Library Donation Will Fund Websites

A pair of historians have donated $5 million to Harvard University Library’s Open Collections Program (OCP), a burgeoning effort to make hard-to-find research materials and unique primary sources freely available over the Internet.

OCP will use the gift to create three subject-based websites by 2007 that are similar to an in-depth online database of digitized materials called “Women Working, 1870-1930,” which it launched in 2002.

Materials which are included in the new sites will be linked from the online HOLLIS catalog, so when users stumble over a book that is digitally available during research, they can simply click on an icon to access it.

OCP Director Thomas J. Michalak said the online materials might ease the scramble for titles on reserve. A large class of 180, he said, will now be able to access assigned readings online, all at the same time, without waiting in queues or ending up unprepared.

Michalak intends to not only work closely with Harvard professors to incorporate OCP resources into class curriculums, but to publicize the online collections to the general public who would not otherwise have access to the University’s rare materials.

The donation, given to OCP by Harvard PhD recipients Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, comes in conjunction with a grant renewal from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which contributed $1.25 million in 2002 to the “Women Working” project. While the two funds will not officially be combined, they will ultimately go towards the same three projects.

According to Michalak, the topics of the three new sites have not yet been decided, but an executive committee has been formed to explore the options.

“The donors expect us to tackle at least three broad topics in the next two years,” Michalak said. “There will be a process to work with the faculty to decide what the best thing is to do.”

Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library Sidney Verba ’53 intends to solicit suggestions from the faculty before presenting the donors with possible topics.

“The donor has interests in things like globalization, and we would like to do something that has global impact,” Michalak said, adding that the scope of potential topics is not limited to just social sciences and history. Indeed, he said, the three new websites could take on anything from technology to medicine.

At least one of the three topics will be chosen by late fall, Michalak said, and a faculty adviser will ideally be assigned to guide the process of material selection and research.

“Women Working,” meanwhile, is still under construction, but the digitization and transfer of the remaining books and photos will be completed by October, according to Michalak.

At that point, “Women Working” will have consolidated countless digitized resources culled from Harvard’s libraries and museums, boasting an online collection of more than 2,200 books and pamphlets, 1,000 photographs and 10,000 pages of various manuscripts.

The three new sites may turn out to be even more extensive, particularly with the help of the recent donation.

Yet, both Michalak and Verba emphasized that the OCP websites are not meant to replace the printed word, but to supplement it.

“There are two kinds of information—the kind that was born digital, and then there are the books and journals that over time can be digitized,” Verba said. “I’m convinced that one of the big jobs of the faculty is to make sure that it understands and its students understand that there’s information beyond Google.”

University President Lawrence H. Summers expressed his enthusiasm for the project, saying that Rausing and Baldwin’s gift “represents a visionary and dramatic step in the University’s efforts to share its outstanding collections with scholars and students around the world.”

“Intellectually curious people from every corner of the globe will have free access to such information, for the benefit of their studies, their interests and their work,” he said.

—Staff writer Leon Neyfakh can be reached at neyfakh@fas.harvard.edu.