The current Covid-19 shutdown of the SJSU campus is just the latest chapter in the history of SJSU’s libraries, but it is revealing something to the public that librarians have always known: the library is not just a physical building that holds books! The remote access to collections and services that SJSU library is providing during the shutdown would not have even been possible a generation ago, but this is just the latest manifestation of the ways that SJSU libraries have changed over the years.
The SJSU library has been housed in many different buildings throughout its history, but also has always been a reflection the collective work of many different people. Our first librarian, Ruth Royce, led the library from 1881-1918 after the Second Normal School Building was built.
In these early years, librarians and other staff would have brought materials to students from locked cases. As you can see from this 1904 photograph from our collections, the library reading rooms were popular places to study!
From the 1910 to 1941, the library was housed in the third Normal School Building, which brought changes to the ways that students and staff accessed materials. There were still reading rooms, but there were also stacks where they could access books after finding them in the card catalogs. Although now SJSU’s library school is online, back when it started in in the 1930s and 40s, it was a popular field of study on campus too.
1941 STACKS, and 1941 CARD CATALOG, and 1941 LIBRARIANSHIP STUDENTS
1942 brought the opening of the Wahlquist Library, which was eventually demolished to make way for the current library, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in 2000. However, for part of that history (1982-2003), there was also a second library building, the Clark Library, which is now Clark Hall. This period saw the development of new technologies such as microfilm, but also the openness that is more characteristic of library services today.
WAHLQUIST CENTRAL BUILDING, 1958, and CLARK LIBRARY MICROFILM, 1982, and MOBILE BOOK STAND, 1967
In 2003, the library moved into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, as part of a unique partnership between SJSU and the San Jose Public Library. With 8 floors and 475,000 square feet, it holds over 1.6 million volumes, but offers much more in digital collections and services.
The Archives and Special Collections department began in the Clark Library in the early 1980s, but our collections include materials from the inception of the library. The digitized photos in this blog post are only the tip of the iceberg! Not only do we have many more physical photos and undigitized archival materials, but many of our rare books and artworks were transferred from the main library collections over the years. SJSU Archives & Special Collections staff has remote access to our internal catalogs of physical materials, as well as knowledge of our unique holdings that have been developed through years of experience. We may not be on the fifth floor with our collections right now, but we’re still available to answer your questions about them by emailing special.collections@sjsu.edu.
Resources:
Historical Images of The Library: a LibGuide with selected images documenting the library’s history from our digital collections
SJSU King Library Digital Collections: to find more images of SJSU’s historical libraries, student and staff, try searching keywords such as ‘librarians’ and ‘libraries,’ as well as specific names or buildings.
Suggested SJSU Archival Collections for further research: San José State University Library Records(MSS.2009.03.03), Willard O. Mishoff Library Science Literature Collection (MSS.2010.11.15), San José State University School of Library and Information Science Records (MSS.2015.06.01), San José State University and the San José Public Library System Joint Library Project Records (MSS.2009.08.05)
Post written by Monica Keane, SJSU MLIS '20.
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