William H. Bond Retires As Harvard's Premier Librarian

The day William H. Bond first arrived at Harvard as a graduate student in English literature, he had but one thing on this mind find Arber's edition of the Registers of the Stationer's Company of London.

Long familiar with the book from his undergraduate research at Haverford College Bond wanted to hold the 17th century equivalent of a copyright registry in his own hands and examine the first official reference to a playwright named William Shakespeare. "I had run across so many notations mentioning the volume," he recalls, "and then to actually have it in front of me-that was the wonderful thing about Widener and about Harvard."

Perhaps more than any other scholar at the University, William Bond appreciates the significance of an extraordinary book-not just for the ideas it contains, but also for the way it appeared to those who first read it, for its significance as a specific and tangible piece of history. It will thus be some what difficult for him to pass on his vast and prestigious collection when he retires tomorrow as librarian of Houghton Library after 36 years of service to the Harvard Library system.

But the dignified, genial patriarch of the University's rate book depository plans merely to shift his attention from administration to personal studies and teaching, both of which naturally focus on explaining books to others. After spending next term doing research on a Guggenheim Fellowship, he will resume his duties as Professor of Bibliography for three final years-until he reaches mandatory retirement at age 70.

For decades, Bond says, he has spent no more than 40 uninterrupted minutes at a time working on his own projects. "It is the curse of the librarian's life doing other people's research, never spending a very long time on any one thing," he explains, smiling. "It leaves you scatterbrained as a result."

He will begin pulling his thoughts together next month, striving to complete a 10-year excursion into the life and times of Thomas Hollis V. A member of the family for whom the yard dormitory is named, Hollis led a campaign to restock the Harvard Library after it was entirely destroyed in the famous Massachusetts Hall fire of 1764. Bond decided to track down as many books as possible from the Holliscollection, which over the centuries have become lost amidst the millions of volumes Harvard owns.

Another View of Books

To fully understand a subject, "you must see the object, the book,itself," insists Bond. "Some things you can only learn from the actual object that cannot be conveyed by printed descriptions orphotographs." Of the elusive Hollis gifts, many of which are on displayin Houghton's main lobby, Bond adds: "I keep pulling them out ofWidener stack all the time: they are specially bound, and at this point I can sight a Hollis at 50 paces."

"A kind of tingling feeling" is how Bond describes the pleasure of finding a rate treasure hidden on a dusty shelf. He felt it the firsttime he leafed through the Stationer's Company Register, and it drewhim away from a conventional academic career and into library work whenlegendary Houghton Librarian William A. Jackson offered him a job in 1946.

"The quality that makes a library great is that even if a book is neededonly one in a century, it will be there, "he says, gesturing towardthe small collection of rare volumes which line the walls of his comfortable basement office in Houghton. "There is a tremendous sense of continuity," he adds "Departments change, professors come and go, and the library is a constant"

Great Achievement

Forty years old this year, Houghton contains about 450,000 printed books and enough manuscripts to fill three and a half miles ofshelving if the papers were all removed at once. The subterranean stacksextend south to Mass Ave and east to Quincy St Before 1942, the entire rare book collection resided in a single room in Widener.

Says Herman W Liebert librarian emeritus of Yale's Binecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. "He [Bond] inherited a wonderful resource and had a very, very difficult act to follow, but he has lived up to the challenge[Houghton] is one of the finest collections in the world because ofWilliam Bond.

You will not find anyone in the field who has anything but praise forBond. who himself struggles valiantly for modesty when describing the institution he is leaving. He readily accepts a request for a tour,describing the series of upper floor display rooms which even diehard scholars reading downstairs rarely see.

"You won't find a collection like this anywhere else, "he says of the keats room, where more than two-thirds of the poet's letters and manuscripts are kept "That sounds like boasting, but you hit that a lot talking about Houghton or the Harvard Library."

Several of the ornately decorated displays remain locked and emptyof visitors because the library cannot afford the staff needed to keep them open Budget problems have become increasingly severe in recent years.Bond says as book prices and salary levels for skilled librarians have escalated taster than general inflation

The University operating on a financial system that makes all subdivisions responsible for their own income, has not stepped in to help.If Bond is frustrated by any aspect of his job, it is this situation and thedarkened rooms upstairs.

But a slight frown passes quickly as he describes the detail on an exactreplica of an 15th century English plaster ceiling in the Hyde Room, which houses a collection emphasizing the work of the Samuel Johnson. James Boswell circle. Books here and elsewhere will stand as Bond's permanent legacy-the brilliant acquisition he has made for Harvard.

He points to the portraits of famous literary figures on the walls,distinguishing between the originals and the careful reproductions."We know where the rest are," he says of those masterpieces Houghton lacks, adding without hesitation, "And I trust they will come to us eventually; like all other things it is a matter of time, but they will come."

Yen-Tsai Feng, librarian of Harvard College, describes Bond's success in bringing top collections to Harvard. "Often with donors it is his quietmanner, his deep knowledge and his caring for the books themselvesand the library in his charge "Feng adds, "It is also a gentle humor...thatis important in any career to succeed."

In appreciation of his work, Harvard has established a William H BondBook Fund which Bond himself neglects to bring up. "It is is very dear to his heart, I think," says feng, "but Mr. Bond is too modest to talk about it."No successor has been named to head Houghton, but a nationwide search inunder way.

Teacher as Well

Feng echos others in the field who stress Bond's skills as a teacherin addition to those as a curator. As with the library, he inherited fromWilliam Jackson a rather esoteric English department course English 296,"Descriptive and Analytical Bibliography." Bond is now Harvard's last professor of Bibliography, explaining that Eng. 296 still "emphasizes that a book can be seen as an artifact special in the way that something might be in the Peabody Museum." In the class, he adds, "we look at the type, the paper the ink, the binding it is a complete study."

"Bond has probably had even more impact as a teacher outside of the classroom. He conveys his love for the library to everyone around him, colleague say often providing the encouragement or the specific advice a scholar needs to push through a rigorous project.

"William Bond teachers with everything be does," Says Roger Stoddard,assistant librarian at Houghton "Someone with his experience with a collection can help a reader in ways that defy filing and catalogues."

"And Bond says he's sorry more people haven't experienced what he offers.Though the absolutely silent reading room (no pens allowed, only pencil's is usually in use he says."The Harvard faculty doesn't take as much advantage of the library as it might. Under graduates, however have wandered in with increasing regularity recently, he says, and now comprise about 15 percent of those who use facility.

In a farewell address to his co-workers this spring. Bond tried to express his determination to help others enjoy his life's work. He quotedfrom a speech given in 1822 by Joseph Green Cogswell, then librarian of Harvard Cogswell described the importance of a great library-one whichhas the book you need even if you are the only one who wants it for a hundred years.

Cogswell made specific reference to an extraordinary book in the Harvard collection Hearne's Acta Apostolorum, one of a total printing of 120volumes. Bond borrowed the example for his speech, but decided that it would be tun to find the book as well. His search in Widener ended successfully, as usual.

But the small, ornately bound volume yielded" a special electricshock," says Bond, turning it over in his hands. He discovered immediately that it was one of the books given to Harvard in the 1760s by Thomas Hollis V "That's why this has been a good career," says William Bond