It's tight all over

As Harvard's library system struggles with space, preservation and computerization, university libraries across the country face the same problems. While none are anywhere near as large as Harvard's--which, with 11 million volumes, is the second largest in North America after the Library of Congress--most are farther along in using computers and better able to solve the space crunch.

Yale, for example, opened its new Mudd Library a year and a half ago, and moved one million volumes there from its central Sterling Library. With eight million volumes in the system altogether, and four million in Sterling until the big move, the central building already held more that Yale expected it could, according to the university librarian, Rutherford D. Rogers.

Mudd Library features taller stacks with narrower aisles, a big space saver, and Yale has also installed compact shelving in its Divinity School library. But Mudd can only take another 500,000 books, which isn't enough to solve the space problem in the rest of its various buildings.

Yale also features a snazzy new computerized checkout system, which uses computer codes similar to those on supermarket packages. Before starting up the system in 1982, the university installed the codes on all 175,000 books in its version of Lamont Library, the undergraduate intensive-use library.

The codes are attached to books in Sterling as they are withdrawn, and Rogers says only about 40 percent of the volumes brought to the circulation desk need to have codes installed. So far, the number of books in Sterling with computer codes runs in five figures, according to Rogers.

While installing the codes is a continuing expense, Yale expects the process to pay for itself. The library staff has already been reduced by about six or eight people through attrition. Moreover, the computer automatically prepares overdue notices, collects fines and prevents delinquent borrowers from taking out more books by electronically jinxing their cards.

The directors of Duke University's 3.2 million volume system plan to add a new building for all science books or possibly a storage building on the Durham. N.C. campus. Most of its books--about two million--are in the major Perkins Library, but Duke has begun building compact storage facilities for science volumes such as old academic journals, and has moved an initial 5000 volumes into the compact shelving.

Along with nearby North Carolina State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke will start up a computerized catalogue in August. It uses a database now for its acquisitions and plans to create facilities for public access to its catalogue are under way.

But the Ivy League leader in compact shelving definitely seems to be Princeton, which last spring added a second annex library with compact shelving to hold 500,000 books. The newer annex, in the basement of Fine Hall, the mathematics building, complements the now half-full 400,000 volume capacity Smith Library, which is located four miles away from the main campus.

Princeton librarian Glen Odell says that "space is a constant crisis here as everywhere." The school's main building, Firestone Library, is about 85 percent full, which Odell says means that librarians are constantly having to readjust shelf space for new books. But Princeton is one of the smaller of the major research libraries, with just over 3.6 million volumes.

Both Stanford and the University of Texas at Austin, such with 5 million volume libraries, are suffering space woes as well. Stanford needs to build or lease more than three miles of additional shelves by 1986 to cope with its expansion, and at UT, even after adding a huge new storage building in 1977, the campus needs another spot to warehouse books.

The Palo Alto, Calif, school now enjoys a totally computerized card catalogue system known as SOCRATES, and UT hopes to phase in a similar system next year. "I think that probably within one year we'll have some small part of it available," says a UT library official. "In my mind, Harvard's is the example of how it should be done--you build up your database first and get all holdings into a sensible format like the Distributable Union Catalogue, and then you figure out how to make it accessible."