James Blair spent two years in London while he was helping to found the College. During these years – 1691 to 1693 – he may have solicited books for the College’s library. The Charter for the College specified that funds should be put toward constructing the buildings, fitting them out, and for “furnishing them with books and other utensils.” However, there are no surviving records of Blair’s activity in London, so while we do not know with certainty, it is possible that Blair bought books while he was there.

Blair’s model for the library may have been the library at Edinburgh, where he got his Master’s degree. Although there are no surviving records to tell us where in the building the first library was, the east side of the second floor would have been the most likely location based on the other known uses of the building and the ancient Roman engineer Vitruvius’s influential advice to build libraries facing east.

In the late seventeenth century, colleges usually built their library collections from donations, not college funds. Despite this, in 1697 the College used its own money on the library to help build the collection. The main donor for William & Mary’s first library was Francis Nicholson, the royal governor of Virginia, who gave over 200 volumes in 1698. Other donations of books were received before the fire on October 29, 1705, which destroyed the entire library and much else in the Main Building. Few of the titles that comprised the library’s collection are known due to loss of the records for the donations in the fire.

From John M. Jennings. The Library of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, 1693-1793.
Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1968.

Images of the exhibit are available from Swem Library on Flickr.

Curator: Susan Riggs, Frances Lightfoot Robb Special Collections Librarian, with assistance from Phillip Emanuel, Archives Graduate Apprentice and MA/PhD Candidate in History. Exhibit Design and Installation: Jessica Molz, SCRC Graphics Student Assistant, and Jennie Davy, Burger Archives Specialist.