Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

its oyn, and had asked for but been denied a congressional appropriation
te buy it. Mr. Gest was in desperate financial straits; Flexner was
certain that if the Library were not purchased promptly as a unit, kt
would be broken up into iterrs and disposed of,
Deeply concerned lest this Pappen, and also influenced by Dr.
Gilman's early vision that the probable importance of the Far East a£ ter I r'
World Wax 1 would lead to more i~tensfve western studies of Chinese ~ul-
ture, and by the expressed hope that the Institute and Princetonqs Depart-
rent of Oriental Languages and Literature.might soon expand to include a
representation in the Chinese, Flexner persuaded the Rockefeller Fotmda-
tion to contribute half the estiwted cost of the collection, and secured
the permissfon of the Founders and the Executive Committee to pay the
54
rest. The Board ratified the action on the Director's representation
that Its action, in view of frincsetonRs interest in the field, would re-
conpense the University in sortre masure for t k Institute's use of its
various libraries -- general, art, and rrrathematics. The Znstltutels
policy was to purchase the books needed by its staff members, and to
place them in the appropriate Princeton library marked as htitute
property vith its bookplate and listed in a separate catalog.
The Foundation9s grant was conditioned by the requirement that
the Cest Library remain fn Princeton, avatlable forth9 use of both insti-
tutions; it was given vith no promise that the Institute would later
undertake to develop Oriental studies, As Flexner wrote Aydelotte later,
he felt that while it was useless to urge the expansfon by the Institute
in the early forties, it should m e
in that dfrection by the time the
second woxld war was over, because "relations in the Pacific..,are going