A Library in Progress

Abstract

Libraries function as more than just repositories of information: they produce knowledge, and they create and fill absences worthy of examination. This chapter explores the early history of the Moorland Foundation Library at Howard University and the absences that this collection was designed to address. The Moorland Foundation started as the personal library of Howard trustee Jesse Moorland, who accumulated books, pamphlets, pictures, and other items about African diasporic history. Moorland used this material for his own private study, but Howard professors Kelly Miller and Alain Locke saw the potential for a research collection and comprehensive bibliography that would respond to needs on campus and in their respective fields. Although it would take the hiring of librarian Dorothy Porter to fulfill these professors’ ambitions, the three distinct ideas behind this one collection demonstrate the versatility of Black thought and the motivations behind Black collecting.