Vision
The vision for the Von KleinSmid Center Library is to create a collection-based, service-oriented research and learning center for greater public understanding and appreciation of the world in which we live. The library strives to be a comprehensive learning laboratory consisting of collections, instructional programs, and research initiatives that are linked to serving the growing needs of a diverse community of researchers within the University of Southern California, the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the Southern California region, and beyond.
History
The origins of the Von KleinSmid Center Library can be traced back to the 1932 founding of the World Affairs Collection at USC. Housed in Doheny Memorial Library, the collection consisted of materials acquired by the fifth President of the University, Dr. Rufus B. Von KleinSmid. He recognized the need for a collection of such works and began acquiring documents from the League of Nations. Over time, the University Libraries continued to develop great strengths in the area of published works from the United Nations, SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), the European Union, and other international organizations in support of the School of International Relations, a program founded in 1924, also under the leadership of Dr. Von KleinSmid. According to University Librarian, Dr. Lewis F. Steig in 1966, “U.S.C.’s World Affairs Library is one of the outstanding collections of its kind in the country.” He emphasized that, “Only the Littauer Center at Harvard and Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University are comparable.”
In 1966, the Von KleinSmid Center for International and Public Affairs was built and dedicated to the former president of the University. Its purpose was to recognize the legacy of Dr. Von KleinSmid by providing space on campus where the teaching and research he was so intensely interested in could be realized. The Center was planned as the focal point on campus for the study of critical world problems and to prepare individuals for careers in government service. Designed by American modernist architect Edward Durrell Stone and costing more than $3,260,000, space for a library was developed throughout the lower level of the building to create a service-orientated research and learning center in support of the original vision for the Center.
According to a press release announcing the new Center, the VKC Library was to include the 90,000-volume World Affairs Collection and more than 35,000 additional volumes of materials in the areas of public administration and political science. These two programs, along with the Research Institute on Communist Strategy and Propaganda, were also incorporated into the Von KleinSmid Center for International and Public Affairs. The movement of these materials from Doheny Library required a complicated system to quickly move the books from Doheny and two other locations where materials had been stored. Beginning on the morning of March 18, 1966, box after box of books, each carefully coded, moved through a window in Doheny onto a 388-foot “conveyer line.” Described as having “more ups and downs than a roller-coaster,” the collection had to be moved three stories vertically and 439 feet horizontally to its new location. Nearly fifty persons participated in moving the materials, including 15 librarians, 10 student assistants, and 25 people from the University’s Operation and Maintenance Department. The VKC Library also opened with study carrels that could accommodate 248 students.
During the next twenty years the VKC Library continued to grow in response to the increasing curricular and research demands of the School of Public Administration, the newly formed School of Urban Planning and Development, and the Department of Political Science. The initial collection of approximately 120,000 volumes grew to more than 220,000 volumes, with subscriptions maintained for more than 900 journals, magazines, and newspapers and 25 cabinets of microfilm. By the mid-1990s, the facility was surpassing capacity and, as a result, books had to be arranged on tables because they could no longer be reshelved properly. Any new shelving installed to help relieve the growth of the book collection took away study place from the students.
On December 15, 1999 the Doheny Memorial Library closed for a seismic retrofit project that would increase substantially the Library’s resistance to damage during seismic events. This meant that Doheny Library would be under repair for over a year, from the end of Fall semester 1999 until early Spring semester 2001. The entire facility had to be evacuated, including the over 1.5 million volumes of books that were moved to an off-campus storage facility as well as dozens of library faculty and other personnel. As a result, VKC Library had to accommodate the staff and collections of the Micrographics Department, the current journal collection, and the library faculty from the combined Government Documents and Doheny Reference Department. This necessitated the removal of more than 80,000 books and other materials to permanent storage so that offices could be built for the relocated staff and faculty. When Doheny reopened in 2001, the Government Documents materials and departmental staff and faculty stayed behind, furthering the mission of the VKC Library as a resource center “for the preparation of men and women for careers in government service.”
In 2002, the Strategic Planning Steering Committee was created in cooperation with the U.S.C. Academic Senate and charged with advising the Dean of the Libraries on a strategy for advancing library and information services over the next five to ten years. One of the recommendations that came from faculty participating on the Committee was “to reconfigure VKC Library as an interdisciplinary center for international and urban initiatives,” paralleling the University’s overall strategic goals. This provided the impetus for several recent projects intended to enhance the Library, including repairing the roof and the installation of the Multimedia and Satellite Broadcast Learning Lab, made possible by a generous gift from the School of International Relations.
The VKC Library’s future in the 21st century is one of great expectations and an on-going commitment to quality service and inter-disciplinary learning. Future plans include enhancement of wireless access throughout the entire facility and creating a reading lounge near the current journal and newspaper collections with clusters of comfortable seating that can be used as both a study area, when no table is needed, or as an area for relaxing leisure reading. The collections are now guided by a comprehensive plan [pdf] that identifies areas of future growth in key academic areas, such as public diplomacy, and describes the strategic integration of digital resources into the library's overall mission to support graduate-level research in the applied social sciences.
Although the Von KleinSmid Center Library has a long history, with its core collection of materials tracing back to Dr. Von KleinSmid’s initial gift in 1932, the purpose of the library has remained unchanged—to be a collection-based, service-orientated research and learning center for greater public understanding and appreciation of the world in which we live.