FANNY BORDEN
1876-1954
Fanny Borden, a New Englander from Fall River,
Massachusetts, joined the freshman class of Vassar
College in September l894. The college discovered
that she was a young woman of good parts. Her
teachers liked the pleasure she showed in enquiry and
knowledge, the respect she early acquired for scholar-
ship. Student chronicles name her among officers of
college and class organizations, on important com-
mittees, as chairman of a hall play, captain of '98's
basketball team, holder of records for the 120 yard
dash and the 220 yard run.
We who knew her later can also tell about a many-sided
person. We saw her elegant skating, good horsemanship
and tennis game, careful riding of the only Columbia
chainless bicycle on the campus. Some of us recall a
Founder's Birthday that under her direction became a
lovely English May Day the whole day through, the
campus over. we remember her as a poet whose pen
could commemorate in ballad or free verse the quandaries
that beset a college Faculty from time to time. We knew
her concern with affairs of the world, and could count
on her getting to the heart of a question in a few,
quiet, undisputatious words. (When she had nothing to
say on a topic, it was her habit to say nothing, a rare
and disconcerting practice.)
The center of her life was the Vassar College Library
for the thirty-seven years of her librarianship and
through her retirement. She came to the library in
1908 after professional training at the New York
State Library School and positions at Bryn Mawr and at
Smith. Three years before, the library had moved
from its small quarters in the Thompson Annex of Main
Buildig to the Thompson Memorial Library. The Librarian,
Adelaide Underhill, had already made the decision, so
important in Vassar's history, to continue the "open
shelves". F.B. joined her in the task of building
the kind of college library that many of their con-
temporaries elsewhere believed could not exist. Pro-
fessor Amy Reed wrote her observations of their work:
"they had very large, very enlightened ideas about the
future function of a college library, and very little money
to work with. With almost incredible patience, persistence,
FANNY BORDEN (Continued)
and determination they made the right decisions; with
tireless industry they took the right measures to
place the library in its proper relation to the stu-
dents and the teaching faculty".
Our library reflects the labor and generosity of many
people. One of the persons it most reflects is F.B.:
her knowledge of many fields of learning, the fine
quality of her discrimination; her gift for perfection,
her energy, her understanding of scholars, teachers,
students. It hardly needs saying that Vassar's method
of teaching from the sources depends on the kind of
library she had so large a share in making. She found,
often made, opportunities to build up rich collections
of materials, valuable both to the mature scholar and
to the undergraduate. A true scholar herself, she,
with her colleagues, ensured to the students the free-
dom of a library where they could take their own first
steps in independent research.
Her wise spending of funds, her success in securing
further endowment, and in suggesting to alumnae and
friends gifts that were no less appropriate to their
interests than to the needs of the library, attest the
high quality of her librarianship. Among gifts by
Alumnae who shared her love of the library are the
1898 Fund, which her classmates wished to name in her
honor; the manuscripts and rare and beautiful books
that Rebecca Laurence Lowrie of 1913 has been giving in
honor of her since her retirement.
But the interest in the college that she communicated
to others encompassed more than the Library. To some
of the alumnae she has been Vassar's best interpreter.
Her classmates and friends are now supporting generously
a project that they know she had much at heart; a chair
in American History to commemorate the teaching of Lucy
Maynard Salmon.
Miss Borden compiled two bibliographies that found wide
use: one on Trusts and Monopolies in America, the other
on College and University Government and Administration.
Since her retirement in 1945 she has arranged and in-
dexed the Library's collection of the papers of Benson
J. Lossing, local historian, biographer of Matthew Vas-
sar, trustee of the college. She has collected source
materials for a history of the Library, and made indexes
FANNY BORDEN (Continued)
for early publications of the college. These are now
ready or the Centennial historian.
XIII - 440-441
Violet Barbeur, Professor Emeritus
Helen Drusilla Lockwood
Dorothy Plum
Josephine M. Gleason