As a society expands geographically, numerically, and intellectually, the demand for organization and storage of its information grows proportionately. In the ancient library of Alexandria, for example, there was a register of every available book as well as a critical commentary of the contents. The preservation of intellectual achievements of prior generations has been an essential part of libraries' collections so it is not surprising that the first important donation to the University of Missouri Library was a complete set of Livy's Early History of Rome.
This gift was shared in 1842 and was especially welcome, since the initial funding for the Library covered only apparatus and eight periodicals, including Bladewoods, Edinburgh Review, Foreign Quarterly, and North American. Though the University Library received book donations thereafter, no books were purchased until 1849, when President John Hiram Lathrop secured a $1250 appropriation for that sole purpose. From that amount, $900 was deposited by Lathrop in the vault of the Exchange and Banking House of William Nisbet & Co. in St. Louis, but disappeared in the hands of burglars on the night of March 23, 1849. Two St. Louis policemen and a vigilante whose life savings was among the approximately $15,000 stolen, captured two of the robbers on the Wabash River in Indiana over a week later. Though $5,965 was recovered, the robbers, while still handcuffed together, escaped one of their sleeping captors. By April 11, they were once again in custody. Fortunately, in time, the University Library was returned its full deposit.
The University continued to build its library collection at a crawling pace, since it lacked the enthusiasm and knowledge of a full-time librarian as well as a salary to secure such a professional. At one time, if a student wanted to check out a book, he was required to pay a small fee to the "Librarian." The Librarian was a faculty member who had a regular teaching schedule and provided a few hours of library service each week. For example, if the Librarian was teaching a Math class, the case for nearly a decade, the book stacks were closed until class was completed. Recovering the books, however, proved to be even more of a problem. One persistent librarian even collected books door-to-door, retrieving 94 volumes from student rooms and boarding houses. According to one annual report, students lost eighty-three percent of all books checked out. In the following year, administrators cautiously reduced the availability of library materials to Fridays only, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
The remainder of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century was spent in a nearly constant state of changing librarians, duties, and patron regulations to assure that the collection did not dwindle. Policy revisions intermittently opened and closed the stacks to both students and faculty. At one time, the Board of Curators required that all who checked out materials from the Library leave a monetary deposit; later, the Board added one dollar to student fees to cover Library materials. Ironically, only those books out to library patrons on the night of January 9, 1892 survived the burning of Academic Hall. All volumes in their designated place on the Library shelves were lost. Because of the small size of the Library collection after the fire and the fear that students were stealing books, the freedom of students to use books was again substantially curtailed. Books were not allowed to be checked out of the Library by either students or faculty, and with the exception of special permits, this policy remained in effect for more than fifty years.
The Civil War affected the University of Missouri-Columbia and the entire country dramatically. The commencement of the war had an immediate impact on the Library, as Head Librarian and Chair of the Math Department, Edward T. Fristoe, abandoned his offices and joined the Confederate Army. He was the only University of Missouri-Columbia faculty member to join the ranks. The Board of Curators was so angered that Fristoe's salary was remanded, and he did not receive any payments until fifteen or twenty years later.
There were long term consequences from the Civil War as well. The Union Army garrisoned troops at the University (1862-1865) and used the Library as a guard room. The University Librarian, Joseph Norwood, detailed the devastation. The result of the army's occupation was that 467 Library volumes were taken to construct fires. Norwood assessed the damages to the Library's collection at $1100.00. The army's destructive tendencies were not limited to the Library, however, and the Board of Curators, with Congressman James S. Rollins as their representative, sued for damages. When the U.S. government finally settled in 1915, the award was used to build the Memorial Gateway.
The fifth University of Missouri Librarian, Scott Hayes, (1877-1879) was well aware of the tragic destruction by fire of the Library of Congress, and thus appealed to the President of the University of Missouri-Columbia, Samuel S. Laws, to prevent a similar tragedy. Hayes must have realized that the appearance of a benefactor such as Thomas Jefferson was not likely to occur at the University of Missouri. Hayes made the case for the construction of a fire resistant building to house the University Library. He also created the first library card catalogue at Missouri and enriched the Library collections by acquiring the book collections of several University literary societies as well as the public library of Columbia.
