Six years later, not long before Smith departed for what is now Bluffton University, the Alumni Association formally presented the collection, then numbering about 80 volumes, to Goshen College.
One of the earliest North American institutional collections of Anabaptist Mennonite materials, the archive has grown over the past century to truly earn the description, prematurely granted by early Goshen catalogs, as "one of the most valuable of its kind in America."
After a one-year closure, Goshen College reopened in the fall of 1924 with a new vision for making the institution a center for the academic study of its denominational heritage in order to educate leaders for the future of the Mennonite Church.
Young professors Harold S. Bender, Ernst Correll and Guy Hershberger were among those active in promoting the concurrent resurrection of the college's Mennonite Historical Society.
Activities of the society and its leaders were key in transforming the MHL's several shelves of topically related material into a comprehensive resource for the study of Anabaptist-Mennonite history, life, and thought.
One of the library's most prized pieces, the only known copy of the 1564 (first extant) edition of the Ausbund, an Anabaptist hymnal still used by the Amish, was purchased for $10 in 1928 in a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, bookshop.
In addition to printed materials, the MHL collection has long included "objects of historical interest" - ranging from quilts to toys to furniture.
Although at an earlier time the library also collected manuscript items, most of these are now under the care of the Mennonite Church USA Archives, long housed under a common roof with the MHL, and still located on the Goshen campus.
Over the past 20 years, the MHL has supported a variety of exhibits featuring their own materials as well as items belonging to private or other museum collections.
The diverse themes of these exhibits include toys and games, Amish crib quilts, Goshen College's centennial, one-person art shows, Fraktur (decorative writing), and furniture.