Introduction to the Catalogue

William J. Crowe, Dean of Libraries, April 1994:

This catalogue of exhibitions mounted to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library recalls Helen Foresman Spencer and the countless others who helped build this great library at the crest of Mount Oread, and provides us with an occasion to thank them anew. Their dedication to learning and, in many instances, perseverance in the face of adversity speak eloquently to the commitment of the University of Kansas to support advanced study and research with collections of original records of human experience.

I look with confidence to the continued vitality of the Spencer Library, indeed of all of the libraries on the Hill, as we face old and new challenges in this electronic age. The University of Kansas Libraries and all who work with us remain committed to securing and making available great library and archival collections. I reaffirm this obligation to future generations so that all who come after us may be able to seek freely after truth and to keep faith with all who came before us.

Alexandra Mason, Spencer Librarian and Head, Department of Special Collections, April 1994:

The Kenneth Spencer Research Library is the rare books, manuscripts, and archives library of the University of Kansas. Its three departments are Special Collections (established in 1953), the Kansas Collection (founded before the turn of the century by the university's first librarian, Carrie Watson), and the University Archives (established in 1969), each with special resources and services to support the basic research and teaching functions of the University, and all sharing in the beneficence of a most uncommon donor.

In the mid-1960s, Helen Foresman Spencer, a woman of vision and a philanthropist already distinguished for her support of the arts and humanities in the Kansas City area, decided to build a library at the University of Kansas as a memorial to her late husband Kenneth Spencer. Her gift, a 100,000 square foot, four-story library building, was designed by Robert F. Jenks of the Kansas City firm of Tanner & Linscott, specifically to meet the needs of rare books, manuscripts, archives, and their users, and built by B.A. Green Construction Co. of Lawrence. The Kenneth Spencer Research Library was dedicated on 8 November 1968 with a speech by C.P. Snow and opened to the public a month later.

Mrs. Spencer's interest in what she called "Kenneth's library" did not end with the completion of the building. She remained a good friend to the Spencer Library until her death in 1982, visiting it frequently and demonstrating the most lively interest in its activities, particularly in the development of the collections and in the service it provided to students and other young researchers, and donating to it both her late husband's and her own books and papers. By gift and bequest she provided it with the assurance of a continued modest income for acquisitions and made special provision for its physical upkeep.

Mrs. Spencer built her library for the future, with ample reading rooms, stacks and staff quarters, allowing the university to bring together the previously scattered special collections acquired over its first century and to pursue the growth of the collections and the establishment of new services. Because of her determination that this not be one of those unfortunate libraries which found itself full within a few years of its building, the Spencer has also been able, during its first twenty-five years, to provide temporary assistance to the KU library system in housing overflow collections from other buildings in its expansion space, and its processing areas have served not only the needs of its own rare materials departments but interim grant-funded projects as well.

Now, after twenty-five years of active collecting the holdings of the three Spencer Library departments amount to around 350,000 volumes of printed matter— more than double the number held when the library was first occupied—while manuscripts and archives take up 31,000 shelf-feet, more than ten times the figure of a quarter of a century ago. The building is beginning to reach its predicted first stage capacity. As we reach and celebrate our quarter-century mark it is time to embark upon the second stage of the library's life: the completion of the planned 10,000 square foot stack addition, the reclaiming of stack areas now in use by other departments of the library, and making plans for the challenges of collecting research materials in the electronic age.

In celebration of our first twenty-five years in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, the three departments are mounting a triple exhibition, each showing its own interpretation of its functions, each paying tribute in its own way to Kenneth Spencer, in whose honor the library was built, and to Helen Spencer, who built it.