The Samuel Read Hall Library at Lyndon State College has grown over the years, both in size of the collection and the physical space. There are currently around 113,000 items here: books, media, periodicals, college archives, and instructional materials. The following chronology of the library was gathered by the library's archivist, Patricia Webster and facilitated by Access Services librarian Janet Thorn.

In 1951 the Lyndon State College Library came up Vail Hill from Lyndon Institute (where the college began as a teacher education program) when 12,000 volumes were moved to the Vail Manor in one weekend.

The library was located in one of the twin towers of the mansion. 

The mansion was the crowning feature of the campus until it was demolished in 1974. The current Vail building now sits on the site.

The Library expanded into its own building in 1965. Professor Graham S. Newell named the library after Samuel Read Hall, a Vermont pioneer in teacher education. The building is now the Harvey Academic Center.

The Library we now occupy opened in 1972. It was only two stories at that time and had a rooftop walkway from the Activities Building across to the east side of campus. The Library entrance was in the “tower”.

The building won an award of excellence from the American Institute of Architects in 1980 for being a “bridge” from one side of the campus to the other.

Two additional floors were added to our building to increase academic space on campus. A “roof-breaking” ceremony was held with LSC President Peggy Williams, Vermont Governor Howard Dean, and Professor Graham S. Newell doing the honors. 

The Library was emptied during construction. We moved 80 percent of the collection with us to the smaller gymnasium for a year. 20 percent was placed in storage.

When the addition was completed in 1995, we refilled the library by working from the beginning and the end of the general collection simultaneously. Our copy of Winged Victory of Samothrace was retrieved from storage as well. The building wasn’t quite ready at the opening of the semester so we set up temporary library access in the lounge outside the Meteorology Lab and retrieved what was needed ourselves in twice or thrice-daily runs.

Governor Howard Dean dedicated the new Library Academic Center in October, 1995.