“We may, therefore, say that while its soul is the spirit of the men who teach and are taught – the heart of a true university is its library. It is the safety-deposit vault in which is kept the past’s legacy for the present and the future. It is the quiet sector in the life of the busy university where imperialists in the realm of truth may happily dream of new frontiers. And it is, finally, an index of our progress as a people.”

-- O. Max Gardner, Governor of North Carolina, 1929

 

Source: Address delivered at the dedication of the new library of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, October 19, 1929. In David Leroy Corbitt, ed., Public Papers and Letters of Oliver Max Gardner. Raleigh: State of North Carolina, 1937, p. 130.

Image source: Yackety Yack, University of North Carolina Student Yearbook, 1920, p. 28.