By Mike Fordon

The library at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (NYSAES) is as old as the station itself. It first became operational in 1882, and the annual report for that year lists book donations and library acquisitions. Purchases and donations continued and the collection grew larger every year. In 1896, Director W. H. Jordan sought to hire a full-time person to take on the dual task of librarian and editor of the station’s outreach publications. Frank Hall, hired in 1897, was the first to fill this role. His successor, James Luckett, convinced the director that the two jobs should be separate. The functions of communications and the library have been separate since 1924, when Catherine Oaks became the first person to hold the title of librarian exclusively.

The library originally consisted of books no doubt shelved in a variety of offices and labs. Then, in 1897, the books were consolidated in three rooms on the west side of Denton Place (later called Parrott Hall), which was then the administration building and home of the director. One day each week, a “library day” was established to encourage staff members to take advantage of the current scientific literature. The library was moved to Jordan Hall when it was completed in 1918. Here was another opportunity to bring all aspects of the collection under one roof, although branches of the main library still continued to exist in department libraries.

When Frank Hall was in charge of the collection, he devised his own system of organizing the books and shelved them accordingly. When he left the position in 1920 it became clear that that method was not satisfactory. James Luckett consulted with librarians at the Department of Agriculture in Washington and was strongly advised to adopt the Dewey Decimal system. Use of a standardized system made the collection more accessible and ensured the ability of successive generations to locate material and properly maintain the collection. In the mid 1990s, the library’s system of organizing books was switched to the Library of Congress system, which classifies and organizes books by subject categories. This system remains in place to this day.

Because of the NYSAES’s early commitment to grape-related research (grape breeding began in the 1880s), the library has been collecting viticulture and enology related books. Today, the library is a component of the Cornell University Library System and is the university’s main repository for grape growing and winemaking books and journals. Because of the strength of this collection and Geneva’s acknowledged expertise in the field, the Eastern Section of the American Society of Enologists (ASE/ES) decided to establish an Eastern U.S. library dedicated to these topics at the NYSAES library. The idea was originally proposed by Phillip Wagner with a vision that the library would serve as a place for ASE/ES members to access important journal articles and books. Once approval came in the late 1970s, the ASE/ES (later named American Society for Enology and Viticulture/Eastern Section [ASEV/ES]) began donating $500 annually to support the purchase of new grape and wine science titles. The NYSAES library has always been an important source of information for scientists, graduate students and visiting scientists. However, budget limitations and the library’s small size when compared to larger more comprehensive Cornell libraries has occasionally been a source of frustration to faculty needing ready access to current journals and books. One such faculty member was Frank A. Lee who worked in the chemistry division, which later became part of the present department of food science and technology. Lee worked at the Station from 1936 to 1967 and conducted important work focused on freezing. Dr. Lee was concerned that the library did not always have the means to procure the best materials and so he left a sizable bequest to the library in his will. In honor of Dr. Lee’s $2.3 million gift, the NYSAES library was renamed the Frank E. Lee Library in 2000.
Visit The Frank A. Lee Library at http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/library/