Central Florida, dating back (1909-1951) to its Carnegie Library founding as one of the original 14 Florida libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie. The original collection, at the founding of Rollins College in 1885, consisted of one Christian Bible and one dictionary. According to Cohen (2006), Carnegie's "donation of 108 libraries to colleges in the first two decades of the twentieth century assisted 10% of the institutions of higher learning in the United States. Carnegie had a preference for colleges and universities that served African-American students, which Rollins College president William Fremont Blackman noted the school did in a letter to Carnegie appealing for a library in 1904:
The fact that it is the only college in the country, North or South, in which the grandchildren of abolitionists and confederate soldiers, in about equal numbers, sit together in the same class-room and play together on the same athletic field, and learn thus to understand, respect and love one another;
Blackman's request consisted …
