King Library era began with symbolic "book brigade"

Miami University - Top Stories


Celebrate King Library's 50th birthday

As King Library celebrates 50 years since its official opening as the Edgar Weld King Undergraduate Library, the Miami University Libraries invite students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members to an open house celebration from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m., Friday, Nov. 18, in King Library’s first-floor lobby.












by Vince Frieden, strategic communications coordinator, Miami University Libraries
Before the new Edgar Weld King Undergraduate Library could open its doors, or even really be called a library for that matter, there was the question of how to move 35,000 books in a single weekend.
The answer to that question is what’s remembered today as “the book brigade,” a collection of Miami University Libraries’ staff and student assistants working alongside student volunteers to complete the daunting task in time for the new library’s grand opening Monday morning 50 years ago.
“It was a seamless operation,” recalled Charles Markis (Miami ’68, M.M. ’76), then a Libraries student assistant and later the manager of Miami’s Amos Music Library. “I still talk about it whenever I’m looking to share an example of how proper prior planning can accomplish a lot.”
Although there have been a number of significant book moves in the Miami Libraries’ history, including a more extensive relocation to the expanded and completed King Library in 1973, the 1966 “book brigade” represented not just a physical move of periodicals and monographs but a transformational move to a new type of library.

Students study in the Alumni Library Reading Room. (Photos from Miami Univesity Libraries)
Open space and the freedom to browse
Built in 1910 and expanded to the east in 1922, Alumni Library was over capacity almost from the start.
A 1931 Miami Student headline described the overcrowding situation as “critical” and quoted university officials who urged students to “cease social visits” and come to the library “only for serious study.” Alumni Library ...

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