The Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences was founded in 1823 and is currently celebrating its Bicentennial, but exactly how old is the Library? The Library is actually only slightly younger than the institution itself, as we are turning 200 in 2024!
The groundwork for the Library was built into the original College "Bye-Laws” on January 7, 1824. Article 2, Section 1 provides for the appointment of several committees, including a “Library Committee of three members,” and Article 2, Section 2 lays out the duties of those members as the following,
The Library Committee shall procure with such funds as shall be placed at their disposal by the Board a collection of works on chemistry, materia medica, pharmacy, and such other subjects as relate to the objects of the College, and shall have the general superintendence of the Library: all members of the College shall be allowed to take books from the Library, for themselves and their apprentices, under such regulations as the Board shall prescribe.
Pictured: Massachusetts College of Pharmacy "Bye-Laws," January 7, 1824
Then, on April 2, 1824, at an adjourned meeting at the house of President Ephraim Eliot, Daniel Noyes, Ephraim L. Eliot (son of the President), and Henry White were appointed to the Library Committee and it was voted that $25 be placed at the disposal of the committee. With that $25 appropriation, the Library took root and began to grow. We consider April 2, 1824 to be the founding date of the Library.
Pictured: Notes from the adjourned meeting on April 2, 1824
At a meeting on March 23, 1825, Noyes, Eliot, and White were re-elected to the Library Committee and an additional $50 was placed at their disposal. Then, at the quarterly meeting of the College in December 1825, an update was made on the Library. The Board of Trustees gave the following statement in their report:
The Library, which is of first importance for both interest and utility, has received attention from the Board, and with that books have been received by donation and obtained by purchase and what will be purchased in the course of a few days, will consist of about 125 volumes on pharmacy, materia medica, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, on health, climate, the arts, etc. The Library will be ready for use as soon as a room can be procured for the College.
At this same meeting, the subject of the room was further addressed. It was voted that a committee search for and procure a room for the College, and ultimately, the Library. The committee selected a room at 92 Washington St., above Bartlett & Brewer druggists, with the rent being $50 a year. Once the room had been acquired, the Library Committee brought the books to the room and arranged them, and took steps toward getting a cabinet for specimens. At the Board of Trustees meeting on June 21, 1826, the rules and regulations for the Library were read as prepared by the Committee:
All members of the College shall be allowed to take books from the Library. The Library shall be open every Monday from three to four o'clock for the delivery and returning of books. Two volumes may be taken at a time, and shall not be kept for more than two weeks. Any person keeping a book over the regular time shall pay ten cents per week for the detention, and if detained more than six weeks shall pay for the book. Books injured or lost shall be paid for by the person who took them from the Library. All books to be returned to the Library on the Monday preceding the second Wednesday in March annually for inspection. Any member can have access to the Room to examine books or specimens, but no book can be taken except at such time as is specified as in the regulations for the Library--namely from three to four o'clock each Monday afternoon.
At that same meeting Samuel Brewer was elected librarian, and a week later, on June 28, 1826, he accepted the position and an additional $25 was placed at the disposal of the Library Committee. It is important to note that prior to 1913, anyone at the College with the title "librarian" was not an actual professional librarian, these were members of the Board of Trustees. Our first professional librarian, Ethel J. Heath, was hired in 1913.
The Library went on to publish its first catalogue in 1829. A facsimile of this catalogue was published in the December 1934 issue of The Bulletin, which you can find digitized in our Institutional Repository.
Pictured: First Catalogue of the Library of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, c. 1829
Ethel J. Heath, the first professional librarian of the College, had some interesting thoughts about our first Library catalogue. In Edward Kremers' "Works on Chemistry in the Early Library of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy," she stated the following:
Whoever made that old list evidently just took the binders' titles from the backs of the books, without bothering to open them and copy from the title pages, as he should have done, binders' titles being sometimes quite different from the actual titles. Also, I suspect that he did not include those volumes which members had out at the time the list was made, as another catalogue, printed in 1836*, does not include a number of the volumes of the 1829 list which we still have! Also, different entries were made in 1836 for a number of books evidently the same as some included in the 1829 leaflet. Fortunately, a quaint little bookplate was pasted in all these early books, which definitely identifies them among the various duplicates received in 1889 in Mr. Sheppard's large collection** of such works.
An interesting thing to note is that while the College was founded in 1823, we didn't actually form a curriculum and create a school until 1867, so the Library predates the curriculum by over 40 years! Since the Library's foundation in 1824, we have grown and changed alongside the institution, and as the Library enters its 200th year, we look forward to sharing more of our history with you.
*Note: The 1836 catalogue starts on page 13.
**Note: In 1889, Samuel A.D. Sheppard donated his private collection consisting of approximately 3,000 volumes on pharmacy, botany, chemistry, as well as pharmacopoeias from around the world and valuable plates on medical botany. In accepting the gift, the trustees voted that the Library should be named for Sheppard, and it remained named after him for many years. We still have items from this donation in our archives.
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