| Sweet Briar College opened in 1906, but with only four of the sixteenth buildings provided for in the architectural plans from Ralph Adam Cram and only thirty-six students of the five hundred students for whom the plans were drawn. Sweet Briar College was not able to have a building specifically for a library until twenty-two years after the opening of the college.
In 1928, the generosity of Fergus Reid provided the funds for the college to construct a library building in honor of his mother. Fergus Reid of Norfolk was at that time the President of the Board of Directors.
Before this act of generosity occurred, the library was first housed in Academic Building (now Benedict) in a first floor room. The collection totaled almost a hundred volumes purchased in Europe by Dr. John McBryde, Jr., a member of the original faculty. When the Mary Helen Cochran Library building was completed, in the third week of October, 1929, students eagerly volunteered to help transfer more than ten thousand books to the new building. Finally, on October 21, 1939, the library opened in the new spacious Georgian styled facility.
In early December 1965, after receiving a challenge grant of $300,000 from the Charles A. Dana Foundation for an extension of the library, work began on the new Dana wing. The added wing provided for the students a greatly expanded stack space, study areas, air conditioning, and for the staff, a work area in a central location.
Currently, Sweet Briar’s Mary Helen Cochran Library has the largest private undergraduate collection in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The library houses nearly 300,000 items, with the additional usage of the Junius P. Fishburn Music Library in Babcock, Martin C. Shallenberger Library for Rare Books and Archives in the Anne Gary Pannell Art Gallery, Kellogg Library for children’s books in the main building, the Wick storage facility, Media Services Department, and with the online database, LION: Lynchburg Information Online Network. Physical items owned by the library are augmented by access to over 200 full-texts online databases, which students, faculty, and staff can use from any location in the world.
To learn more about the history of the Mary Helen Cochran Library, see the Bulletin of Sweet Briar College issue on the Mary Helen Cochran Library 1929-1939.
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