When protestors clambered onto a tank during the 1991 attempted coup of the Soviet government, a Hoover Institution employee was in the streets below, picking up leaflets for the Hoover archives. And when war broke out in Serbia and Bosnia, Hoover operatives were on the scene, collecting the kind of primary sources that Herbert Hoover envisioned when he established the library in 1919.
Since the mid-1960s, Hoover has also been purchasing a more conventional library staple--books--in core subject areas like politics and history. But the Hoover Library is running out of space to shelve them. So in September, it will begin transferring some of its 1.6 million volumes and 39 of its 68 staffers to Stanford's main library system. The 300,000-volume East Asian collection is slated to move first; librarians will determine which additional books will move over the next 21/2 years. The rare and archival materials will remain at Hoover. "This returns the Hoover Library to an exclusive focus on its original mission," says Charles Palm, the Hoover Institution's deputy director.
When the plan became public in December, scholars from around the world swamped the institution and several professional list-servs with complaints. "This is nothing short of a calamity," wrote historian Karin Hall, PhD '98. "This decision . . . was made in complete ignorance of the value to scholars of the rare, unique and extensive collection."
Palm and University librarian Michael Keller say the critics generally did not understand the proposal. Once they were told that only books would be moved--and that Hoover Library patrons could still use them--most were mollified. "In the hearts and minds of those involved, there is nothing but goodwill and an intent to serve Stanford as well [as] or better than we have in the past," Keller says. "We are not politicians. We are librarians."
