"Motlow College Library now has 4,000 items"-1970

"Motlow College Library now has 4,000 items"-1970

The Tullahoma News covers Motlow Library's beginnings, from the items in the collection to the librarians themselves. Eloise Lacy Davidson-Bromel, the college's first Library Director, is quoted in the article as being very excited over the new collection, particularly the audio-visual equipment.

September 30, 1970

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English

Newspaper Clipping

Motlow Beginnings

Motlow College Library Now Has 4000 Volumes
Motlow College’s library is growing this year right along with the size of the student body. Its book budget for the current year has doubled, going from $25,000 to about $40,000. The total volumes have risen from roughly 1200 when the college opened last year to about 4000 this year, and the college is still steadily moving toward the goal of 20,000 established by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Additionally, it has more magazines, more professional journals in humanities, social science and the physical sciences, as well as more periodicals of other types. One of the main things visible in the reading room is a goodly number of copies of the Congressional Record, which records debates and other matter read into the journal of congressional proceedings by members of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. These have been given the library by Mrs. Prentice Cooper of Shelbyville, wife of the late governor, who was a regular subscriber to the publication. Mrs. Warren Broemel, the college librarian, also has a new assistant librarian this year in Miss Nancy C. Mielke, who holds a master’s degree in library science from Peabody College in Nashville. They are aided by six student assistants and a library secretary. But while Mrs. Broemel is happy about the growth in reading matter, she says she is putting special emphasis in another area – audio-visual aids. These consist of movies, filmstrips, tape recordings and records. Since the college opened last year, the library has had a good collection of records that are extensively used for music course requirements or just for enjoyment of students and faculty. The library has a music listening room with turntables and earphones for use with records after they are checked out at the main desk. This year, Mrs. Broemel said, she is trying especially hard to build up a supply of movies and filmstrips, not because she is planning to convert one corner of the library into a theater, but because it provides good supplementary material for use in the classroom. “I said last year that I thought the library should be a learning resources center in every sense of the word,” she said. “This is as good a way as I know to make it so.” One of her prize acquisitions is an album of several long-playing recordings of 100 contemporary American poets reading their own works. Included on it are such well-known figures as Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Donald Davidson, John Crowe Ranson and Allen Tate (currently a resident of Sewanee). But in addition to these and others who have been prominent literary figures for several decades, the album also has readings by more recent poets such as Allen Ginsberg and John Updike. Mrs. Broemel last year announced a standard of making the library a “lively” place. Records, filmstrips, movies, and tapes are important tools she is using to make it so.