Early on some professors, including Harold Maxwell-Lefroy, let students access their private collections due to the lack of extensive provisions at the college, however, in time the departmental libraries grew with donations of books from their leading academics, whose name they generally took, including the Egerton-Hinchley library at the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Geology's Watts Library, the latter of which had by 1934 a collection of nearly 7000 books.