Richard B. Harwell papers

Richard (Barksdale) Harwell (1915-88) was Bowdoin College's librarian from 1961 to 1968. Born on June 6, 1915 in Washington, Ga., the son of Davis Gray and Helen (Barksdale), Harwell received his Library of Science degree at Emory University in 1938. For the next two years (1938-40), he was assistant to the director of the George Washington Flowers Memorial Collection of Southern Americana at the Duke University Library. He worked at Emory as cataloger of special collections (1940-43), leaving to serve his country as lieutenant for the U.S. Navy during World War II (1943-46). He returned to his alma mater and was named assistant librarian in 1948, a position he held until 1954. From 1954-56, he was the director of the Southeastern Interlibrary Research Facility; from 1956-57, he was the director of publications for the Virginia State Library, and from 1957-61, he was the executive secretary of the Association of College and Research Libraries. At Bowdoin (1961-68), he was instrumental in the planning and development of the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library. A noted Civil War historian, Harwell was also author of several books, numerous articles and hundreds of reviews. Among his notable books are: Confederate Belles-Lettres (1941), Cornerstones of Confederate Collecting (1952), More Confederate Imprints (1957), The Union Reader (1958), and Gone With the Wind as Book and Film (1983). He died on March 9, 1988.