ACADEMY LIBRARY >  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Organisation

Staff

The office of librarian was an additional job of one of the professors. The first one was Nicolaus Mulerius,who taught mathematics and medicine. Mulerius however did not have an official appointment and he received no financial remuneration for all the work he did between 1619 and 1621. The librarian was assisted by the beadle. The instructions for the beadle of 1648 state that he was responsible for opening and closing the Academy and the lecture rooms, and for keeping them clean. He also had to clean the books in the library as often as deemed necessary by the librarian, to keep them in order, and to fix them to iron rods.
Following the extension to the south wing of the building in 1667, which caused a rearrangement of the collection, the need arose for a more precise definition of the duties of the librarian. New library regulations were formulated in 1668. These state that the beadle earned 175 guilders a year for his duties performed for the library, as well as fuel to heat his official residence. He also received 100 guilders as sexton of the Academy church, and another 52 guilders as assistant in the library. The servant of the Academy, who was appointed in addition to the beadle to assist in the library, also received 52 guilders. The printer of Academy got 60 guilders for fuel to heat the printshop, and another 300 for the printing of theses.

Mulerius was reappointed librarian in 1625, after the death of his successor, the theologian Herman Ravensperger (1586-1625), who had been in office for two years only. This time Mulerius received an allowance of 50 guilders. In 1630, the professor of philosophy and logic, Franciscus Meyvart (1585-1640), took over who, according to his successor Tobias Andreae (1604-1676) did not show much interest in the library. Gerhardus Lammers (1668-1716) prepared the first printed catalogue, published in 1669, a duty that had been added to the regulations of 1668. Groningen did not lead the way in this respect, as Leiden had had its first catalogue printed as early as 1595, and Franeker in 1601.