New York Library Overtakes Widener

"It's the quality of your material, not the quantity, that counts," Associate Librarian Paul J. McNiff declared at Widener last week.

McNiff was defending the Harvard College Library against claims by the staff at New York's Public Library that their system had usurped Harvard's time-honored status as second-largest collection in the country.

According to the New York Times, the librarians at 42nd Street found over seven million volumes at last count. The College library's annual report of last June listed 6,697,111 books and pamphlets.

Neither McNiff nor New York seriously hopes to surpass the Library of Congress, which just passed the 39-million-volume mark.