VIRGINIA GOULT

CLASS OF 1941

FORMER DIRECTOR OF LIBRARIES

Virginia Goult was a fixture in the DePaul library for over 40 years as the director of libraries. In 1974, she was only the third woman in the university’s history to receive the Via Sapientiae Award, the university’s highest honor for faculty and staff. During her time at DePaul, the library grew from modest beginnings to over 400,000 volumes and she contributed significantly to increasing supportive services to faculty and students. Furthermore, she organized and managed the libraries’ moves from the 64 E. Lake Street location to 25 E. Jackson Drive in the Loop, and on the Lincoln Park campus, from its’ original location to the Schmitt Academic Center.

In your reminiscence, books and library services must pale when you consider the tens of thousands of young whose learning you helped to shape, the scholars you led to innumerable sources of truth. If recent decades have witnessed an explosion of knowledge, it was through your deft hands that much of the energy created by this explosion was channeled to the minds and spirits of the students and faculty you served so loyally.

Via Sapientiae nomination

FACES OF DEPAUL