“The touch of memory and imagination”: Edgar Odell Lovett on Fondren Library

Sometimes what happens when you work in the same archive for a long time is that you just get used to it. It seems so normal when you’re in it every day and it becomes easy to take things for granted, to believe you thoroughly understand things and don’t need to think hard about them any longer. I mention this because I read something today that Edgar Odell Lovett–a man whose greatness is an article of faith at Rice–wrote in 1946 about the plans for the new library. I’d never read this before and it struck me as a specific, immediate and forceful reminder of why it is that Edgar Odell Lovett actually deserves to be revered.