Traffic in the Stacks

Harvard added about 160,000 volumes to its almost 11-million-volume library system last year Or, to put it another way, assuming that the average book is about an inch wide, Harvard added about two and a half shelf-miles of books to the University Library.

Last year was hardly a profligate year for book-buying--in fact, the library has grown about two miles every year for the last decade. And that vast growth is posing severe problems for a system already light for space and pressed for adequate cash.

"We, at Harvard, are almost alone in this country in the potentiality for guarding out cultural heritage in our books," says Oscar Handlin, Loeb University Professor and former director of the University Library, "so that the responsibility affects not only this institution but the national scholarly community as a whole."

That powerful sense of mission poses certain imperatives for the system, and while the University's commitment to maintaining the best possible scholarly library insures that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and other faculties are generous to the system, it also places a heavy responsibility on its managers.

"We're blessed with a tremendous heritage," agrees Yen-Tsau Feng, who, as Larsen Librarian of Harvard College, is the University official perhaps most intimately involved with the day-to-day problems of running the system. "We have inherited a lot, but that poses a burden because we have to keep it up."

Harvard's library, which employs about 13 specialists in different areas who determine which books will be purchased, operates according to three basic principles, Feng says: to build on the system's strengths, to collect in response to curriculum needs, and to recognize "the broad scope of human knowledge that any self-respecting institution should be committed to."

But at the same time, "Research needs are not a matter of current interest," she says, noting that Harvard seeks not only to add books which are needed now, but books that might not be needed until 50 years from now. "I always like to use a phrase that's a Chinese expression: learning is like sailing against the tide--if you don't advance, you're retreating," Feng says.

The two fundamental problems confronting Harvard's library fall into two categories: space and preservation. Space poses a problem because it can restrict Harvard's ability to stay on the vanguard of scholarship, and preservation because once those books are acquired, they begin to deteriorate on the shelves.

In Widener Library alone, librarians are struggling to find room for the 50,000 volumes added each year to the 66-year-old centerpiece of the system. At three million volumes--already stretching the limits of Widener's capacity--the building holds about half of the Harvard College Library, which makes up more than 40 percent of the whole University system.

Widener is constantly readjusting its collection to squeeze out more space, but officials are considering three major plans to create a long-term solution to the space crisis.

* Compact shelving, which involves installing new hardware. Stacks are put on rollers with just enough maneuvering room to permit access to one-stack at a time. The Law School's 1.4 million volume Langdell Library has been able to install compact, shelving successfully and came the burden there, as has the 160,000 volume Tozzer Library in the Peabody Museum.

But compact shelving is impossible in much of the Harvard College Library, first because the shelves in Widener act as supports for the floors above them, and in other cases, because the structures can't take any more weight.

* Miniaturization, which involves microfilming old books and buying new collections on film. Harvard already does some microfilming and purchases new volumes it doesn't have in paper form. But while it can ease the space crunch, microfilming also demands new space for reading rooms and film viewers. And, says Feng, "not everything is conducive to or a good candidate for microfilming."

* Warehousing books somewhere outside Cambridge, which is the most radical and currently least feasible option. With costs much lower 15 or 20 miles away, a remote storage building would greatly cut expenses over the long haul, but require a large initial cost which the library may not be able to afford right now.

In addition, remote storage would mean adding messengers and more staff to a system which now employs 200 professionals and $26 support personnel in Boston, Cambridge, Washington--for the Dumbarton Gultz library--and Florence, Italy, site of Harvard's Vilin I. Tatti Renaissance studies center.

And that type of storage would be inconvenient for researchers as well, Feng says, adding that she is particularly proud of the fact that Widener is the only library of its size with open stacks: "I like to call this browsing feature the eighth wonder of the modern wold, and we'd like to preserve this special feature as long as we can."

Feng says she expects a change involving some tradeoff among the options by 1986, but adds that while each can contribute to finding more room for Harvard's comes, they all have certain disadvantages.

Preserving the vast collection also occupies a major part of the Library's concerns. "The danger to me, particularly, is that for a large and old collection like ours, it's hard to detect what's quietly deteriorating in the stacks," Feng says.

One person in total agreement is Sidney Verba '53, who has just taken over Handlin's post as director of the system. "All of a sudden," he says, "I'm lying awake at night worrying about the fact that the books in Widener are rotting. It's a very serious, expensive issue."

The University employs a full-time staff, led by Doris Frietag, book conservator in the Harvard University library, for just the cleaning and repairing of old books. Harvard has received about $1 million in government grants over the last four years to microfilm endangered material, and to date more than 10 million deteriorating pages have been preserved on film. And in the University Archives, the process has been used to preserve more than 250,000 photographs.

Widener, in particular, is in the midst of significant renovation designed to create a more conducive environment for book preservation. In 1982, an anonymous donor gave the Harvard Campaign $2 million to install a new copper roof on Widener. Workers will begin replacing many Widener windows--but not all, because of fiscal constraints--with double-glazed units in preparation for installing air conditioning and humilty control. And the building's electrical wiring--geared to a 1915 burden of just larger not electric typewriters or computer terminals--also needs substantial work.

Computers are also gradually coming into the system, with a computerized acquisition system going on-line next year. But "we are slow, I don't mind admitting, in plunging in," Feng says. "We are very conservative in converting things to computer use. We have to be prudent because we are so old, large and complex. We'd rather let other institutions do the pioneering and get the glory--we like to learn from their mistakes."

Harvard began putting its card catalogue on a computer database in 1976, and created the Distributable Union Catalogue (DUC), a set of microfiches covering all books bought since the mid-70s. About 130 stations--with fiches and readers--have been installed around the system, but Feng says that while Harvard could completely computerize the system and have researchers call up catalogue information on a computer screen, officials feel the convenience doesn't justify the expense.

In addition to the arduous task of typing in information on each of the 11 million volumes, computers would cost money every time they are used--while the DUC stations' only ongoing expense is for the light with which to read the fiches and for replacing damaged materials. Feng also says. "We have been very happily surprised about how good people would be with the fiche," and that the system has held up far better under intensive use than anyone had expected. Other areas where computers might be called is to help include the reserve books system, which is "growing and needs a computer assist," according to Feng.

The Harvard Campaign has made aid to the library a major part of its fundraising effort. In 1962, when the system comprised four libraries, endowment provided 65 percent of the cost of buying books, and the Faculty only had to contribute two percent.

But the 11-library system in 1982 could only count on 36 percent of its book-buying budget coming from endowment, and the Faculty had to give a whopping 46 percent. During the same period, book costs have outstripped the Consumer Price Index by more than 80 percent, library salaries have fallen in real terms, and the need for preservation work has grown more desperate.

But the University now gets income from more than 600 named book-buying funds, is seeking more, and recently established several named endowment funds for which it seeks donors. At the top are a $5 million bibliographers program, a $3 million microforms center, a $2 million preservation center, and a host of other funds to support senior librarians' salaries, compact shelving, curators, and other goals.

In his final annual report as director of the University Library, Handlin candidly acknowledges that the centrifugal force generated by Harvard's system being composed of dozens of decentralized libraries poses a major threat to effective, integrated improvement. A University Library Council, headed by the president, supervised the whole system from 1867 to 1909, but had little effect on daily administration and failed to achieve its goal of maintaining direction over all of Harvard's libraries.

As a result, the governing Corporation directed in 1880 that all books, except those for the Law School, should be bought through the Harvard College Library and that books donated to Harvard be catalogued through the College Library. But that arrangement quickly broke down--and a century later, Handlin says, "the basic situation remains unchanged. The absolute autonomy of each individual unit sometimes creates an infuriating impasse at the center, which is armed only with the instrument of moral suasion."

Each library manages its own collections, but some coordination has been achieved through the Union Catalogue, and Handlin says that the computerized acquisition system will further promote collaboration and centralized management.

What library officials and scholars agree on, a heart, is that Harvard's reputation as a scholarship university stands directly on the strength of its research library, and that the problems of space and preservation are acute. The size and scope of the system offer tremendous bait to professors being courted by Harvard, Feng says, and scholars here concur.

"The wonderful thing about the place is that it has source material on so many topics and historical figures," says Porter University Professor W. Jackson Bate '39, who says he has been using Widener since he was a 17-year-old stack attendant and knows the nine-story building "blindfolded."

But he adds, "It has become increasingly difficult to keep the Library up to par. If the Library doesn't receive support to alleviate some of its major problems, it will be extremely difficult to recruit University faculty in the future. Just as a scientist needs a modern laboratory, so must a scholar have a library of quality in which to carry out his work."

"Widener is Harvard's distinction and pride," says Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara V. Tuchman '33. "Yet, a library can be no better than its program of collecting, which must be alert, uninterrupted, and unfailing, and--needless--to say--reliably funded."Oscar Handlin