The Organizing Committee and Its Activities

Merle M. Hoover
Secretary, Library Development Plan Committee

THE "Friends of the Columbia Libraries," of which Columbia
Library Columns is the official organ, is the successor of a
former organization, "The Friends of the Library of Columbia
University," which operated from 1928 to 1938.

This first Friends' organization was the shadow of three dis¬
tinguished men—George A. Plimpton, David Eugene Smith, and
Frank D. Fackenthal. These three attracted around them a mem¬
bership of ten Honorary Life Members and two hundred and
fifty lay members both from the campus and off campus. The
group was successful from the start. It created an area of good
feeling about the Columbia Library and its interests. It also con¬
tributed to the Library a series of gifts, notably the David Eugene
Smith Collection of mathematical books and materials and the
George A. Plimpton Collection of textbooks. The organization
flourished until its work was interrupted by the long illness of
David Eugene Smith. When that grand old gentleman and scholar
died in 1938, the organization died with him.

During the years since his death the necessity for a like organi¬
zation has become increasingly evident. Analogous groups around
the Libraries of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Rutgers, and other uni¬
versities have been highly successful, and their success has been
publicized through attractive publications. It was manifest destiny
that Columbia and some of her well-wishers, members of what
President Eisenhower terms the "Columbia family," should at¬
tempt to revive the interrupted work of the earlier organization.

Early in 1950 a group of devotees gathered around Dean Carl
White; Henry Rogers Benjamin, General Chairman of the De¬
velopment Program for the University Libraries; and Dallas Pratt,
Chairman of the Development Plan Committee. A larger commit¬
tee grew by accretion into what is now known as the Organizing
Committee of the Friends of the Columbia Libraries. Subcommit¬
tees were appointed to formulate constructive policies and plans
for the group.