In December 1889, the University Board of Trustees authorized $650 for periodicals and books, which were placed in a single room in Holladay Hall. The collection was overseen by the university's first professor of English and future third chancellor, Daniel Harvey Hill Jr. Comprising 1,500 volumes by 1890, it reflected Hill's scholarly and literary interests instead of a purely scientific and engineering focus; indeed, the library was considered to be part of the Department of English. Through the 1890s, the collection primarily consisted of required reading materials for English courses taught by Hill and American and European history courses taught by Professor Alexander Holladay. The concept of a centralized library system was not considered; by 1893, the departments of agriculture, horticulture, mechanics, physics and mechanical and civil engineering had each developed their own reference collections separately from the primary library. The library moved to three rooms on the third floor of Main Building in the fall of 1897. In 1899, the University of Texas librarian, Benjamin Wyche, came as a consultant and introduced the Dewey Decimal System of classification, a card catalog and library cards; also that year, Edward Bentley Owen, a recent graduate of the college, was hired as librarian. In 1899, the collection totaled some 3,000 volumes, increasing to 3,500 volumes and 125 periodicals by the following year.