The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-04-13

New Haven, Conn, April 13.-The Sterling Memorial Library of Yale university was dedicated here to-day at exercises held in the library at 8 o'clock. Designed by James Gam bie Rogers, of New York city, the building was made possible by the bequest to Yale of John w. Sterling, Yale 1864, of New York city, who died in 1918.
 The keys to the library were pre- scented by John Anson Carver, coun- sel for the trustees of MT Sterling's $ estate, and were accepted on behalf of the university by President James Rowland Angell. Addresses were made by Andrew Keogh, university librarian, and Sterling professor of Bibliography. and by Herbert Put nam, librarian of congress-. Bene- dictfon was pronounced by the Rev Dr Henry Sloane Coffin, Fellow of the Yale Corporation.
 Modern Gothic in style of archi- lecture, the Sterling Memorial Library stands In the heart of the university on a square about $50 feet on each side. It has a shelf capacity of two volumes which can be ex- banded to four million, and a seat ing capacity of two thousand read CTS at one time. A sixteen storied book tower. 90 feet in width, 135 feet in depth, and 150 feet in height, dominates the lower buildings sur rounding 1t. Tn addition to the re- serve book room. the Linonian and Brothers Library, the periodical room. the rare book room. the ex- hibition room, and the lecture hall, the library contains a dozen rooms for special libraries or collections. one special room of great interest is restoration of the Yale Library as 1t was in 1742. with many of the original books given by the founders and early benefactors.
 The upper floors are primarily for research workers. On these floors are their seminaries. studies where they will find conveniently at hand the most important reference books in their chosen fields, and $50 stalls where students writing their theses or dissertations may keep their books and papers with some privacy.
 quoting from Mir Sterling's will, President Angell in accepting the library on behalf of the university said:
 Here indeed is 'an enduring, use- full, and architecturally beautiful edifice' and beyond all peradventure it constitutes "a fitting memorial of Mir Sterling's gratitude to. and affec- tion for Yale.v
 ''As with great cathedrals. un- measured thought and care and sheer devotion have been 1avished on this pile, whose beauty everywhere leaps out to meet the eye. It Is in truth, a very temple of the mind which here we dedicate to-day, a fane wherein are marshalled the greatest souls of human history. and on the altars of its inner sanctuary will always burn the sacred lamp of learning and the holy torch of truth. Here is incarnate and intellectual and spiritual life of Yale.'
 Professof Keogh told how Yale. and the Yale Library. was founded in 1701, at Branford. Conn. when group of Congregational ministers, assembled at the home of the Rev Samuel Russel, agreed to give books from their own scanty libraries as a nucleus of college property."
 "The first library endowment, of. lf0 given by Jared Elioc in 1763. has been followed by q hundred others. of a total still woefully inadequate, but much greater than our prede- cessors would have dreamed neces- sary or even possible. The forty volumes given bv the ministers have grown to two millions. We now add as many books in year as had been accumulated during the first century and half of our history. But the number of volumes in q library means little more to librar- ian than their cubage or their weight: 1t is appropriateness. 1t Is quality that counts.
 ssThe ideal library for the under graduate Is a sufficient number of the best books administered in the best way. The ideal library for the investigator knows no limit of num- Der or subject or language or date. and places experts in charge of it's various sections. Tn practice no sin- gle library can collect everything There will always be national and special Repositories to which the re- search worker must go to master his subject. But an individual library may be unusually rich. may even be supreme. In one subject or in hum dred subjects, and 1t is distinction of this sort that attracts students and teachers. The librarians. the