This Week in Vanderbilt History

This Week
In Vanderbilt History ...

The promise of a cooler future came with the opening of the General Library Building Dec. 6, 1941. The building became the first on campus to have central air conditioning, a welcome luxury for any scholar who had to spend a muggy Nashville summer indoors. The GLB is part of the University's library system, which was later named for Chancellor Alexander Heard and his wife Jean in 1983. The Heard Library System now houses more than 2.5 million print volumes, 2.7 million microform units, 22,000 serial subscriptions in print, 14,000 electronic books, 200 Web-based databases and 7,000 electronic journals.

Sources: Elaine Goleski, Kathy Smith, www.vanderbilt.edu,
and Gone With the Ivy, by Paul Conkin
-- Meghan Codd

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