John Davis Barnett, LLD’1919, hoped his books would enrich learning and exploration for “any earnest seeker of knowledge.”
It’s what led the engineer and railroad worker to donate his personal collection—a staggering 40,000 books—to Western in 1918. Barnett’s gift, the single largest received by a Canadian library, was foundational. Western Libraries’ collection, which at the time numbered about 3,000 books, swelled to include literature, books on history, science and technology, alongside government publications, magazines, monographs and bulletins.
Barnett became Western’s first librarian, managing the collection from 1919 to 1922 before his health deteriorated. Some of his items have since been digitized by the Archives and Special Collections team in Western Libraries, which also holds Barnett’s personal papers.
A book lover who believed in the importance of unrestricted access to information, Barnett’s goal was to create “the nucleus of a library.” One of the conditions of his gift was that his books be available to anyone. His donation gave rise to a flourishing library collection, now boasting more than 5.8 million print or digital books, journals and other materials.
