The College of Engineering Library at the University of Cincinnati

Eighty-Eight Years:  1916-2004

THE BEGINNING OF THE COLLEGE
The College of Engineering was established at the University of Cincinnati in 1900, but as early as 1840 Professor Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel had begun lecturing in civil engineering at U.C.'s predecessor, the Cincinnati College.  By 1874 a professorship of Civil Engineering was begun;  and in 1879 an engineer was one of the students in the first class to graduate from the newly chartered University of Cincinnati.  By 1902 degrees were offered in four different fields of engineering.

Herman Schneider was appointed dean in 1906.  Dean Schneider is most remembered as the inventor of cooperative education.  He had tried to interest several other universities in this idea before bringing it to the University of Cincinnati.  And it was only after he had gained support from Frederick Geier of the Cincinnati Milling Machine Co., and others in the business community, that President Dabney and the U.C. Board of Trustees approved his plan. The co-op plan was an instantaneous success. By 1920 there were so few engineering students who were not co-oping that the program was made a requirement for all engineering students. Also in 1920, women were first admitted to the College of Engineering. For a while cooperative education was known as the Cincinnati Plan. It is now used internationally in more than 75 countries.

STARTING THE ART COLLECTION
In 1909 President Dabney put Dean Schneider in charge of the plans for a new engineering college building.  Dean Schneider believed that not only did engineers need the practical experience of cooperative education, but they also needed an appreciation of the fine arts, not as something remote and rarefied but as a part of their daily experience.  And so Baldwin Hall has a library, as well as extensive murals and other paintings on the walls.

The murals reflect the civil and industrial life in Cincinnati and show its river front, woodlands, bridges and buildings. Dean Schneider said they struck "a new key in mural decorations, inasmuch as the romance of engineering is worked into beautiful scenic canvases."  They were a gift of the class of 1916 and were painted by Frances Faig.   Mrs. Faig was a pupil of Frank Duveneck, who painted her portrait.  The painting is owned by the family.  Mrs. Faig was the wife of John T. Faig,  Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the College of Engineering from 1906-1918.  In 1918 he became president of the Ohio Mechanics Institute, a position he held until  his death in 1951.

With Dean Schneider’s encouragement this gift from the class of 1916 began a tradition of leaving money to the college for the purchase of art works; and the walls of Baldwin Hall became an art gallery of original paintings.

In January of 1920, when there was a fire in the roof of Baldwin, engineering students carried art works with them as they “marched single-file into the winter air of the quadrangle.”  Anna Teasdale, the dean's secretary sounded the alarm.  She ushered students toward the exits, making certain that on their way to safety they took the college's art collection from the walls.

THE BEGINNING OF THE LIBRARY
The collection of engineering books was growing. The earliest engineering thesis was written by a member of the first class to graduate from the newly chartered University of Cincinnati.  One of these graduates was a woman and one was an engineer.  Antonio De Toledo Piza, the first engineering graduate, was a native of Brazil, and the first of many international students in the College of Engineering. His handwritten thesis on Petroleum in Pennsylvania from 1879 is part of the library collection.  The Howard Breen book fund started about 1910 to honor Howard Breen who graduated in 1882.  The endowment continues to this day.  Howard Breen's handwritten thesis on The Measurement of Base Lines, with drawings, is also part of the library collection.  It was not until about 1900 that theses started to be typed..

In 1901 Mrs. William Merrill donated the Merrill Library of engineering works that included 876 volumes, 478 pamphlets and 185 maps, charts and photo-lithographs. One of these volumes that is still a part of the library collection is A Manual of Civil Engineering by William Rankine, 1865.  The volumes were originally placed in the Van Wormer Library that had opened in September of 1901.  According to the 1902 Annual Report of the university librarian, when the library collection was moved into the Van Wormer Library the books were re-cataloged on typewritten cards, and the handwritten cards were replaced.

The library in the College of Engineering started as departmental  libraries within the college.  The library in the Department of Civil Engineering started sometime before 1897.  In 1897 the Civil Engineering Department, along with its library, moved into the second floor of the original Hanna Hall.  In his 1915 Annual Report Dean Schneider noted that the Engineering College needed a "library properly equipped in our own building, (filled with) not only technical literature, but also copies of (the) non-technical works with which every educated man should be familiar."  In 1916 the departmental libraries combined to form the Engineering College Library.  By 1918 Paul D. Bogle was appointed engineering library assistant, a position he held until 1922.   Starting in the 1920’s the engineering collection, along with the rest of the university libraries collections, was recataloged from the Dewey System to the Library of Congress classification system.   By 1930 there were over 9,000 volumes in the Engineering Library.
 

Departmental Libraries in the College of Engineering (number of volumes)	1897	1898	1908	1909	1910	1911	1912	1913	1914	1915	1916	1917	1919
Civil Engineering	922	924	230	252	340	343	363	413	444	8
Co-ordinating Engineering								48	56	55
Electrical Engineering			28	108	132	148	175	216	274	309
Mechanical Engineering			113	133	132	134	146	191	184	191
ENGINEERING COLLEGE LIBRARY											3,064	3,349	3,744

ENCOURAGING A READING PROGRAM
In 1920 Dean Schneider introduced a “free” hour in the middle of each day known as the hobby hour.  Students could use this time for extracurricular activities, including athletics and music. A number of student organizations were started at this time, as was the student magazine, The Co-operative Engineer, which lasted from 1921 to 1978.  The time could also be used for “reading,” as B. E. Batson, a civil engineering graduate of the class of 1925, describes as he sits looking out the library window at the cupola of old McMicken.

Swift Hall, that Mr. Batson watched being built as he looked out the library window, completed the buildings in the engineering quadrangle which is now known as the Schneider Quadrangle.

With strong support from Dean Schneider, an elective reading program was adopted by the engineering faculty in 1933.  Typical programs covered various phases of science, philosophy, economics, biography, history, art and literature.  In 1937 a partial list of recent additions to the Engineering Library included about half in engineering, and half in the liberal arts and humanities.  By 1935 book reviews started appearing in The Co-operative Engineer.  In 1937 the magazine carried a homepage article about the Engineering Library and about Mary Condit, the engineering librarian from 1923-1943.  In 1938 The Co-operative Engineer had articles on what students were reading, as well as on the main library of the university.

Dean Schneider served as president of the University from 1928 to 1932 and was asked to remain, but he preferred to return as dean of the College of Engineering, a position he held until his death in 1939.  On the day of his funeral classes were suspended at the University of Cincinnati.

In 1951 The Co-operative Engineer took note of a new engineering librarian, Miss Peggy Fleming; and from 1966 to 1974 Helen Stafford was librarian.   In 1959 Dr. Arthur Hamlin, the university librarian, proposed a reading program for co-op students.  This experimental reading program expanded the elective reading program started by Dean Schneider. By 1962, under Dean Cornelius Wandmacher and with a grant from General Electric, it had become the Humanities Reading Program.  Students who were co-oping were given paperback books, a format that was new on the market at the time. The books became part of the students’ personal libraries.  The program was voluntary, and students who participated were required to attend discussions led by various faculty members from the English Department.

EXPANDING THE LIBRARY
With all this interest in reading the Engineering Library was getting too small. Part of the planning for the new Engineering College building, Rhodes Hall, completed in 1971, included the renovation of the Engineering Library.  There was discussion about whether the Engineering Library should move into the proposed new central library, the Langsam Library, that was finished in 1978. Finally it was decided to leave the Engineering Library in Baldwin Hall, but to expand it beyond the mural room, to include all the front half of the center section of the eighth floor.

The renovation was completed in January of 1974; that spring the first professional librarian was hired.  In 1975 Dr. Dorothy Byers succeeded Joyce Senescal as Director of the Engineering Library.

The library expanded again in 1980.  This time library space increased by 50%; and the library took over all of the center section of the eighth floor including the space over the central staircase, which was closed off.  In 1984, with a grant from G.E., the Engineering Library was the first library at U.C. to begin to convert its catalog records into machine readable form.  In 1986 the catalog of the University of Cincinnati libraries came online.

THE VIRTUAL LIBRARY
In 1993, Dean Constantine Papadakis  provided the Engineering Library with a UNIX web server and help in learning how to use it.  This allowed the librarians to create an Engineering Library website and to begin to teach Engineering College students about accessing library resources online.  It also allowed 24 x 7 access from the desktop to much of the library's collection, including, starting in 1995, electronic reserves.  Today electronic reserves accounts for 45% of the total usage of the site.

In August of 2000 all offices, including the Engineering Library, moved out of Baldwin Hall so that it could be completely renovated.   Pictures of the renovation show the process.  When the renovation was completed in January 2002, the Engineering Library had expanded to include the south wing of the eighth floor.  In addition, the Library shares the north wing with the Office of College Computing in operating an Information Commons with wireless access and two computer classrooms, serviced by consultants.

Dean Stephen Kowel was an enthusiast of the library renovation and provided seed money to begin conservation of the Faig murals described above. Professor Emeritus James Morand and his wife Diane Morand provided the gift that carried the conservation work to completion. Conservators removed eighty years of grime and yellowed varnish to bring the murals to new life. The original library space featuring the conserved Faig murals is now a quiet reading room, a dignified sanctuary popular with serious students.

By 2003, the Engineering Library had 120,000 catalogued items in Baldwin and another 70,000 in remote storage.  The library subscribes to 700 journals, all but about 200 of which are available electronically.  In addition, students can request books directly from the OhioLINK central catalog; and they can access OhioLINK electronic journals and other electronic resources. The Engineering Library website has been online for eight years.  It is a portal to off campus resources and used extensively to teach students about the library.

Today, engineering students and faculty expect to have fulltext library resources available to them electronically.  This will never be entirely true, but so far, the library has been able to provide more and more information to the desktop.  In cooperation with computer support personnel, librarians are teaching not only how to to identify and use library resources  but also how to access and manipulate them electronically.  In the renovated Engineering Library, they can teach students in the library classroom and beyond about real and virtual library resources.

The Engineering Library is a place of contrast. Baldwin Hall is the oldest classroom building on the University of Cincinnati campus, and the newly restored Quiet Reading Room is the oldest academic library facility in the greater Cincinnati area. Yet the collections and services exemplify the virtual library of tomorrow with its array of online resources and reference functions.

dfb 4/19/2004