Clarence Charles Williamson

From Philosopedia

Williamson, Clarence Charles (26 January 1877 - 11 January 1965)

Williamson was graduated in 1907 from Columbia University, where his doctoral dissertation was The Finances of Cleveland. For a time, he was chairman of the department of economics at Bryn Mawr College, then accepted the job of heading the economics and sociology division of a new library building to be opened in New York City at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. In 1921, he left library work to become the director of the information service of the Rockefeller Foundation.

The culmination of his professional career was being named in 1926 as director of Columbia University Libraries and of the University’s School of Library Service, remaining until his retirement in 1943. Working under President Nicholas Murray Butler, he developed what has come to be known as the new Butler Library, a major research center.

At the time of his retirement, the Columbia libraries, with 1,844,600 volumes, ranked third behind the collections at Harvard and Yale. The French government named Williamson the “Chevalier of the Legion of Honor” for his work toward the publication of the catalog of the Bibliothèque Nationale.

Williamson’s major book was Training for Library Service, but with Alice Jewett he edited the first edition of Who’s Who in Library Service (1933).

In the 1960s, a retiree living in Greenwich, Connecticut, Williamson often drove to nearby New Canaan to chat about naturalistic humanism with The Humanist’s book review editor, Warren Allen Smith. His knowledge of ancient and Renaissance humanism was superlative (and he insisted that VERGIL (not Virgil) be inscribed in stone on the front of the new Butler Library.

Williamson was a student of philosophers from ancient Greece to the present; he had known and admired John Dewey, but the final years of his life found him particularly interested in what young philosophers were thinking and writing, especially the philosophic naturalists.

Smith in 2006 recounted some of Williamson's ideas:

• First, he was a critic of all the organized religions. Any joke about their leaders or books that are "sacred" (he reserved the word more for Nature, humans' love, and the like) brought a quick sardonic smile. He wasn't sure what to think about The Humanist, a journal he liked but wondered why it was not having more of a positive effect upon intellectuals. Because I was its editor, I offered him some of the latest books to review. No, he'd spent a lifetime with books, and now gardening, driving his car around, and keeping up with current events in his 80s was more enticing. I told him firsthand my favorable views of Ed Wilson, Corliss Lamont, and Priscilla Robertson - he was amused at the blowup Lamont and Robertson had had, resulting in the magazine staff's resigning en masse.
• "C.C." came to my small house half a dozen times, leaving his elegant home in nearby Greenwich. He enjoyed hearing me re-tell how I'd scored with a check from the retired John Dewey for $1 to be a dues-paying member of the Humanist Club I'd set up. We agreed that existentialism was something of a negative humanism, but Lamont's naturalistic humanism had not caught on maybe because Sartre emphasized the humanities more. He asked which humanities-humanists I liked, particularly which poets, novelists, playwrights. Anything about high school students interested him, but I don't recall his telling me about his family or if he had children.
• How, he wondered, could I chair a high school department at the same time as being a magazine editor. How, I asked, could he have been not only an expert on librarianship but also an advisor to President Butler about the architectural designs for Columbia's new library. "C.C." had a refreshing sense of humor, telling me how Butler thought it was a waste of space to have such a high ceiling in the main reading room - Williamson argued that the height must remain despite the seeming waste of space and the sure increase in the costs of heating the room, for he pointed to grandiose works in Ancient Greece and argued that Columbia deserved the same.
• Asked who chose the names of individuals to be inscribed on the new library, "C.C." said he came up with the list, then circulated it to faculty members for their input. Asked who chose the spelling of Vergil, not Virgil, "C.C." gladly took the credit.

Now, in 2006 as I write, I am older than "C.C." was when he spent those afternoons chatting with me. I've a memory for trivia, and he didn't like it that I had no convenient place for him to park - if he drove down the incline to my place, he couldn't see the oncoming traffic when he'd leave, or the landlady would want to remove her car and he'd have to re-park. It's easier to empathize with him now, for I similarly like to keep in touch with cutting-edge ideas. Just as he asked if I had received any new letters from Our Lord (as we called Bertrand Russell) or Henry Hazlitt or Brand Blanshard, I try to keep up with what opinion makers are writing. I regret that he never invited me to his Greenwich home, for I would have liked to have learned more about his personal life.

Williamson's disappointment with being unable to have the library built with all the specifications he desired have been described in detail by Michael Stoller, in an an Autumn 1996 article with photographs, "A Library for the Twentieth Century: The Rise of South Hall"].