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Purpose
 
Contents
Introduction |
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The challenge always confronting research libraries is the sheer uncertainty of researchers' future needs.
Bill McPheron, curator for American & British Literature, on the left, with Bliss Carnochan, in the Lane Room, Green Library. |
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When the new Green Library opened in 1980, I was assigned an office on the lower level, 51-D. I've been there ever since -thousands of hours over the years. The only way I care to leave is feet first.
Since moving in, I've written variously about Edward Gibbon, American higher education, the nineteenth-century search for the source of the Nile, the history of Stanford, and the literature of the prison. I also did a memoir, generously published by the libraries, that required some digging in the early history of the Republic. Without the resources of the library collections and their proximity to 51-D, none of this might have happened.
When I came to Stanford in 1960, the library collections were middling at best. Now they are excellent, the product of heroic efforts by many people to create, somewhat late in time, a first-rate research library.
Among the many whose help has been invaluable are Bill McPheron, a skilled and knowledgeable curator of collections in the Humanities; Michael Ryan and John Mustain, whose work has contributed greatly to the increasing strength of Special Collections; Maggie Kimball, without whom I would never have navigated my way through the dense and rich thicket of the archives; and Eric Heath, who knows everything there is to know about databases and library technology.
The challenge always confronting research libraries is the sheer uncertainty of researchers' future needs. What seems of minor interest today may be of major interest tomorrow. Research libraries therefore have to take intelligent risks. The payoff comes over long stretches of time.
Bliss Carnochan
Bliss Carnochan is the Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus. He was director of the Stanford Humanities Center from 1985-1991. He has written books on eighteenth century British literature, American higher education, and a memoir, Momentary Bliss. His most recent book (forthcoming, 2006) is The Sad Story of Burton, Speke, and the Nile.
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