GU Gives Thanks for a Thanksgiving Proclamation

Susan K. Martin, University Librarian; Marshall B. Coyne, University Board of Directors; and Mario Vargas Llosa, novelist

On May 4, 1994, Georgetown University was pleased to show its gratitude to Dr. Marshall Coyne, H'90, for his gift to the University in celebration of its two millionth volume, George Washington's broadside proclaiming the first national day of Thanksgiving.

Washington's Proclamation was printed in New York, probably by Childs and Swain, in late September or early October 1789. Surviving untrimmed copies, such as the one at Georgetown, indicate that it was printed on a typical newspaper-type stock, the sheets measuring approximately 20x16 inches. So far as is known, only seven (or perhaps eight) copies of the Proclamation survive. Besides the copy at Georgetown, there are examples at the Chapin Library of Williams College, Harvard, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the University of Indiana, and Yale. To get an idea of the scarcity of the Proclamation, we need only remember that more than two dozen copies of the first broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence are still extant.

The University's two million volumes are distributed among its various libraries, with the Joseph Mark Lauinger Library on the Main Campus holding approximately 1.5 million volumes; the Edward Bennett Williams Law Library containing about 300,000 volumes; and the John Vinton Dahlgren Medical Library containing roughtly 200,000 volumes. In addition, the library of the Kennedy Institute of Bioethics and now the National Center for Education in Material and Child Health are part of the University's growing information resources.

Joining Marshall Coyne in observing the two millionth volume was Mario Vargas Llosa, acclaimed Peruvian writer and scholar. Dr. Vargas Llosa spent the spring 1994 semester at Georgetown's School of Languages and Linguistics as its first Distinguished Visiting Scholar. For a large crowd of Library Associates, students, faculty and library staff, Dr. Vargas Llosa reflected on his memories of libraries that he has known and worked in, and read from his published works, in a presentation that he entitled "The Paradise of Books." The audience enjoyed hearing about his comparison of the Peruvian national library, described as a public library where the citizenry came to enjoy reading, but also socializing, with the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, as an extreme opposite, with an aloof and scholarly air as well as a shortage of seats. Dr. Vargas Llosa commented on the architectural problem besetting the new Bibliotheque de France and the British Library facility at St. Pancras.

Dr. Coyne entertained the audience with a history of the naming and dating of Thanksgiving Day, written by his grandson. While George Washington proclaimed the first Thanksgiving Day, in the year of Georgetown's founding, the day was not fixed on the fourth Thursday of November until the 19th century.

Present at the ceremony were President Leo J. O'Donovan, S.J., who spoke briefly and introduced both Marshall Coyne and Mario Vargas Llosa; William Curtin, chairman of the Georgetown University Board of Directors; Dr. Judith Areen, Executive Vice President of the Law Center; Dr. John Griffith, Executive Vice President of the Medical Center; Dr. Patrick Heelan, S.J., Executive Vice President of the Main Campus; Helen Bagdoyan, representing Naomi Broering, director of the Medical Library; Robert Oakley, director of the Williams Law Library; Susan Martin, University Librarian; and John Breslin, S.J., University Chaplain.

University libraries--indeed libraries of all kinds--take the opportunity to celebrate the attainment of "round numbers" in their collections. Followers of Georgetown activities may think that it hasn't been very long since the celebration of the one millionth volume; the mid-1980s celebration of one million volumes was for the Lauinger Library alone, rather than the entire University. Lauinger Library anticipates that it will celebrate its two millionth volume around the year 2012. Save the time for that celebration!