Library of Virginia

Library of Virginia
Country	United States of America
Type	Government of Virginia
Established	1823
Location	Richmond, Virginia
Other information
Director	Sandra Gioia Treadway
Website	http://www.lva.virginia.gov/
References:

The Library of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, is the library agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia, its archival agency, and the reference library at the seat of government. The Library moved into a new building in 1997 and is located at 800 East Broad Street, 2 blocks from the Virginia State Capitol building. It was formerly known as the Virginia State Library and as the Virginia State Library and Archives.

Formally founded by the Virginia General Assembly in 1823, the Library of Virginia organizes, cares for, and manages the state's collection of books and official records, many of which date back to the early colonial period. It houses what is believed to be the most comprehensive collection of materials on Virginia government, history, and culture available anywhere. Its research collections contain more than 808,500 bound volumes; 678,790 public documents; 410,330 microforms, including 45,684 reels of microfilmed newspapers; 308,900 photographs and other pictorial materials; 101.8 million manuscript items and records; and several hundred thousand prints, broadsides, and newspapers.

Programs and publications

Among the Library's many distinguished publications, exhibitions, and educational programs is the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, a multivolume reference work documenting the contributions of Virginians to four centuries of local, state, and national history.

Since 1998, the Library of Virginia and the Library of Virginia Foundation have sponsored the annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards honoring outstanding Virginia authors and books about Virginia in the areas of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. They also present annually a lifetime achievement award, whose past recipients are Ellen Glasgow (1998), Edgar Allan Poe (1999), Anne Spencer (2000), Booker T. Washington (2001), Mary Lee Settle (2002), Louis D. Rubin Jr. (2003), George Garrett (2004), Merrill D. Peterson (2005), William Styron (2006), Tom Wolfe (2007), Rita Dove (2008), John Grisham (2009), Lee Smith (2010), and Earl Hamner, Jr. (2011).

The Library of Virginia sponsors the annual Virginia Women in History project to honor eight Virginia women, living and dead, who have made extraordinary contributions to the state or to their professions and also the annual African American Trailblazers in Virginia project.

History of the institution

Although the Library of Virginia was officially established in 1823, its history goes back to the collection of materials acquired for official use by the colonial Council and subsequent colonial and state authorities. The first permanent home of the Library was a small room on the top floor of the State Capitol. The state’s books and records eventually outgrew this space, and overflow books and documents were then stored in several rented locations across Richmond. In 1892, the General Assembly provided for a new State Library on Capitol Square in what is today known as the Oliver Hill Building. Over the ensuing forty years, the Library again outgrew that building, and in 1940 it moved to its third location at the edge of Capitol Square between 11th and Governor Streets (today the Patrick Henry Executive Office Building). It shared this space with the State Law Library, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, the Virginia Department of Law, and the Office of the Attorney General. The Library moved to its current location at 800 East Broad Street in 1997.

State Librarians of Virginia

During the nineteenth century, Secretaries of the Commonwealth usually oversaw the state library as part of their official duties.

• John Pendleton Kennedy, 1903–1907
• Henry Read McIlwaine, 1907–1934
• Wilmer L. Hall, 1934–1946
• Randolph Warner Church, 1947–1972
• Donald Rucker Haynes, 1972–1986
• Ella Gaines Yates, 1986–1990
• John C. Tyson, 1990–1994
• Nolan T. Yelitch, 1995–2007
• Sandra Gioia Treadway, 2007–present

Further reading

• Sandra Gioia Treadway and Edward D. C. Campbell Jr., eds. The Common Wealth: Treasures from the Collection of the Library of Virginia. Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 1997. ISBN 0884901858.
• Trenton E. Hizer, comp., Guide to the Personal Papers Collection at the Library of Virginia. Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 2008. ISBN 0884902080.

External links

• The Library of Virginia (official site)
• Find It Virginia (official research tool)
• Virginia Memory (digital collections)
• Debra H. Rodman, "Retelling Virginia's Migration History", Southern Spaces, 25 October 2010. A review of an exhibition at the Library of Virginia.