Save the Books

Recently, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith wrote in his annual report that our vaunted library system will need to be reshaped with “a dramatically smaller base of resources.” While times are tough, the administration should be extremely reluctant to slash funds for this cornerstone of the university. During this period of budget contraction, cuts have necessarily been extended to many parts of the school, yet libraries are one of the sacrosanct areas of this institution that deserve preservation in particular.

Harvard’s library system is one of its greatest treasures, constituting the largest academic library in the word, with over 16.8 million holdings. This enormous system has been maintained on the cheap for the past decade with a budget that has stayed generally stagnant while the rest of the university’s expenditures have ballooned. According to English Department chair James T. Engell ’73, the staff increases in FAS over the last six years have been roughly equivalent to the size of the entire Harvard College Library staff. The director of the Harvard University Library system, Robert C. Darnton ’60, even said that the libraries are “being bled to death.” Acquisition rates have fallen precipitously as the prices of published material and periodicals have rapidly increased, and the Harvard College Library lost 100 staff positions this past summer.

A library system of this magnitude contains texts that might not exist elsewhere, preserving a unique part of the world’s accumulated knowledge. A system of such importance should be one of the last to face drastic budget cuts, especially considering its already dire financial condition.

While library funding should be preserved, the library system should look for efficiencies that can improve quality and save money wherever possible. As the task force led by University Provost Steven E. Hyman has noted, the current decentralized system forces Harvard libraries to bid against each other to acquire the same books. An effort to better coordinate services would hopefully result in savings without the loss of one of Harvard’s most important resources.

This university acquired its name in 1638 as a result of a bequest of 400 books from John Harvard. The spread and preservation of the written word has been essential to its mission ever since, and we must not allow tough economic times to damage this legacy.