WIDENER AIDED BY UNUSUAL PROJECT

Fourteen libraries, including Harvard's Widener, are taking part in a cooperative enterprise, the New England Deposit Library, the first of its kind, which is helping to ease the critical shortage of storage space due to the war.

the library houses books not in immediate demand, duplicates, and old newspapers. After its completion in March 1942, Widener moved in most of its back newspaper volumes, which had been occupying one-tenth of its space, or room for 200,000 volumes.

The library, not familiar to most Harvard students, is located on Western Avenue, behind the Business School and the athletic fields. Of simple design, the utilitarian structure, 88 by 64 feet, surrounds a stack of six levels. In front of the stack is a reading room which can accommodate 20 persons.

Most of the visitors to the Deposit Library are students sent by Widener for special research. The greatest advantage of the library is its extensive amount of material. Librarians remember the case of one Harvard student who wished to compare the first nine editions of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

While the library was originally an idea of President Eliot's construction was not begun until July 1941. The building and its equipment cost $212,500, and has room for 800,000 books plus a considerable number of newspapers. With the library already full, plans are being made for an annex to be built after the war.

Other colleges using the library are Boston College, Radcliffe, Massachusetts institute of Technology, Simmons, and Tufts. The Boston Public Library and the Massachusetts State Library also have deposits there.