Romance and Reference

Almost an answer to every architect's dream, Widener Reference Room is multi-purpose. Quite cosmopolitan, it caters to all types of clientele without sacrificing its dignity.

The first thing the average man will notice on walking from the marble staircase into this lofty vault is a superfluity of girls. Cliffedwellers, stationed at the numerous tables, sit waiting for their prey. Some pretend to study weighty tomes; others idly thumb the pages of Real Screen Romances, patiently awaiting the right moment. Skeptics, doubting the efficacy of their "Got a match?" technique, are likely to become social theorists on analysis of the Reference Room marriage record.

Yet the Reference Room does not seem like "under the clock at the Biltmore"--the stillness of the book-lined chamber gives it a musty, scholarly flavor. There are books for every type of student in the 6,250-book reference collection. Prison ethnologists, for instance, delight in the Dictionary of the Underworld which sets into plain language such technical phrases as slice (knife wound) and to slip on the heat (v., trans; to shool a person, especially to death). Sociologists specializing in higher strata may find more help in the Who's Who of Polish Americans, Librarians, Texans, or even the Argentinian Quien en Quien. Detrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage provides excellent pictures of family crests' and advertisements of tea-biscuits.

Possessors of such diverse items as three different versions of the New York Times Index and numerous bibliographic of bibliographics, the reference librarians hardly know where to start when space limitations demand weeding. Thinking themselves safe in disposing of the Dictionary of Islam on adding the ten-volume Encyclopaedia of Islam, they were appalled when, within an hour, a long-haired scholar came to the desk inquiring after the dictionary. The problem of arranging the variegated collection has proven even thornier. In trying to place the reference works on history, language, and geography in a logical order, the staff could not place the countries in alphabetical order, because many of the books deal with several countries. Instead they arranged them according to location. Cartographers often complain about the difficulties of representing the globe in two dimensions, but the librarians really ran into difficulty in the one-dimensional shelf projection when they came to the Balkans: they had to make the rather difficult decision between proceeding to Africa or Asia.

The three members of the staff direct puzzled students to the facts they seek. But following the "no-coddling" principle faithfully, they steadfastly refuse to do the digging. Their big circular desk seems to inspire other types of questions too. The librarians were drafted to help in writing the last line of poetry on one occasion, and letters addressed to Messr. Harvard have a way of filtering down to the Reference Room.

A person with curiosity can spend many fascinating hours in the Widener Reference Room, whether he is seeking obscure figures, thumbing through exotic books for their intrinsic interest, or even seeking a date for a House formal.