Message from the Interim Dean
As we start a new year and the spring semester, we are looking forward to new initiatives around open access, collections, and partnerships. We will also take time to reflect on our past. 2025 marks the 75th anniversary of Holland Library’s opening. For my Browse columns this year, I will include stories about President Ernest O. Holland, his collecting, and the library that bears his name.
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections opened a new exhibit this month, “Against the Grain: Lentils and Countercultural Eating on the Palouse, 1916-2024.” The exhibit explores the history of lentil growing on the Palouse, influenced by the countercultural communities that adopted lentils over more than 100 years.
Manuscripts Librarian Will Gregg’s article on a recent gift by WSU grad Kean Wilcox highlights a special collection of early photographs, including gorgeous Woodburytype images. This gift will greatly enhance class visits to MASC focused on the history of photography and 19th-century British and French culture.

Our faculty column this month by School of Biological Sciences’ Eric Roalson celebrates the WSU Marion Ownbey Herbarium, which moved over the summer from Heald Hall to the top floor of Owen Science and Engineering Library. Our partnership with the herbarium is a homecoming of sorts; it was located in Holland Library from 1953 until the 1960s.
As we initiate a year of commemorating Holland Library, the building we have today was not what President Holland intended. In 1938 Holland had plans developed for an ornate building with reading room ceilings 68 feet tall (three feet taller than the University of Washington’s Suzzallo Library).
However, funding from the state for the new library came after Holland’s retirement. When librarian G. Donald Smith started his appointment in 1946, he found the completed library plans, reflecting, in his view, an impractical structure. Instead, Smith persuaded President Wilson M. Compton to model the library on a functional design developed at Princeton. According to Smith, his vision was to get everything we needed for service inside the building: “I didn’t care what they did with the outside.”
Compton did not directly oppose Smith, but he unsuccessfully lobbied many groups to keep the original design. In the end, they built a practical library to hold all the collection in one building. They scrapped the reading room, and by reducing the height of the ceilings from 12 to 9 feet, they added an extra floor. William Stimson, author of “Going to Washington State: A Century of Student Life,” generously described Holland Library as a “building of clean, straight lines, trim and efficient, like a book lying on its side.”
Having worked in Holland Library for 26 years, I can attest that several charming details survive. Dudley Pratt’s monumental sculpture of “The Reader” is easily the most recognizable piece of public art on the Pullman campus. The sleek, mid-century lobby, now used for events, retains its 1950s elegance. Most of Holland Library’s restrooms have their original tiles, and the building offers numerous secluded places to study and enjoy views of Terrell Mall and the Palouse hills.
Trevor