A Library for Engineering Education: Frank O. Marvin and the University of Kansas, 1875-1915

Abstract

This article investigates the influence of developments in engineering education on the establishment of departmental libraries for engineering in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American universities. A case study is made of the University of Kansas and Frank O. Marvin, a former president of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education and dean of the university’s School of Engineering when its library opened in 1909. While national forces spanning the profession supplied the necessary preconditions for Kansas’s library, Marvin was the local catalyst. His beliefs about what attributes the successful engineer should possess and how a liberal education could produce those attributes made the library inevitable.