A library was begun by the Washington Agricultural College concurrent with the opening of the college in 1892. About 1910 or 1912, the Library acquired it own building, or rather wing of a building, and with it an identity as a major division within the college.
The central record of the library's holdings was the central accession register, a ruled book in which were entered information about books, periodicals, goverment documents and other materials that were acquired by the library. The registry system also assigned a serial number to each entry. The accession book system was implemented very early in the history of the library and remained active until the later 1940s.
Data element recorded in the main sequence are; number, author, title, place and publisher, year, pages, size, binding, source, cost, class and book (Dewey and Cutter numbers), volume number, and remarks.
Accession books are arranged in the simple numeric order inherent in the system. The books are uniform, save for the very first and the last few. The last few, in fact, are irregular lists made in the 1970 and 1980s and contain very little useful information.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions may apply.
[Item description] Libraries Accession Record Books, 1892-1982 (Archives 196)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
The accession record books of the Washington State University Libraries were transferred from active use to inactive, compact storage in the late 1940s, and subsequently transferred to active use by the Rare Books Librarian about 1980. In January of 1988, the records were transferred to the University Archives.
This collection was processed by Lawrence Stark in January, 1988.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.