Department history

In 1931, nearly half a century after Librarian Henry Hill Goodell first authorized the permanent retention of the official records of Massachusetts Agricultural College, the Library established a College History Collection. Documenting the activities of the administration and faculty and the life of its students, these collections grew steadily, and soon came to offer a valuable perspective onto the origins and growth of the campus and community. In 1953, the Library dedicated a room named in honor of Dean William L. Machmer to serve as the first true home of the University Archives.

The timing of Goodell’s proposal coincided roughly with the Library’s first efforts to assemble a collection of rare books to support its educational mission. Even though the campus had no separate library building until 1885, the College accepted several significant gifts of books, beginning almost from the time of its founding. In 1868, for example, the apiarist and state Adjutant General Henry K. Oliver donated twenty scarce volumes on bee culture, and other prominent citizens added important works in agriculture, history, and science. By the time the library published its first catalogue in 1875, rare books were a small, but distinctive part of the collecting focus. Among the Library’s earliest acquisitions were the first London edition of William Bartram’s Travels Through North and South Carolina (1792), François Augier de Marigny’s The History of the Arabians (London, 1758), and two early bee manuals by John Keys, The Practical Bee-Master (London, 1780) and The Antient Bee-Master’s Farewell (London, 1796) — both courtesy of Oliver. All of these works remain part of the collections. From its initial focus on key works in agriculture, horticulture, and the natural sciences, the Library soon extended its collecting efforts in an effort to document the history and culture of the Commonwealth and New England more generally. Beginning in 1973 with the acquisition of the records of the Valley Peace Center and the papers of ethnographer Jozef Obrebski, the Library also began to acquire collections of personal papers and organizational records of historical significance. The rare book and manuscript collections were combined administratively with the University Archives in the early 1990s to form the current Department of Special Collections and University Archives. Today, SCUA oversees a growing research collection of primary materials that includes rare books and manuscripts, historic maps, photographs, prints, and the official records of the campus at UMass Amherst.