February 2019 McFarlin Library Message from Dean Alexander
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February 2019 McFarlin Library Message from Dean Alexander

Dear Friends,

To those of you who may have missed our evening of TU basketball (against Memphis) on January 30, I wish you a heartfelt Happy New Year, and I hope that your holiday season was as merry and bright as ours. At McFarlin Library and The University of Tulsa, though, the holidays ended all too soon as campus reopened on January 3 and classes began the following Monday.

It’s hard to believe we’re already five weeks into a 16-week semester. Final exams and graduation on May 4 will be here before we know it! My staff told me back in December that the fall semester was one of the busiest we have ever experienced in terms of student and faculty traffic in the library, along with more academic-related events in the Ann & Jack Graves Faculty Study and other library spaces. And this semester thus far has been the same. McFarlin Library truly has become TU’s “Academic Town Square,” since our last major renovation/addition project was completed almost a decade ago this spring.

And on that note (as my wife likes to say), I should add here that 2019 marks the 90th anniversary of the beginnings of what we now call McFarlin Library. This month in 1929, it was announced publicly that Robert and Ida McFarlin had pledged $275,000 (almost $4 million today) toward construction of the university’s new library. Groundbreaking for the library, along with Tyrrell Hall and Phillips Hall, took place on May 3, 1929. McFarlin Library was officially dedicated thirteen months later, on June 1, 1930.

We will have much more to talk about over the next year or so regarding the “birth” of McFarlin. In the meantime, I’m very excited about the rest of our McFarlin Fellows season, and I hope you can join us for two wonderful guests: Professor Maya Jasanoff from Harvard on February 21 and Tulsa’s own Joy Harjo. And the marvelous artist book exhibit is on display until March 22 in the Special Collections reading room. I hope you have a chance to see it!

Thanks for all you do for McFarlin Library and TU.

 

 

Adrian W. Alexander