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UCT Online Library,
The University of Cape Town (into which is incorporated the South African College) celebrated 175 years of its existence in 2004. The University Libraries, whose collections constitute a rich storehouse of information and research resources, celebrate their centenary in 2005 … 1905 being the year in which the S.A. College set about establishing an organised library on its premises in Orange Street, Cape Town.
The seed for the Libraries was first planted in 1829 when the founders of the South African College expressed their determination to establish a library for the use of students and begged the public to donate books and money to this end. In succeeding years the citizens of Cape Town were generous, and none more so than the brilliant practising attorney and later professor of law, Caspar Hendrik van Zyl, who made his extensive library of legal texts available to the law students he taught. Equally generous was Sir George Grey, who, on vacating the governorship of the Cape, presented the College with an outstanding collection of classical works. Books, purchased and donated, were scattered wide in the College’s teaching departments and in the student residence, College House, and were therefore not always available for those who needed to consult them. Professors and students alike clamoured for the establishment of a College library. What was needed was not only a physical home for the books, but also their systematic arrangement.
Professor W. S. Logeman of the Department of Modern Languages planted the sapling of the title of this brief history. In 1905 Professor Logeman was appointed Honorary Librarian, a post which he retained until 1920. He took steps to bring all the books accumulated in College departments together into one place … initially the old Zoology Lecture Room … where he arranged them systematically and catalogued them. Carefully nurtured by a dedicated altruist, the library began to grow and flourish, despite the rigours of the post-South African War economic depression in the Cape Colony.
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