Our friends at the State Library of North Carolina have just added a bunch of new materials to their excellent historical state publications online collection.
Among the titles recently added is the North Carolina Collection’s copy of the Public Papers and Letters of O. Max Gardner, from his term as Governor, 1929-1933. The volume includes Gardner’s excellent speech at the dedication of the new library building at UNC in 1929 (pp. 199-200), which featured this great quote:
We may, therefore, say that while its soul is the spirit of the men who teach and are taught–the heart of a true university is its library. It is the safety-deposit vault in which is kept the past’s legacy for the present and the future. It is the quiet sector in the life of the busy university where imperialists in the realm of truth may happily dream of new frontiers. And it is, finally, an index of our progress as a people.