THE LIBRARY: PRIMARILY FOR UNDERGRADUATES

Justin Winsor, College Librarian in the last century, thought that "books should be used to the largest extent possible and with the least trouble." But today Widener's monumental size threatens to defeat this principle. Consequently the library fails to play its part in undergraduate education.

Since this lack of constructive influence is a function of size, the best way to make the library a positive, educational factor is to isolate the one hundred thousand books needed by College students. Such isolation could best be accomplished by construction of an undergraduate Book Center.

The Book Center would be a friendly building, divided into many rooms and dens; each room would contain books on a related group of subjects, and to each room would be appended stacks, open to anybody. A personable reference staff would be ready to help students at any time. And pervading the Center would be an air of informality. Comfortable chairs, lounge rooms available for discussions, a tuck shop--these are but a few of the conveniences--would make studying desirable instead of damnable.

The advantages of such a Book Center are two-fold. First it would establish a balance between graduate students and undergraduates, as far as library facilities were concerned. To get a book in the Center would mean turning around in a chair and picking it off the shelves. And if a student wished to pursue a subject at length, the staff could give him adequate and exact references in Widener.

This leads up to the second and more important advantage of the Book Center. Its informality would breed friendship rather than contempt. Before long it would become the undergraduate center; debates, talks, and bull sessions would take place there. College students would be in fruitful contact with Harvard not two but twenty hours a day. No longer could George Ticknor's ghost say that "In Cambridge, the library is one of the last things thought and talked about."

It may be objected that a Book Center would merely double the House libraries. But among the average nine thousand books are found only course texts with few additional volumes. The difference between this number and the one hundred thousand books contained in the Center is a measure of the greater amount of material that is to be located there. While House libraries serve only as academic filling stations, the Book Center would be an educational super-service station.

For only when the library seeks actively to entice undergraduates with its charms as well as with its contents will they as actively respond. Only then can it exert a continual, positive influence in support of scholarship. And only when the Book Center exists can Justin Winsor's philosophy really bear fruit.