Introduction to "Widener Library: Voices from the stacks" The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Carpenter, Kenneth E., and Richard F. Thomas. 1996. Introduction to "Widener Library: Voices from the stacks". Harvard Library Bulletin 6 (3), Fall 1995: 3-6. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42665397 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA 3 Introduction his assemblage of essays grows out of a chance, almost wistful remark by TDirector of the Harvard University Library Sidney Verba: "How does one make Widener Library's importance clear to those who do not already understand it?" Professor Verba made this comment at a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Committee on the Library, which he chairs. Then at a subsequent meet- ing he mentioned that one of the committee's members had given a very success- ful talk about the importance of Widener. Those meetings of the Library Committee usually take place in Wadsworth House, and so after the meeting, as we strolled back to Widener, we two, one a professor of classics and one a librarian who edits the HarvardLibrary Bulletin, continued to discuss the desirability and dif- ficulty of communicating Widener's importance to the larger community. To do so for some libraries is much easier. The Houghton Library and Harvard's other rare book libraries have, after all, many beautiful books, books printed five hundred years ago in the early days of the printing press, papyri, illuminated manu- scripts, letters by famous historical figures and by great writers and thinkers, origi- nal manuscripts of some of the greatest works of our civilization. It is almost inevitable that an educated person will be moved by the sight of such artifacts, and it is easy to understand that such are the stuff of scholarship. But the case for Widener is not so obvious. Much of the material is, after all, quite ordinary and common, even if present in extraordinary profusion. We felt that rather than giving an account of Widener's holdings the challenge was to de- scribe the processes of scholarship. How does it happen that from the ordinary new knowledge is created? How, in fact, do scholars work in the stacks of Widener? Does it really matter that so much is on those long rows of shelves, capable of be- ing gathered together in a break between class and department meeting? Do fac- ulty really browse, and, if so, how is that capacity for browsing important? These and other questions were ones that we hoped Harvard scholars, emulat- ing historian Michael McCormick's talk, would answer. 1 They have done so in these essays, many of them written by members of the Library Committee. Yet, it is not just information that these essays convey to the reader. They also reveal that these scholars are deeply attached to the library. "After all," said one faculty mem- ber, "I virtually live here." Faculty members with a study in Widener (or Pusey) can use the library at any hour of the day or night, every day of the year; but no one, not the Roy E. Larsen 1 In addition to writing to each member of the Library the middle of a busy academic semester is itself a sign of Committee, we sent letters to fifty other faculty members the importance with which they view Widener. in a variety of disciplines. That so many wrote essays in 4 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN Librarian of Harvard College, not the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library, and not the most senior member of the faculty, has a key. Anyone wishing to be in the library after normal library hours must record in a book, in advance, the time of entry. At the appointed hour, a guard, often uniformed, will then open the heavy metal door at the Massachusetts Avenue entrance to the building. With what a feeling of awe, what a sense of privi- lege, does a study holder enter into these walls encompassing about 3.5 million volumes! The I 3 5 scholars who have this kind of access to Widener are among the most fortunate in the world--some would say the "most fortunate." In hours, a day or two at most, they can track down-and hold in their hands-almost any work that might be needed, as the experience of these scholars tell us. This combination of a library that has the books and also provides ready access to them means even that Harvard scholars tend to spend most of the summer in the vicinity of Harvard Square, and graduate students are advised to do all possible research here before going off to work on manuscript materials housed elsewhere. And, of course, many scholars from elsewhere spend their summers or even the spring break close to Widener. One such swallow on his yearly migrations always returns to the same carrel on B West. To read the prefaces of the output of American university presses is to run across again and again acknowledgements to Harvard and to the libraries of Harvard. Harvard faculty are, after all, highly productive. So are many of those who wrote dissertations here. And so are those who come to Harvard as visiting professors, as fellows of the Warren Center, as Mellon fellows, as Bunting fellows, and so on and so on. Leading scholars from this country and from around the world come to Harvard sooner or later for an extended stay, and consequently Widener perme- ates American scholarship. To speak about the widespread impact of Widener comes close to suggesting that importance can be measured; and, of course, to some extent it can. It matters that a lot of articles and books are primarily researched here. But even if we were to count references in prefaces, or provide statistics on the number of borrowers, or on the books they borrow, all of those measurements would lack what these essays show, namely, that a great library generates creativity in ways the defy quan- tification. A great library is the artist's brushes and paints and canvas; the musician's instru- ment; the sculptor's chisel and stone; the cabinetmaker's wood, saw and hammer, glue and nails, and varnish. The analogies are apt because a library like Widener consists of the ordinary, but so well chosen and in such profusion that out of the common and ordinary, the new can be created. Here are the tools of the scholar. Artists and craftsmen know that the quality of the tools is critical. Just as they care greatly, so do the scholars who wrote these essays, for on the quality of the library rests their lives as scholars and as teachers. With that caring comes as well concern that the library of the future be an institu- tion of the same quality. Such concern stems, it must be acknowledged, from the fact that efforts to maintain the essential greatness of the library have over the re- cent decades also been accompanied with losses: the Widener classification scheme abandoned, more than one catalog to consult (until retrospective conversion is completed), compact shelving that limits browsing in some parts of the library, Introduction 5 microfilming that sometimes gives the coup de grace to objects while preserving texts, and, perhaps above all, offsite storage of material that will drastically threaten browsability, particularly in the absence of satisfactory electronic browsability. What is more, change will continue, as we all know. Even when as in the case of the retrospective conversion of Harvard's catalogs, all welcome the change, it is also clear that it comes at a cost. Those costs-as for electronic products-will also increase. Moreover, natural cost reduction in print materials will not soon offset costs for electronic materials, for the output of printed products continues to in- crease. And the fear exists that the resources will be insufficient to maintain the relatively comprehensive collecting of printed scholarly books and journals as well as to acquire the increasing quantity of needed electronic materials. At the same time that concern exists over change and the costs of change, it is probably accurate to state that everyone recognizes that the library must partici- pate in the technological changes underway. Indeed, classicists and medievalists have been among those humanists who have most benefited from putting texts in electronic form, as Richard Marius indicates. The ideal situation would be that the Harvard Library continue to excel in holdings of and access to all kinds of material, in whatever format. That would mean a position analogous to the situation with microforms, for Harvard has rich holdings of microfilms and microfiche that have been acquired without obvious diminution of the print collection. Perhaps another relevant analogy is with the Harvard Library of the I 8 50s. Then the largest in the United States, the library in Gore Hall had, in spite of its size, endowed book funds generating an income of only a few hundred dollars a year. The size had resulted from occasional purchases of collections and from a steady stream of gifts of material from individuals. Then, in 18 58 there appeared the Re- port ef the Committee ef the Association cifthe alumni cifHarvard College, appointed to take into considerationthe state cifthe CollegeLibrary, in accordancewith a vote cifthe As- sociationpassed at the annual meeting,July 16, 185 7.