Women of Library History: Mabel Zoe Wilson

Western Today — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 15:50:25 +0000

Women of Library History: Mabel Zoe Wilson Western Today Tue, 03/22/2016 - 8:50am

It’s hard to imagine Western without the Mabel Zoe Wilson Library. Its elegant, Italianate brick façade has graced the south end of the green swathe in front of Old Main since 1928. But when the famously feisty, determined woman for whom the building is now named first set foot on campus, there was no separate structure serving as a library, and there was barely a library collection at all.

“There just wasn’t a library,” Mabel Zoe Wilson was to exclaim many years later, recalling her reaction on February 1, 1902, her first day on the job. On the uppermost floor of the institution’s only building at the time (now Old Main), she saw a few reference books, a great pile of disorganized magazines shoved into a corner, and perhaps 400 to 500 additional books. A sheaf of bills from book firms and some lists of items to be ordered constituted the official records.