E~9HE University of Chicago first opened its doors to students in the I autumn of 1892. It was able to do so largely because of gifts made by John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and because of planning done by William Rainey Harper, its first president. The University's birth was auspicious, considering the wealth of Rockefeller and the vigor and imagination of the young Harper. Its birthplace, too, augured well, because Chicago was a center of population which was growing rapidly in size and economic power. A few months after the first students matriculated at the University, the attention of the entire country was focused on a plot of land just across the street where the World's Columbian Exposition was educating and entertaining throngs of visitors. The new university at Chicago came into an intellectual environment which was no less stimulating than was its physical environment. During the preceding ten or fifteen years, new ideas about the techniques and purposes of university education had been causing marked changes in American institutions of higher education. Perhaps the most influential of these new ideas was the concept of intensive and specialized scholarship which had been developing in Germany during the nineteenth century. And American educators were just beginning to notice another idea, largely British, to the effect that a university had obligations to society which could be discharged through publication and offcampus teaching. President Harper believed in these foreign ideas and incorporated them in his plan for the new institution. These imported educational ideas were changing American university libraries in various ways. The German theories probably had more effect than any others because they made large collections of books and journals a necessity. It is true that the rapid growth of book collections which had begun before 1890 was due to other factors as well; rapidly mounting endowments, broadened curricula, and increasing enrolments all had their effects. By 1890 these growing collections were making it necessary for university librarians to change their ways of doing things. Collections were being organized according to more elaborate classification schemes, and the needs of specialists were sometimes being met by small collections kept in separate seminary rooms. Library staffs were being augmented, and some staff members had become specialists in certain types of library work. President Harper was aware of these changing ideas of library administration and utilized them in his initial planning for library services. It is clear from printed and manuscript documents that he wanted for the University of Chicago 1 Part II, dealing with the history of the University of Chicago Libraries from 1910 to 1928, will be published in a subsequent issue.