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By Julie Burlingame
News Reporter

The University's M.D. Anderson Memorial Library frequently mounts exhibits of historical documents or photographs giving insight into the history of a region, craft or people. Rarely does it display items tracing its own history.

That's exactly what the library is doing now, however, in its exhibit Reflections of Yesterday, Visions of Tomorrow," which gives visitors the chance to see how the library itself has changed since its founding in 1927.

Ten display cases house the exhibit near the information desk on the main floor of the library. University archivist Sarah Frazer and reference librarian Mark Bay rummaged through library exhibits of previous years to put together the collections of photographs, ledgers, handbooks and newsletters that make up Reflections.

"We went through everything we had," "Bay said, "but we went with the things that showed the history the best."

One problem the pair said they had in putting together the display was that materials from old exhibits weren't always stored together. 

"We were limited by what we still have,"" Frazer said. "In many cases, the texts of the exhibits were kept, but not necessarily the pictures."

Most of the pictures used in the old exhibits had been taken from other sources in the library and were returned after they were used in the displays.

Reflections " goes back to the library's beginnings, when it occupied a part of San Jacinto High School library and held a collection of about 2,000 volumes.

The exhibit follows the library through its first home on the present campus -- a wing of the Roy Gustav Cullen Memorial -- to the construction of the Anderson building in 1951 and its 1967 and 1977 additions.

What may interest passers-by the most, however, are the photographs of students from years gone by. "You can really see fashions and how they've changed,"" Frazer said.

The materials will be on display at the library through May 30.