Library Directors of the Past, Present, and Future: Welcome Lisa Forrest!

On July 1, Lisa Forrest of Hamilton College will become the second Leland M. Park Director of the Library and Davidson College’s fifth Library Director since its founding in 1837.

Forrest’s career prior to Davidson includes service as the director of research and instructional design for Hamilton College’s Burke Library and as an associate librarian at SUNY Buffalo’s E.H. Butler Library.  Ms. Forrest has been honored with the Excellence in Library Service Award from the Western New York Library Resources Council and as a fellow of the EDUCAUSE Leading Change Institute.

As Davidson College and other elite institutions of higher learning explore the future of facilities built around books in the digital era, Forrest’s expertise in both traditional and experimental models of teaching, learning, and research in the liberal arts will be of great service.

Past Library Directors of Davidson College

The Library Director position was inaugurated by Cornelia Rebekah Shaw, who was elected “Librarian and Registrar at a salary of $900.00 per annum” on May 28, 1907. Shaw’s twenty-nine year career on campus was notable in many respects–she was the college’s first woman employee, first librarian, first registrar, and first secretary to the President. She was well respected by all on campus and her hospitable service to the library made her well-known as every student’s best friend. In fact, the college yearbook Quips and Cranks, was dedicated to Miss Shaw in 1912. During her time, Shaw oversaw the movement of the library’s collection of little more than 10,000 volumes from the “Union Library” room in Chambers  to the Carnegie Library, which has served as a guest house since 1942. Shaw’s history of the school, Davidson College, was published in 1923 with a foreword from College President Henry Louis Smith (1901-1912) and can be found in the Davidson College Special Collections.

Following Miss Shaw’s retirement in 1936, Davidson College’s longest serving Library Director began service: Chalmers Gaston Davidson ’28. Affectionately known across campus as “Dr. D,” Davidson was the college’s first professional librarian, he earned his Master’s in Library Science from the University of Chicago in 1936. When Dr. D’s career began, the library was very small and not the hub of student life as it is known today. The collection was a mere 39,000 volumes, the annual materials budget was $3,500, and there was only one other employee: assistant librarian, Miss Julia Passmore. However, barring the years Dr. Henry Lilly took over the position whilst Davidson served in WWII, Davidson revolutionized the library space, including overseeing the move to the Grey Memorial Library in 1941. Not only was Davidson also a member of the college History department, but by 1961, he had grown the annual library budget to $41,000. Perhaps Dr. D’s success was in his blood, given that he was a direct descendant of William Lee Davidson, the college’s namesake.

The 1974-1975 school year brought much change to the Davidson library: Dr. D retired, Leland M. Park ’63 became the new Library Director, and the E.H. Little Library was dedicated in September of 1974. Park earned his Library Sciences degrees from Emory University and Florida State University before serving as Library Director for 31 years. At his retirement in 2006, the Quips and Cranks yearbook staff elected to dedicate their volume to Park and his service to the school and the Library Director position was named in his honor.

In 2007, Gillian Gremmels was named the first Leland M. Park Director of the Library. Unlike her predecessors, Gremmels was neither an alum of the college nor a long-time resident of the area. Gremmels was raised by two professors on the campus Iowa’s Wartburg College, is a descendant of Wartburg’s founder, and continued on to attend the school and act as their Library Director. Although currently on sabbatical from the mentoring seminar faculty of the Association of College and Research Libraries and after serving Davidson College for ten years, Jill Gremmels will serve the Dean of Cowles Library at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa beginning on July 1.

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