Room for Growth

It's a common phenomenon among toddlers. You rarely play with one of your toys--until another kid tries to take it away. Suddenly, you can't do without it.

A library, of course, is not a toy. But the students who oppose the proposed changes in Lamont have acted disappointingly juvenile in recent weeks.

Students' complaints are motivated by the feeling that undergraduate library space is scarce, while faculty and graduate student study carrels abound.

Yet during most of the year, Lamont's first floor--not the entrance floor, but the floor two floors below the entrance floor--is like a ghost town. Students scarcely touch the tables and chairs, opting for Lamont's cozier upper floors for their scant studying needs.

Only during exam period--when more students finally decide to crack open a few books--does life appear among the ugly wood paneling. But it's safe to say that more students use government documents on a regular basis throughout the semester than cram on Lamont's first floor during reading and exam period.

Government documents and microforms currently occupy a dank, cramped space in Lamont's sub-sub-basement. Twenty-five years ago, gov does were temporarily placed in this library underworld. Misplaced University priorities left it there for more than a decade.

A trek to this subterranean archive is full of inconveniences; the documents stored there don't fit well, the equipment is crowded too close together, and often all of the machines are occupied.

The proposed gov docs section would be spacious and airy with high ceilings and actual windows. More importantly, it would boast improved access, more equipment and better organization. It would make a host of valuable University resources more accessible to undergraduates.

The new gov docs department wouldn't even take up all of the first floor. No stacks would move. Only the open reading area would disappear.

Moreover, Harvard has a number of underused libraries (Tozzer Library, Robinson Hall's history library, Emerson Hall's Robbins Library); it's just a matter of knowing where to find them. And the Committee on Undergraduate Education is contemplating increasing the number of late-night study spaces.

Rather than whining about a lost Lamont, students should think about sharing--a major component of most nursery school curricula.

That's not to say that Larsen Librarian of Harvard College Richard De Gennaro has done everything right. De Gennaro should have consulted students at every step of his planning process. Instead, he sprang elaborate, complete plans on surprised students and faculty members. He had commissioned blueprints for the changes long before he brought the proposal before either faculty or students.

That kind of behavior smacks of sneakiness, and is bound to make people defensive. De Gennaro should realize that building a consensus along the way makes people far more amenable to one's proposals.

Cooperation. It's another one of those things we learned before kindergarten.