The University of Tennessee Digital Library Center was created as an internal Center of Excellence in 2001 to foster the creation and use of digitized collections and provide open access to materials of interest to the academic community. A five-year institutional grant provided start-up funding for the human and technical resources necessary to select, format, … Continued

In 1986 Chancellor Jack E. Reese devised a program for recognition of faculty who had made outstanding long-term contributions to the intellectual life of the institution. The program involved nomination of retired faculty by members of the university community and review by a campus-wide committee under the leadership of the Office of the Provost to … Continued

Chancellor Jack Reese and Library Director Donald Hunt spoke at opening ceremonies for the UT Libraries’ online GEAC computer circulation system on September 29, 1983. This was the third public ceremony concerning implementation of the automated system. In November 1982 Cornelia Hodges, widow of Dr. John C. Hodges, bar-coded the first book on the computer. … Continued

In 1927 the stacks in Carnegie Library were closed to all except faculty and graduate students. Others wishing to use materials requested them in the catalog area, and the books were paged (brought) from the stacks. The policy continued with the move to the Hoskins Library. The library began issuing “stack cards” to faculty and … Continued

In January 1933 the UT Libraries instituted a program through which students could borrow best-selling fiction and nonfiction books for $.02 a day for the first five days and $.03 per day for each day thereafter. The city’s Lawson McGhee Library charged out-of-town students a deposit for taking out a book, and the UT Library … Continued

A branch library serving the biology, bacteriology, zoology, and entomology departments was established in 1948 on the third floor of Hesler Biology Building. Mrs. Kenneth Wagner served as librarian. A similar branch was created in room 206 of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Building to serve the physics, geology, geography, and mathematics departments. Engineering and … Continued

In 1950 a 14-member Special Documents Committee, chaired by Dr. Richard Beal Davis of the English Department, was formed to conduct a statewide “hunt” for documents that shed light on the life and times of past generations. Documents donated were to be preserved in the university’s fireproof library for use by present and future generations … Continued

Student Art in the Library exhibitions, begun in 2005, provide an exhibition of undergraduate and graduate art each semester. The exhibition is a juried competition, with cash prizes for the top three submissions. The library archives all work selected for the exhibitions in its collections.

The Librarycycle program began October 22, 1980. Under an agreement with Tipton Distributing Company, 9 cents would be donated to the UT Libraries for every pound of aluminum cans brought to the collection point in the parking lot near the steam plant on Lake Loudoun Boulevard. (The actual donation was approximately 6 cents a pound … Continued

In 1983 UT began a licensing program through which institutional marks and indicia were protected by trademark, and fees were required to be paid before the marks could be used. In its first year of operation, the program took in $3,000. In 1985 the licensing program was outsourced to Bill Battle, former UT football coach … Continued