Dartmouth News - Rauner Special Collections library in Webster Hall to be dedicated April 16-17 - 04/19/99

Posted 04/19/99

Webster Hall -- named for the great American statesman and 1801 Dartmouth alumnus Daniel Webster -- has since its opening early in this century served Dartmouth and the public in many different ways, from Commencement site to film theater to general venue for speakers. Likewise, for the last three decades, the Dartmouth Library Special Collections have served the College and the public in almost innumerable ways from their original home in the aptly named but long outgrown Treasure Room of Baker Library.

Since last December these two well-known and much-loved Dartmouth resources have been united as the Rauner Special Collections Library in Webster Hall.

The Rauner Library will be formally dedicated this Friday, April 16 with ceremonies in Webster Hall beginning at 3 p.m., to be followed by tours of the renovated facility and the collections now housed there. Dedication activities will continue on Saturday, April 17 with a day-long symposium, "Great Books, Great Libraries" in 105 Dartmouth Hall.

Both events will be free and open to the public. For further information on the Friday dedication, please call the Dartmouth Office of Public Programs at (603) 646-3749 or Dartmouth Special Collections Librarian Philip Cronenwett at (603) 646-2037. For more information about the Saturday symposium "Great Books, Great Libraries," please call Derika Hermann at Baker Library, (603) 646-2236, or see the schedule below.

Speakers for the dedication will include The Hon. Stephen W. Bosworth, Chair of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees and United States Ambassador to the Republic of Korea; Dartmouth President James Wright; Librarian of the College Margaret A. Otto; and renowned poet Philip Booth, Dartmouth Class of 1947. Dartmouth Provost Susan Westerberg Prager will preside. Special guests will be Bruce V. Rauner, a member of the Dartmouth Class of 1978, and his wife Diana M. Rauner.

The Rauners, of Kenilworth, Ill., made a $5 million gift to the College in 1996 that, together with the generosity of many other donors, resulted in the two-year, $10-million interior renovation of Webster Hall that transformed it to become the new home of Special Collections.

Events for the Saturday symposium are:

9 a.m. -- Registration, 105 Dartmouth Hall

9:30 a.m. -- Welcome

• Margaret A. Otto, Librarian of the College
• Philip N. Cronenwett, Dartmouth Special Collections Librarian
• Roderick Steinhour, Chair, Friends of the Dartmouth Library

9:45 a.m. -- Keynote Address: Terry Belanger, University of Virginia

• Introduction: Roderick Steinhour

10:30 a.m. -- The Book Before Printing

• Chair: George Berry, Friends of the Dartmouth Library
• Monika C. Otter, Associate Professor of English and Vice-Chair of the Department of English at Dartmouth
• Paul Saenger, The Newberry Library

1:30 p.m. -- The Book in Europe

• Chair: Ann Mandel, Friends of the Dartmouth Library
• Alexandra Halasz, Associate Professor of English, Dartmouth
• Paul Needham, The Scheide Library

2:45 p.m. -- The Book in America

• Chair: Richard Thorner, Friends of the Dartmouth Library
• Mary Kelley, Professor of English, Dartmouth
• Marcus McCorison, American Antiquarian Society

4 p.m. -- The Study of the Book at Dartmouth College

• Chair: Philip N. Cronenwett, Special Collections Librarian
• Roderick Stinehour, Friends of the Dartmouth Library

4:45 p.m. -- Reception in Rauner Library

Background on Dartmouth's Rauner Special Collections Library

The Rauner Special Collections Library is named for Bruce V. Rauner and his wife, Diana M. Rauner. The Rauners, of Kenilworth, Ill., provided the core funding for the renovation of Webster Hall to become the new home of the Dartmouth Library Special Collections.

The collections include more than 95,000 printed volumes dating from the 15th century; 6.5 million manuscripts dating from the 13th century B.C.; documents and records covering all of Dartmouth's history; 500,000 photographic images; and maps, sheet music, scrapbooks, posters and artifacts. A tiny sample of the collections' holdings includes:

-- Robert Frost's poetry notebooks. Dartmouth holds 44 of the 48 known notebooks of one of America's greatest poets.

-- A single leaf of sheet music -- an antiphonal in a Beneventan hand using Beneventan notation -- which dates from the late 9th century and is thought to be the earliest known musical leaf in any collection in the Western Hemisphere.

-- Paine Wingate's annotated drafts of early bills in the First Congress, including legislation establishing the federal judiciary and the State Department, as well as his copy of the journals of the First Congress.

-- The charter of Dartmouth College (1769).

-- Daniel Webster's notes and drafts of his arguments and summation before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dartmouth College Case (1818) , which established a major point in American jurisprudence (the sanctity of private contracts) -- and saved Dartmouth from a takeover by the State of New Hampshire.

-- Annie Adams Fields's library containing first and early editions of 19th century authors signed to Mrs. Fields, a noted author and editor.

-- A photograph of the Dartmouth-Harvard baseball game held on the Dartmouth Green in 1882 and cited by Ken Burns as his favorite photograph used in his PBS history of baseball.

-- Shakespeare's first printing in quarto of Love's Labour Lost (1598), one of ten known copies.

-- Recordings of Ono and Yaghan native peoples of Tierra del Fuego, the only known examples of the ceremonies and rituals of these now extinct peoples.