This Month in
Morrisson-Reeves Library History
March
An item in the March 4 Richmond Weekly Telegram reads:
| Morrisson Library will be closed from the 20th of March to 10th of April for the annual examination of the books. All books must be returned before that time. The penalty attending a neglect of this requisition will be rigidly enforced. By order of the Library Committee. John Nicholson, Sec'y. |
In the early years of the library, it regularly closed for a time to allow the librarian to take a complete inventory and make her report to the library committee, which was subsequently published in the newspapers.
Mrs. Wrigley's annual report was published in the papers on March 10. It showed that the total number of volumes was 9,294, almost 400 more than the previous year. The 1,822 registered families drew 32,125 books and paid $76.35 in fines.
On March 4, the beautiful Memorial Window designed by Louis Tiffany was dedicated. The window was a gift of Miss Bertha Morrisson and Mr. James W. Morrisson, great-grandchildren of the founder.
As part of the celebration of National Library Week, Morrisson-Reeves
announced that it would begin circulating classical music records. After
nearly two years of preparation, approximately 500 records had been bought
and processed. Patrons could check out one album at a time or listen to
the records in the library at new record players equipped with headphones.
On
March 15, the Palladium-Item reported that the Reading Room was closed,
because it had been turned into a laboratory for the painstaking process
of cleaning the century-old painting of Robert Morrisson. Two skilled craftsmen
from the Intermuseum Conservation Laboratory at Oberlin College were on
hand to preserve the painting in anticipation of Morrisson-Reeves Library's
upcoming centennial. Normally, paintings were shipped to Oberlin for such
care, but the size of the John
C. Wolfe painting made this impractical, so the technicians had to perform
their magic on site. (Click
for larger image)