Yesterday, I taught a class for students who need to find articles about American Indians published between 1800-1925. Cool fact, we actually have, on the shelf on Hale's 4th floor, bound issues of magazines published during those dates. Naturally, I grabbed a copy because who wouldn't want to see a magazine that old? I pulled the 1864 volume of the Atlantic Monthly.
Heading downstairs to meet the class, I flipped the book open and saw this label:
While I don't think we've had this particular volume on our shelves since 1864, I can tell you that it was probably the 5574th volume in our collection. And it was shelved in Alcove 1, Case 2 of the library--but which library?
According to our history of K-State Libraries, here are potential homes for this book when this label was affixed.
Anderson Hall (housed the library 1879-1894):
(Please note the books piled under the Librarian's desk. I kind of feel ok about my office, now.)
Or perhaps, Fairchild Hall (housed the library 1894-1927):
Or Historical Farrell Library (1927-1997, now part of Hale Library):
While the ongoing influx of new books eventually made it impractical to number each books and identify its permanent alcove/bookcase home (we have to shift them around all of the time to make room) you can still go into the stacks and see evidence that we used to number all of our shelves:
and here:
History geek? Why, yes, I am!






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