Creating the South Caroliniana Library by John M. Bryan

Author:John M. Bryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Robert Lee Meriwether, circa 1945.

Footnotes and bibliographies in Meriwether’s dissertation and in theses by his graduate students record their research in Salley’s lair.38 As a member of the Historical Commission, Meriwether had a key, but others found access difficult, and once inside, they had little space to work. Records were crowded into the basement of the State House “at grave risk of destruction” and in “conditions [that were] nothing short of a disgrace to the state.” The commissioners submitted a damning review of the situation to the legislature.39 Meriwether, then chairman of the Historical Commission, was Salley’s supervisor, and although the review praised several aspects of Salley’s work, by and large it condemned his stewardship. Salley and Meriwether stopped speaking to one another. Their mutual antipathy became legendary. Nonetheless, despite criticism from many quarters, Salley kept his job and controlled the state archives for another eighteen years.40

At the university, as librarians moved things into the new wings, President Douglas asked a faculty committee to “survey the library situation.”41 Meriwether was a member of this committee too, and they issued a thorough report dealing with twenty-three aspects of the library. Concerning the building, they observed that despite the new wings, there was not enough space for books, readers, or study carrels. They suggested converting Johnson’s new museum room into a reserved-book reading room. They also recommended attaching small, counter-like tabletops to windowsills in the fire- proof book stacks for faculty and graduate students to use as desks. Their most radical proposal, “as a temporary relief for the present overcrowding,” was to convert “the West Wing of Elliott College adjacent to the Library … into an annex … connected with the Main Library by a corridor leading from the second (or third) floor of Elliott…. The annex proposed would provide three large halls measuring approximately 25 by 45 feet. One of the rooms should be equipped for reserve book reading. The other may be devoted to current magazines and periodicals. The third floor would serve for storage of books and material of minor value.”42

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