Abernethy and Frost Collections Bid Adieu to Starr Library

Author: Claire Bourne

As Middlebury College breaks ground for the construction of its new state of the art, $40 million Library and Technology Center (LATC), Starr Library loyalists are feeling a tinge of premature nostalgia. In an opinions piece published in last week's issue of The Middlebury Campus, Ken Andersen, Jr., '66, who used to teach in the American Literature Department, brought it to the attention of the Middlebury community that the College's coveted Abernethy Rare Book Collection and Robert Frost Collection, currently located adjacent to the Starr Library foyer, were to be "shoehorned … into the cellar" of the new library.

The Abernethy Collection includes Henry David Thoreau's own copies of "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" and "Walden," complete with handwritten annotations. "For many, many people around the globe, Middlebury possesses the Holy Grail, the particular copy of 'Walden,' a true priceless treasure," Andersen wrote in the piece.

College Archivist Robert Buckeye and several members of the American Literature faculty lobbied the Library Planning Committee last spring to allow the Abernethy and Robert Frost Libraries to remain in their current location. Their proposal was declined. Buckeye said that he then suggested that the collection be relocated to adjoin the entrance hall of the LATC but once again "failed to convince" the committee.

As the plans for the LATC exist now, Special Collections will be located on the first, or bottom, of three floors at the foot of the main circulation staircase. The area will be comprised of an entrance vestibule with a welcome desk, a reading room with high shelves along the side walls and several waist-height glass display cases, a conference room, two offices and a locked stack area with compact shelving.

This set-up would force most of the collection, including some of the Abernethy and Frost books, out of sight. "You'll have to know what you want before you access it, and so, in effect, you'll never know what you've missed," Andersen maintained.

Despite Andersen's concern that relocating the majority of the Abernethy and Frost books to climate-controlled compact shelving would inhibit members of the community from browsing the collections, Buckeye conceded that not many people visit the College's Special Collections to peruse the books. "People come to ask for specific materials," he explained.

Christian A. Johnson Professor of Art, Art History and Architecture Glenn Andres said that the space reserved for Special Collections in the new library was "more than double" the size of the two rooms currently in use for the same purpose. In addition, the compact shelving area will be both secure and climate controlled. "If the collection is that precious, things can't be put at risk," he said.

He also pointed out that the first floor of the LATC was not underground except where the structure met the hill. "There is a basement storeroom, but no basement," he asserted.

The entrance to the Collection in the LATC will border the periodicals reading room in the "headpiece" of the lower level, Andres continued. He said he anticipated the lounge-like arrangement of the periodicals area to be "a lively space" and therefore to attract a large number of students to the Special Collections vicinity.

Plans for rotating displays in the entrance hall of the LATC calling attention to the texts housed in Special Collections are already in the works. The Starr Library foyer currently serves as the Collections' major exhibit space.

According to Andres, a generous bicentennial gift from a Middlebury alumnus Don Axinn will allow the College to convert Starr into a center for literary and cultural studies once library resources have been transferred to the LATC. The historical Abernethy Room, now the index room, will be restored as a reading room for literary studies and would possibly house English and American literature journals and rotating displays from the Abernethy collection.

Moving the Abernethy bequest to the LATC, argued Abernethy Professor of American Literature John McWilliams, would mean "a real loss for the exposure of the collection and access to the collection." McWilliams, who petitioned to keep Special Collections in Starr, affirmed, "When the building becomes Axinn, it would be only natural to have that type of proximity."

"To what extent does the College want to keep its ties with the past?" Buckeye asked. Since Starr Library is the fourth oldest building on campus, after Painter Hall, Starr Hall and Old Chapel, Buckeye said that it would be logical to keep the Abernethy books in Starr "in terms of its presence as an historical collection."

"Many are mourning leaving Starr behind," Andres said. "Emotionally, everybody wishes we could keep Starr and keep things in place, but the building just wouldn't work."

Buckeye said that he needed to "do more outreach" to publicize the literary "treasures" in the Abernethy and Frost collections. He talks to the American literature and civilization junior seminar every year about the resources Special Collections offers. He said, too, that he would like to help develop a class around those materials to expose the wealth of literary texts the College owns.