When I became the first student to register at the new University of Prince Edward Island in 1969, I was grateful for the university’s small library, with its helpful staff, wooden card catalogue drawers, and quiet stacks. Then computers changed everything, as UPEI’s first president (Ronald Baker) imagined they would.
When other university presidents were raising funds to build sports centres in the early 1970s, Dr. Baker chose instead to build a new library. And he prepared it, as much as he could, for the digital age he knew was coming. His “new” library is still serving the campus and the Island, even though the Atlantic Veterinary College and dozens of new (and some graduate) programs have added exponentially to the pressures on space and resources.
Given my own time as a UPEI graduate and faculty member, and then as the university’s fourth president, I remain impressed with how well UPEI’s designers and stewards have tried to prepare the university library for the challenges it faces. As the founder of UPEI’s L.M. Montgomery Institute (LMMI), which is enjoying more than thirty years of successful academic and community outreach in large part because of its relationship with the Robertson Library, I have experienced first-hand how the library leadership and staff, especially now with Donald Moses as University Librarian, can help to grow a global community from the passion of readers.
The LMMI’s mandate (to promote research into and the informed celebration of the life, works, and legacy of L.M. Montgomery) fits perfectly with the Robertson Library’s special interests in Prince Edward Island and Canadian history, discoveries, and culture. But more than that: the LMMI is enriched – digitally and materially — through the vision, skills, and resources that Donald Moses and Simon Lloyd, University Archivist and Special Collections Librarian, bring to the collecting, preserving, sharing, and improving the accessibility of Montgomery’s works and memorabilia.
The Robertson Library houses all of the LMMI’s collections, with a special room dedicated to Montgomery research. And the library doesn’t just house and conserve materials, tight though its budget may be; it collaborates with scholars and donors, creating informative real-time displays and building accessible on-line digital archives. It hosts, and chairs, specialized gatherings and public launches. Donors feel confident to entrust invaluable materials to the LMMI because the Robertson Library will care for them and ensure the best kinds of access it can afford.
Because of the successful LMMI/Robertson Library relationship, UPEI now boasts one of the world’s largest collections of Montgomery editions; unique gifts from Montgomery’s heirs, such as signed family copies of her novels, the Macneill family Bible, Montgomery’s watch and Japanese kimono, and Montgomery’s son’s WWII naval uniform; numerous letters and postcards signed by Montgomery; and hundreds of period magazines in which Montgomery’s works appeared during her lifetime, now selectively digitized and made accessible for world scholarship.
More than a hundred years ago, L.M. Montgomery put Prince Edward Island on the world literary map. Today, the LMMI and the Robertson Library are working together to make UPEI a virtual and physical destination for Montgomery readers and scholars.
A university library is the nerve centre of a healthy campus; it is a precious place as well as a means to enhancing growth and renewal. The Robertson Library is a shining example of what is done well at UPEI. It deserves and needs to be tended to with all the resources and imagination we can muster.