COLLEGE LIBRARIAN RETIRES FROM POST

William Coolidge Lane '81 has resigned his position as librarian of the University Library, it has been announced at University Hall. Mr. Lane's successor has not as yet been named.

For 30 years Mr. Lane has been the University librarian. When he was first appointed to the position in 1898, the library was in the old Gore Hall which stood on the site of the present Widener Library. The total number of volumes over which Mr. Lane then had charge was some 200,000. Under his supervision the library has grown to its present size, containing at present about 2,500,000 volumes and ranking as the third largest collection in the United States, being surpassed only by the Congressional Library at Washington, and the New York Public Library.

Was Prominent Scholastically

Mr. Lane entered Harvard in 1877. As an undergraduate he stood high in his studies and achieved the highest of scholastic honors, election to Phi Beta Kappa. Immediately upon his graduation in 1881 he went into the University Library. In 1887 he was appointed assistant librarian, a position which he held for six years. In 1893 he was made librarian of the Boston Athenaeum, where he remained until he was recalled to the University as head librarian in 1898.

In 1911 and 1912, when the old Gore Hall was being torn down and Widener being erected, Mr. Lane had the task of personally supervising the storing and transferring of the volumes during the operations. He had to know where each volume was all the time in order that the books might be used as much as possible even while in storage.