Dates

• Usage: 1986-present
• Usage: 1950 - 1986

Biography

Special collections - an administrative unit of a library responsible for materials outside the general collection, including rare books, archives, manuscripts, maps, oral history interviews, and ephemera - began at Boston College separately from the general library, through the efforts of University Librarian Terence Connolly, SJ, in the early twentieth century. Connolly is best known for acquiring works related to British Catholic authors and Irish culture and history, the foundation of what became the Irish Collection and the Catholic Authors Collection.

By midcentury, the University had organized formal support for this collecting work. In 1950, an organization called the Friends of Boston College Library held its first meeting. The group, now dissolved, supported the library's budget and the purchase of rare books, manuscripts and art objects, and funded publication of catalogs of the special collections.

The collections gained a dedicated staff position by 1981, when the Special Collections Librarian role was created; it existed officially through 1986. During this period, and for several years before it - from the late 1970s to April 1986 - the collections were housed in More Hall, separate from the main library building. The Special Collections Librarian position existed officially from 1981 to 1986. During this period and for several years before it - from the late 1970s to April 1986 - the collections were housed in More Hall, separate from the main library building.

In 1981, construction began on the Thomas P. O'Neill Library, intended to house the University's general research collection; it opened in July 1984, freeing Bapst Library for a full renovation. That renovation, completed in 1986, cost $6.2 million against an original 1920s construction cost of $800,000. The Kresge Foundation - which had earlier contributed $250,000 toward Robsham Theater - donated half a million dollars toward the Bapst renovation. The renovated building's north end, facing Commonwealth Avenue, was fitted out as the new John J. Burns Library, named for Judge John J. Burns, Class of 1921. Bapst Library was rededicated and Burns Library dedicated in a ceremony in Gargan Hall on April 22, 1986, attended by members of the Burns family; Yale historian Jonathan Spence was the invited speaker.

Upon the opening of Burns Library, several special collecting areas came under its domain: existing manuscript collections in Irish art and literature, Irish music, and British Catholic authors were joined by Boston business history, the congressional collections, the Liturgy and Life collections, and the University Archives. The University Archives followed a separate administrative path before joining this structure. Before 1986, it had operated independently of the library system, reporting to the president. Paul Fitzgerald SJ, then serving concurrently as University Secretary, held managerial responsibility for the Archives from 1973 to 1986. In 1986 — the same year the renovated Bapst Library reopened as the Burns Library — the Archives was incorporated into the library system.

That incorporation was formalized over the following years into the Department of Archives and Manuscripts, bringing the University Archives, the Congressional Archives, and the library's literary and historical manuscript collections under one administrative roof. The consolidation supported the coalescing of consistent description, management, and access practices across collections that had previously been acquired and arranged independently of one another - a shift toward unified processing standards, shared finding-aid conventions, and centralized reference service across what had been disparate collecting areas.

Leadership of the new library changed hands quickly at first. Ralph Coffman served as the first named Burns Library in 1986. Robert K. O'Neill then led the library for more than a quarter century, from September 1987 until his retirement at the end of the 2013-14 academic year. Christian Dupont has served as Burns Librarian since 2014, also holding the title Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources.

Found in 13 Collections and/or Records: