The University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors voted today to name the University’s newly renovated main library The Edgar Shannon Library, in honor of UVA’s fourth president.
The building originally opened in 1938 and was formerly named for UVA’s first president, Edwin A. Alderman. “As the University recently completed an extensive major project to create a modern, state-of-the art main library through completely renovating the historic portion of the facility … it is presented with an opportunity to recognize another past president,” the BOV’s Building and Grounds Committee wrote in its agenda for the library’s renaming.
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Edgar Finley Shannon, Jr. was born in Lexington, Virginia, in 1918. Before leading UVA from 1959 to 1974, he served in the U.S. Navy as a junior gunnery officer during World War II and was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University where he received a Ph.D. in 1949. As UVA’s fourth president, he oversaw the institution during times of major political and social upheaval. Under his leadership, UVA instituted coeducation and racial integration. During that time, enrollment rose from 5,000 students to 15,000 as UVA, under a strategic plan Shannon developed, grew to become a nationally recognized research university.
The vote to rename what had been known since 1938 as Alderman Library – after the University’s first president, Edwin A. Alderman – took just a few moments, but the research, planning and discussion has been two years in the making.
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“President Shannon’s accomplishments embody the values that the University aspires to in its striving to be both great and good,” said Michael Suarez, an English professor and director of Rare Book School who headed the committee that recommended the new name. The honor, Suarez continued, “appropriately recognizes a remarkable University leader who transformed UVA into a modern research university, but who has little formal recognition on Grounds.”
While the University’s policy on philanthropic namings generally requires they remain in place at least 75 years, an honorary naming such as Alderman’s is available for review after 25 years. At 85 years, the Alderman name was “way past the statute of limitations” and qualified for reconsideration, Suarez said. At the same time, the library’s four-year renovation has been so extensive, “it is practically a new entity,” Suarez continued. “This is a new beginning.”
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
