Library Associates

LIBRARY ASSOCIATES

Here is the knowledge of centuries past,
that all may come and share today.

---Inscription, University of Idaho Library

Libraries are more than books; more than buildings. They are repositories of organized knowledge; the collective memory of civilization. They are maintained for the education of our children, the investigations of scholars, and the furtherance of public discourse. The University of Idaho Library, with over one and a quarter million volumes, is the largest library in Idaho. As such it serves as a state-wide repository for the world's scientific, technical, artistic, and cultural literatures.

The true University ... is a collection of books.

---Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero-Worship, 1840.

Public funds appropriately provide the major support for the university library. However, excellence is impossible to achieve without significant and substantial private contributions.

A great library contains the diary of the human race.

---Rev. George Dawson, on the opening of the Birmingham Library, 1866.

Ten supporters of the University Library gathered together more than twenty-five years ago to found the Library Associates. Today, these active "friends" support many library services through gifts of funds, equipment, books, manuscripts, photographs and other documentary materials. Some have, in addition to their annual membership, established trusts or bequests to leave a lasting legacy.

Libraries keep the records on behalf of all humanity....
the unique and the absurd, the wise and the fragments of stupidity.

---Vartan Gregorian, The New Yorker, 1986.

A selection of major acquisitions facilitated by the Library Associates would include:

• the substantial Sir Walter Scott Collection;
• business records of the Potlatch Lumber Company and Day Mines, Incorporated;
• the exceedingly rare London edition of the Lewis and Clark journals;
• original drawings for the seal of the Territory of Idaho;
• a copy of Idaho's first newspaper;
• the claim location notice for the famous Bunker Hill Mine;
• over 90,000 Barnard-Stockbridge glass and film negatives covering the silver mining region of Northern Idaho;
• a major collection of Western Americana which was added to the acclaimed Day-Northwest Collection;
• the manuscript diary of Nez Perce missionary Kate McBeth.

These treasures and many less spectacular but still essential items were added to the library's collections through the generosity of the members of Library Associates. In addition, the Associates have established an endowment to acquire materials essential to a university library but impossible to fund solely with tax dollars.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

---Barbara Tuchman, Author's League Bulletin, 1979.

All are invited to join Library Associates. Members receive news of the University Library and the library community. Your support will help ensure that the University of Idaho Library will remain the state's leading academic library during Idaho's second hundred years.

Contributions to the Library Associates are tax-deductible to the extent provided by law.

For more information, write:
Library Associates
University of Idaho Library
P.O. Box 442351
Moscow, Idaho 83844-2351
(208) 885-7951