Albion College - Albionian Yearbook (Albion, MI)

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LIBRARIES, LABORATORIES AND OBSERVATOY LIBRARIES The Library Building, the gift of Mrs. Charlotte T. Gassette, of Albion, Michigan, is a substantial new brick structure, well equipped, well heated, well lighted, containing 21,000 volumes, besides unbound volumes and pamphlets. The Reading Room, ample and attractive, is abundantly supplied with encyclopedia, dictionaries, lexicons, and general works of reference, together with such books as are temporarily assigned by members of the Faculty for reference work and col- lateral reading. A generous supply of papers and leading maga- zines of the day is provided. The contents of periodicals are made available by the use of Poole ' s Index and its supplements and the Reader ' s Guide to Periodical Literature. The Dewey system of classification is used and a new card catalogue makes the books easily accessible. Free access to the shelves is allowed, and in addition to their use in the Library building, books, with some restrictions may be drawn for home use. The Library is open on school days from 8:00 a. m. to 12:00 m.; from 2:00 p. m. to 5:30 p. m., and three evenings in the week from 6:30 to 8:30; Saturday from 8:00 a. m. to 12:00 m. PROVISIONS FOR THE STUDY OF ASTRONOMY In Astronomy, the facilities offered by the College are ex- cellent. The equipment is fully adequate for purposes of instruction or research. The Epuatorial Telescope is of eight inches clear aperture, made and mounted by Alvan Clark Sons. It is pro- vided with circles, coarse and fine, driving clock, filar micromet- er, with field and side illumination, and eye pieces giving range from a low-power comet-seeker to eight hundred diameters. The Transit Circle, by Fauth Co., is of a four inch aperture and is provided with micrometers in right ascension and de- clination, levels, sensitive to one second of arc and verticle circles reading to single seconds by micrometer microscopes. The Sidereal Clock and Chonograph are by the same makers. All of the instruments are in electrical connection. PROVISIONS FOR THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY The Biological Department occupies the new Biological

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12 ALBION COLLEGE L. Gassette. The building is designated Lottie L. Gassette Memorial Library and is both an ornamental and useful ad- dition to our facilities. Pour Fraternity Halls have been erected on the east portion of the college grounds, the institution having granted leases of sites for a period of years. The Winter-Lau Athletic field, less than two blocks from the College, presents one of the best equipped athletic fields in the West. CHARACTER OF THE SCHOOL The institution is a college of Liberal Arts, It is not a theo- logical school. There are a few Biblical studies, but no chair of theology. There are no theological tests and no religious exactions beyond regular attendance at chapel exercises during school days and attendance at church on the Sabbath, giving the students their choice of place of worship.

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14 ALBION COLLEGE Laboratory erected as an addition to Robinson Hall. This ad- dition is 45 by 60 feet, three stories high, above the basement. It contains large laboratories for the classes in Zoology and Botany, accomodating respectively 60 and 40 students. Besides the large windows at the end of each table there are electric lights and gas arc lights that afford ample illumination for evenings or dark days. There are commodious lecture rooms adjoining each. Besides these laboratories there are smaller laboratories for more advanced classes, with the same lighting arrangements as in the larger laboratories, as described above. Store rooms and supply rooms, with a large room for a working Botanical Museum occupy the remainder of the space on the lower three floors. On the upper floor are rooms for Museum workshops, v ith a suite of three rooms which are fully equipped for photographic purposes. The Biological Department is well supplied with such ap- paratus as is needed for its work, including over sixty com- pound microscopes, rocking, sliding and rotary micrometers, in- cubator, aquaria, embedding apparatus and a collection of sev- eral thousand mounted slides. The Botanical Working Muse- um is especially designed to contribute to the work in Ecology. It already contains over fifteen hundred species in the herbar- ium nearly twelve hundred of which are representative of this locality, and many of them represented in numerous specimens which show the plant in immature and winter condition, as well as in flower, etc. There is also a large number of specimens of seeds, woods, barks, fibers, medicinal and commercial pro- ducts. It is designed to make this collection as completely rep- resentative of local plant life and plant products as possible. The Zoological Lecture Room is so arranged as to be speed- ily darkened and is provided with a stereopticon; and while there is an ample supply of lantern slides on hand for purposes of instruction, others are being added as occasion de- mands. The photographic equipment of the laboratory is such as to highly facilitate the rapid increase of this collection. All the laboratories have individual private lockers, each with its own combination lock, and water and gas connections are liberally provided throughout. The supply of material for study and dissection is large and Is ample in amount and range of species for both elementary and advanced study. It is constantly enriched through pur-