What's in a Name?
"After 26 Years, a Dream Comes True" $' \ ^ read the headline of a September-October 1953 Georgia Tech Alumnus article heralding the opening of the Price Gilbert Library, hailed as a thoroughly modern facility with its bold lines and large expanses of glass — and for being air-conditioned throughout. Librarian Dorothy Murray Crosland, a licensed interior decorator, cherry-picked the modern furnishings, which included sleek natural birch furniture and custommade textiles and draperies. She also was the library's chief fundraiser, helping secure the initial grant for the building from Georgia Supreme Court Justice Price Gilbert, whom she had helped with research for a book. When Crosland joined Tech as an assistant librarian in 1925, the Institute's library was housed in the Carnegie building, held about 16,000 books and was run by just two other full-time staff members. She was named librarian in 1927 and director of libraries in 1953. The Price Gilbert Library, dedicated in November 1953, had shelving space for 450,000 volumes and seating for 800 people, the Alumnus reported. An addition to the library, shown above in an early artist's rendering, was completed in the late '60s to accommodate the Institute's ever-growing collection. It was renamed the Crosland Tower in 1985, two years after the longtime librarian's death at the age of 79. According to the Alumni Association's Living History program, nearly five linear miles of technical journals were acquired during
Crosland's tenure at the Institute. In late 1946, she made headlines with a grantfunded trip to postwar Europe to buy journals and rare and out-of-print books. "Fortunate will be the threadbare European engineer who had the foresight months ago to preserve the dull and tedious 'transactions and proceedings' of his engineering society," reported the Atlanta Journal in a Sept. 1,1946, article. "Today that stodgy tome may be worth $50, maybe $100." During the 10-week trip, Crosland traveled 13,000 miles, stopped in eight countries and visited more than 40 libraries. It was her first trip abroad. Crosland's 46 years at the Institute are marked by more than the growth of the Institute's book collection. Working with Georgia Tech's first lady Ella Van Leer in the late 1940s and early '50s, Crosland campaigned for admission of women to Tech. Another plea to the Board of Regents played a part in the 1964 formation of Tech's School of Information and Computer Science, which later would become the College of Computing. In 1945, Crosland was named Atlanta's Woman of the Year in Education. In 1961, the Alumni Association named her an honorary alumna of Georgia Tech. Upon her retirement from Tech in 1971, Crosland moved to Monroe, Ga., with her husband to spend more time with family. She also spent a lot of time in the kitchen, trying out recipes from a vast collection of cookbooks she'd amassed over the years. — Leslie Overman
November/December 2009
Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine
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