Butler Library
Butler Library is the main library for undergraduates, named for Nicholas Murray Butler. It holds 2 million volumes in the humanities. Butler has study rooms open 24 hours a day during the school year. Students in Butler tend to either work or spend time on Boredatbutler.com.
Contents
History
Construction on Butler was begun in 1931 and the dedication ceremoney was held1934. It was built in response to a space crunch at Low Library, which after 30 years had become too small to hold Columbia's growing collection. Discussions for a new library began in 1927 when the university librarian addressed a 13 page letter to President Butler proposing to build a new library by connecting Low Library to University Hall. When that proved unfeasible, James Gamble Rogers (the favored architect of donor Edward S. Harkness) was asked to execute a design for the 114th street border of the campus instead. The building was originally named South Hall, before being named in honor of Butler. It is said that there was a move to name the library after Columbia's 10th president, Frederick A. P. Barnard, but Butler put the kibosh on the idea, leaving the building strategically unnamed until his own retirement.
Names on the facade
One of the more recognizable features of Butler Library's exterior is the list of names that wrap around the building. A common misconception is that the names represent authors featured in the Core Curriculum. The names were in fact hand-picked by President Nicholas Murray Butler when the building was designed[1], before there was much of a core curriculum. Besides, college students weren't even allowed in Butler for many years, which was geared to serve the research efforts of graduate students and faculty members. Of the 18 names engraved though, only Demosthenes has never been required reading in the history of the Core.
- Front: Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Vergil
- West (opposite Carman): Horace, Tacitus, St. Augustine, Dante
- East (opposite John Jay): Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, Voltaire, Goethe
Read from the Homer all the way around to Goethe, the names are roughly in chronological order.
In addition to the 18 prominent wrap-around names, each of the main windows on the campus side of the building except for the center three have two names inscribed underneath them. The three middle windows have a version of the university seal underneath them.
The names to the left of the seal are prominent early American politicians: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, John Marshall, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln.
The names to the right of the seal include prominent American writers: Jonathan Edwards, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain.
The names have been the subject of protest for much the same reason that students often protest the Core Curriculum: they are almost exclusively old, dead, white males. In the past, student activists have climbed to the Butler roof and unfurled banners covering the names with those of black or female authors instead.
Milstein Library
Butler is also home to the Phillip L. Milstein Family College Library which is the official designation for the 24-hour reading rooms and the collection of books stored within on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors of the library. Since Milstein isn't really distinguishable from Butler itself in any major fashion, no one actually uses the term 'Milstein', and most probably don't even know that it 'exists'. After 11pm, when the other rooms of the library close, graduate students come down from other floors and overcrowd the 24-hour reading rooms.
Facilities
- Lockers: enter the lottery every year at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/butler/lockers/.
- Photocopiers: on every floor.
Floor 2 (exit level)
- Blue Java Butler coffee bar.
- 214: the lounge, the only place you can eat and talk.
- 213: CUIT computer lab.
- 209-212: Milstein undergraduate reading rooms.
Butler culture
- Inspired the site Boredatbutler.com.
- Students supposedly make out and go so far as to have sex in the stacks. No one has ever seen this actually happen.
- People tend to stick to their own preferred reading rooms, and entire social networks develop around these after a time, particularly on the fourth floor.
Camping out in Butler
During midterms and finals many people camp out in Butler. They take up valuable desk space and seats, leaving their books, laptops and other possessions in the library for extended periods. Some people even leave their belongings in the library 24 hours per day, usually to reserve the very best library real estate. A very small number of people literally camp out in Butler, sleeping there. Many of the people who spend so much time in Butler during exam periods have no life.
Butler Clearance Task Force
Many students believe that people who leave their belongings in Butler for extended periods are making unfair use of the library. As a remedy, objecting students believe that unattended belongings should be confiscated at regular intervals by library staff. The belongings would naturally be made available somewhere else in the library for students to claim. Alternatively, CCSC and the other class councils could do something useful for students by organizing a "Butler Clearance Task Force".
Photos
Butler in winter
