Ex Libris Universitatis Columbiae
 

ALFRED H. LANE
 

TIME WAS-a
couple of hundred
vears ago—when the
total library collec¬
tion owned by Co¬
lumbia University
(King's College at
that time) was a mat¬
ter of a very few vol¬
umes, which pre¬
sented a compara¬
tively slight problem
in identifying the
books as Columbia's
property. Now, with
a collection of over
two million volumes
and with over 300 different bookplates in use by the Libraries, the
problem is immensely complicated.

The traditional means of identification of printed books is by
a bookplate—so it was then, and so it is now. In 1795 Alexander
Anderson, a Columbia Medical College student, was commissioned
by Dr. AMIIiam Samuel Johnson, then president of Columbia Col¬
lege, to design a bookplate. (It is reproduced above.) The story
of rhis commission and its execution is all recorded in detail in
Anderson's diary which no«' reposes in Special Collections. "Feb¬
ruary 28, 1795, Dr. .Mitchell delivered to me a medal, from the
design of which I am to engrave a plate for the College Library."
On the third of March "saw Dr. Johnson on the subject"; on the