and filed them in chronological files, one for each administrator. None of Henkle's own chronological files are found here, but some of those for his subordinates, William S. Budington and Ammiel Prochovnick, were preserved. These chronological files are located at the end of each of the four correspondence groups.
Henkle's professional and personal papers are arranged in one alphabetical sequence following the administrative correspondence. They are much less extensive than Bay's. Most of Henkle's correspondence involves professional activities and organizations. Among his papers are an evaluation of the Elmhurst College Library (Box 117, Folder 5) and correspondence with the U.S. State Department about his service in the Executive Reserve (Box 118, Folder 6). Copies of Henkle's articles and addresses are arranged chronologically after the personal papers.
The correspondence from the administration of William S. Budington, the last executive director and librarian of the Crerar Library, is arranged in two groups, 1969-1973 and 1974-1984, in a manner similar to that of Henkle's. Several of the files in the 1974-1984 group concern the merger with the University of Chicago, and the litigation which followed the discovery made in December 1982 that a number of the Library's rare books had been stolen. Chronological files of Budington's correspondence from 1974 to 1984 are located in Boxes 125F-125H.
Budington's personal correspondence is at the end of this subseries. General correspondence is arranged chronologically in two folders. Much of the remainder of his personal papers concerns committee assignments for professional organizations and other library-related interests; this material has been arranged alphabetically by the name of the organization.
The materials in subseries 17-31 of Series IV, include various groups of general administrative material, drawn from the administrations of all four librarians. Subseries 17 begins with one folder of correspondence between the librarians and various members of the Crerar family from 1908 to 1966. Next are files which contain documents relating to public relations efforts, including correspondence with members of the print media. The articles which resulted from these exchanges are found in Series VI. Folders labelled Library Use include a comprehensive users survey made in 1957-1958 (Box 129B, Folders 2-3). Other studies which were conducted independently for academic projects or theses are located in Series VI.
More than eleven linear feet of files are devoted to membership records. Probably the first effort to raise money to supplement the Library's endowment and real estate income was the 1924 appeal to businesses for contributions to keep the Library open evenings, and this is documented by a scrapbook of correspondence, receipts, and memorabilia (Volume 68). The Crerar's membership program began in 1949 and soon became a major administrative activity. Membership records begin with lists of members in various forms, including a 1965 study by Herman Henkle of the Library's membership efforts which listed all of the members up to that point (Box 131A, Folder 4). Following the lists of members are files on specific membership campaigns, correspondence to prospective members, examples of form letters used for membership purposes, information on advisory panels set up by the Library, and correspondence with the members themselves. The membership correspondence is divided into three sections: individuals, corporations, and societies and newspapers. Corporate member files form the bulk of the records and include correspondence from 1950 to 1984.
Crerar Associates was formed as a support group which sponsored speakers and financed special acquisitions. One folder documents its activities in the years 1954-1956. The group was revived in 1969, and these boxes contain minutes of the Crerar Associates Council, annual reports, and files for semi-annual meetings.
Development files document other efforts to obtain outside funds. Although corporate members made significant contributions through their membership "fees" (which were not fixed), in the 1970s the Library actively began to seek grants from the government and from private foundations. In 1977 the Library received a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities which sparked an intensive three-year fund drive.
The group of records concerning finances in this series relates to the involvement of the librarians themselves in money matters. Included here are general files on various topics, and files on particular book funds. Summary financial reports issued monthly by the librarian between 1970 and 1984 are in Series III (Boxes 57-60).
Files on interlibrary cooperation are extensive, and include correspondence, reports, and minutes of meetings. Records on the various organizations with which the Crerar Library was involved are arranged in alphabetical order, and include, among others, the Association of Research Libraries (Boxes 147-151A), the Illinois State Library (Box 153A), and the Midwest Inter-Library Corporation, later renamed the Center for Research Libraries (Boxes 154B-160). The John Crerar Library was a leader in early efforts to encourage cooperation among libraries.
Records pertaining to employees, prospective employees, and personnel policy in general are arranged in the next four groups. The first group contains information on personnel matters and policy generated by the librarian's office. Included in this section are the Administrative Memoranda, which announced various administrative and personnel procedures, and the Librarian's Newsletter, issued periodically between 1947 and 1959 to communicate the librarian's activities to the staff. Also found in this section are policy and procedure manuals, lists of employees, information on salaries and benefits, and records of staff councils and committees.
Records on individual employees are in two groups. The first consists of a card file containing names, titles, dates of employment, and salaries for all library staff members from 1890 to 1946. The second includes letters of recommendation, resignations, and other correspondence from the administration of J. C. Bay, 1934-1946, and selected correspondence and biographical information for professional librarians and administrators from 1946 to 1970.
The final category of records concerning personnel contains all letters of application received between 1934 and 1959, and those received in the search for a chief science librarian in 1969. This correspondence has been arranged chronologically.
The librarian's records on buildings include general correspondence and memoranda, correspondence with the Library's management firm, G. R. Bailey & Co., correspondence with tenants of the Randolph Street building, documents about the planning, construction, and move to the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, and correspondence about insurance policies. Additional information about the Crerar buildings can be found in Series II and III.
The next group of files contains information concerning equipment and supplies for the Library, particularly in reference to photoduplication machines. The following group, Administrative Procedures and Forms, contains general directives relating to office procedures and examples of bookplates, letterheads, and forms used by the librarian and different departments within the Library.
The final group contains administrative publications issued by the Library. Serials are listed first, including The JCL Quarterly, a staff news sheet; These Are New, a list of new titles received by the Library; and Crerar Current, a short newsletter distributed to members of the Library and to the public. Following these are dedication and anniversary programs, exhibit catalogues, and pamphlets issued for general information, publicity, or development. At the end are brochures from two related organizations, the Midwest Health Science Library Network, which was based at the Crerar Library, and the Crerar Associates, the Library's support group. Publications which are more bibliographic in nature will be found at the end of Series V (Boxes 258-265). Publications about the Library's history will be found in Series VI (Boxes 268-269).
Series V: Operations contains records which pertain most directly to the daily operations of the Library. This series has been divided by department or function, and has been organized thematically following the process of book acquisition and information dissemination. The first subseries contains four folders of reports issued by departments to the librarian during the tenure of J. C. Bay and the first few years of Henkle's administration, and an additional folder of memoranda distributed to several departments simultaneously on operational matters.
Subseries 2-8, documenting Library Acquisitions, comprise approximately 26 linear feet of materials. The subseries begin with memoranda and reports, followed by correspondence divided into six uneven time segments. The next group, covering the period 1895-1914, contains the surviving records from the administration of Clement W. Andrews, documenting four special buying trips or relationships and consisting of documents which have been bound together. The second group contains the extensive acquisitions correspondence of the Bay administration for the period 1934-1946. A primary emphasis during this time was collection development, and the correspondence documents the efforts that were made to obtain library materials at reasonable prices. Most of the correspondence was sent out over the signature of the librarian, although it was generated by other members of the staff. This group has been further divided into sixteen categories based on the type of correspondent: individuals, booksellers, publishers, periodicals, governments, the Pan American Union and United Nations, Chambers of Commerce, trade and industrial organizations, private companies, unions and workers organizations, advocacy organizations, learned societies and professional organizations, hobbyists and enthusiasts, associations of associations, institutions, and subscription agencies.
Subseries 5 and 6 contain acquisitions correspondence for the periods 1947-1954 and 1955-1961, each filed in alphabetical sequence. The third group includes six folders relating to the sale of books to H. P. Kraus (Box 206, Folder 6-Box 207, Folder 3). Additional correspondence about the sale of Crerar holdings to academic libraries will be found in the correspondence of the Henkle administration in Series IV (Boxes 94-101).
The seventh subseries contains the correspondence of Viola Gustafson, assistant librarian for acquisitions, for the period 1950-1959. The correspondence is arranged alphabetically, followed by an additional copy in chronological order.
Subseries eight includes 39 bound volumes of book orders, dated 1895-1949, which usually took the form of carbon copies of letters to book sellers.
Subseries 9: Serials contains two folders retained as a sample of a much larger group of records. One is a collection of memoranda and reports concerning serials from the period 1947-1949; the other is an example of the records which the library kept between ca. 1898 and 1941 to document its serial holdings.
Subseries 10: Cataloging begins with memoranda and reports from the period 1948-1980, and cataloging statistics for 1948-1954. Additional cataloging statistics can be found in the reports of the librarian (Boxes 81-82). The main body of the cataloging subseries is composed of 66 volumes of accession records. These large volumes contain entries for each title accessioned by the Library between 1895 and 1939. Each entry, arranged in accession number order, contains the book's call number, author, title, publisher, date of publication, number of pages, size, binding description, source, order number and cost. The Library's withdrawal records, in two-and-a-half boxes, are at the end of this subseries.
The next four subseries contain memoranda and correspondence relating to the activities of the circulation/public service, business, medical and technical, and reference departments. The files for the reference department are more comprehensive than those of the other three and include correspondence on the Library's Arabian horse book collection as well as general correspondence for the period 1969-1984.
Records generated during the operation of the Research Information Service (RIS), the Library's innovative fee-based research service, form Subseries 15-18. Almost 12 linear feet in length, it has been divided into four groups, including general correspondence and files on specific administrative functions; job files concerning specific searches for clients, selected from a much larger group of files to illustrate the nature of the work conducted by RIS; prospects files generated in the process of publicizing the service; and files on translators of technical articles, who provided one of the services of RIS.
RIS also participated in the publication of bibliographic publications which contained abstracts similar to those they provided to industry. These publications included Abstracts of Bioanalytical Technology (ABT), Crerar Metals Abstracts, Leukemia Abstracts, and Reynolds Aluminum Abstracts. Copies of these publications are part of the general book collections of the Crerar Library.
The next subseries is composed of records of the Special Libraries Association Translations Center, renamed the National Translations Center in 1968 when funding through the Special Libraries Association ended. The Center did not produce translations, but rather acted as a central clearinghouse for the storage and indexing of translations executed by other organizations and individuals. Records include general correspondence and memoranda, inquiries and orders, and fiscal reports and summaries, followed by other reports of various types and materials from efforts to publicize the center during the period 1970-1972. The subseries ends with records relating to the advisory board the Library established after it assumed control of the Center.
Two subseries on Special Collections and Rare Books contain materials produced primarily during the tenure of Herman H. Henkle. These include descriptions of special subject collections in the Crerar Library, dealers' quotes on rare books with annotations regarding the Library's holdings, and Henkle's notes on the collections.
During the administrations of Henkle and Budington the Library engaged in an active exhibit program. Folders containing ideas for exhibits are grouped at the beginning of the next subseries, followed by files on particular exhibits. Catalogs for some of these exhibits will be found in Series IV, Box 179. Photographs of exhibits are filed in Box 271B and in the University of Chicago Archival Photofiles.
Subseries on the production of catalog cards and the binding department contain only one folder each. Following these are records of the photoduplication department, including monthly reports and related materials.
The next subseries, Production and Distribution of Publications, contains correspondence and memoranda which were generated in the course of producing bibliographic publications to disseminate information to the public. This subseries is divided into two groups. General correspondence, mostly requesting information about Crerar publications, is arranged in chronological order, followed by correspondence on particular publications arranged in alphabetical order by title.
A small subseries on Printers contains three folders of correspondence with the Crerar Printing Office, which was established during the administration of Clement W. Andrews in Oquawka, Illinois, and operated until 1947. There are also two folders of correspondence with other printers.
The final subseries in Series V contain publications of a bibliographic nature published by the Library. Administrative publications such as brochures, pamphlets and exhibit catalogs are in Series IV. The six subseries include: bibliographies of books, 1900-1959; bibliographies of serials and periodicals, 1897-1942; Crerar cataloging rules; various lists and guides, including Reference Lists, 1930-1945, Bibliography Series, 1953-1956, Special Bibliographies, 1950, and Guides to the Collections, 1954-1968; reprints of books in the Crerar collections; and a set of Library publications bound together as "Minor Publications," which include administrative publications and annual reports as well as bibliographies.
Secondary materials about the history of the Library have been grouped together in Series VI for the convenience of the researcher. The series begins with seven scrapbooks compiled by the staff of the Library for most of the Library's history, 1889-1960. These scrapbooks, particularly the early volumes, contain an eclectic array of information, some of it only incidentally related to the Library. Following the scrapbooks are miscellaneous clippings and articles, arranged chronologically, and press releases issued by the Library. Most of the press releases are without dates, and are arranged topically. The final group in the series consists of books, theses, papers, and pamphlets which deal with aspects of the history of the Library. These are arranged chronologically.
Series VII. Photographs, Oversized Items and Memorabilia contains material in non-standard or non-paper formats. Oversized items include large items on paper, mostly leases and addenda to leases. Most photographs of the Crerar Library, its staff, exhibits, and events were transferred to the Archival Photofiles; however, two bound volumes of photographs of the Crerar Library building under construction on the corner of Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue, and a set of large format photographs of the statue of Abraham Lincoln erected in Grant Park with money from the John Crerar estate, are shelved in this series. There are also slides of an exhibit presented at the Chicago Public Library's Cultural Center in 1978-1979, and slides for audio-visual presentations on the library. Memorabilia include several Director's nameplates, a medallion which was the first impression made from the die of the Library seal (Volume 185), an embossing die with the image of an open book used for a publicity brochure in the 1960s, and the scissors used in October 1984 to cut the ribbon at the new Crerar Library building on the campus of the University of Chicago.
This series contains budget and personnel materials to which access is restricted until 2027.