My Century in History: Memoirs by Thomas D. Clark

Author:Thomas D. Clark [Clark, Thomas D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General, Personal Memoirs, Historical, history, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV)
ISBN: 9780813171388
Google: S68UGcRzP4gC
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2006-08-04T00:11:04.866523+00:00

12

BUILDING THE

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

WHEN I WAS HIRED IN APRIL 1931 BY PRESIDENT MCVEY, my job description indicated that I would give half time to the classroom and half time to collecting basic source materials for the library. The new library had recently been named for its director, Miss Margaret I. King, and was in an advanced stage of completion. For the foreseeable future it would contain a maze of empty stacks with no books and no documentary materials. Almost anything in the way of books and documents, original or published, would be a welcome addition.

In making my earlier survey of source materials held in regional libraries, I had discovered that the Kentucky state capitol contained a hodgepodge of the Commonwealth’s paper records as well as a mass of printed and bound documentary materials. There was also a good run of the United States serial set catching dust in the building’s basement. I spent almost a year moving these items to the University of Kentucky library. In the process of transferring them from Frankfort to Lexington I found that we might also secure some files of newspapers, the published state document series, files of Senate and House journals, and the Acts of the General Assembly. These items laid a solid foundation for building collections in both the university library and that of the Law School. I had no difficulty in procuring much of this material. As a matter of fact, I think the indifferent state librarian and the janitors were happy to part with it.

To be on safe ground, however, I prepared a bill authorizing the transfer of the neglected materials to the University of Kentucky Library and got Leer Buckley, a representative from Fayette County, to introduce the bill in the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, the presidents of Eastern Kentucky State Teachers College and of Western Kentucky State Teachers College spotted the bill and proceeded to amend it to assert the claims of their schools to the materials. They also made a change that altered the intent of the bill. When the bill was finally enacted into law it stated that “everything necessary to the operation of state government” was to be transferred. The original bill had provided only for those documents “not necessary.” When the state finance officer read the new law, he virtually blew the dome off the capitol in proclaiming the person who drafted the bill to be an idiot and the legislators who passed it to be fit candidates for the Kentucky institute for the feeble-minded. I went to him to explain the unfortunate tampering with the bill by the college presidents. I found a veritable bull of a man smoking a huge pipe carved in the shape of a bull’s head. He spouted streams of smoke like a logging locomotive and spoke in the expletives of the logging camp. I got nowhere with this roaring official. I then talked with Attorney General Bailey P. Wooton. In a much calmer fashion, he read the law with amusement. He assured me he would interpret it on its intent and not on the basis of its befuddled wording.

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