The costs of processing materials--that is, primarily, of selecting and cataloguing them--are a major problem. Unit costs tend to rise instead of fall, as a library grows larger. Growth means that the library must deal with publications in increasingly obscure subjects and languages, that its catalogues must become increasingly complicated, and that even the relatively simple process of circulating books grows more costly. It takes longer, for example, to re-shelve a book in stacks containing two million volumes than in stacks containing only a few thousand.
Library improvement, unlike improvement in most other parts of the University, is cumulative. Any innovation that improves the quality of a library's service is sure to entail costly demands for additional service.
For example, use of Widener continued at a high level even after the opening of Lamont, so that reductions in the Widener staff never became practicable.
Cataloguing in Arrears
Program donations were insufficient to meet even the current needs of the library. In 1962 lack of funds forced the suspension of the Harvard Library Bulletin, and cataloguing lies hopelessly in arrears because of a chronic staff shortage. A cut-back drastic enough to make present income sufficient would involve giving up something like half the collection, and closing a number of buildings. Harvard would have to abdicate its traditional library pre-eminence.
Even if the library had sufficient endowment to provide for satisfactory growth of its collection and physical plant, its income would still be too low to support an adequate staff.
Low Library Salaries
A staff of more than 380--more than one third of whom are classified as professional librarians--is required to operate the Harvard library. While it leads in Faculty salary scales, Harvard unfortunately has always lagged far behind many other institutions in library salaries. In 1957 starting salaries for library employees were $3,240 at the University, compared with $4,000 for a leading public library and more than $5,000 for the library of a Midwestern municipal university. And the program simply did not provide the endowment income necessary if Harvard is to raise its library salaries to a competitive figure.
Since World War II the Harvard Houses have labored under severe handicaps. The postwar growth from a total of 3,500 undergraduates to more than 4,400 has heavily overtaxed the present buildings. The seven undergraduate Houses in existence before 1956 were designed for about 1,800 occupants in all. The increase in enrollment had combined with the growing proportion of resident students to push 1100 more students into the Houses as the Program for Harvard College was launched. Claverly and Wigglesworth were pressed into service to house 310 of this total.
Quincy House was the first to be constructed of three undergraduate Houses provided for in the Program, and it siphoned off 350, but the Houses still contain 123 per cent of their pre-war quotas. A tenth House will allow almost complete deconversion, provided Harvard does not expand further before it is constructed.
At the beginning of the Program, the Yard dormitories were in even worse shape than the Houses. With 167 upperclassmen living in Wigglesworth, and with half of Weld occupied by administrative offices, 843 freshmen were crammed into living space designed for 557. Two freshman dormitories were purchased on Prescott Street (Hurlburt and Green- ough), and the Program called for two more to be built "in the vicinity of the Yard." In practice this objective was never met. A third dormitory, Pennypacker, was purchased and remodeled, but to date no construction of new facilities has taken place. Instead, the interiors of all 18th and 19th century dormitories were extensively rebuilt, while their exteriors remained intact. This method of change symbolizes the essential conservatism of the entire Program: it was an attempt to restore in present-day terms the standards of space and comfort which marked an earlier Harvard. Yet the effort at preservation has led to a transformation; presenting drama in the Loeb or teaching art in the Carpenter Center naturally produces pressure for higher; less-amateurish, standards of performance. A similar, although less sharp, pressure for excellence, is exerted by the other new buildings although Leverett Towers, with its huge population of cubicle-dwellers, has tended to de-personalize House life. In trying to meet the physical needs of the College, the Program has to some measure furnished new standards for its intellectual life. For any attempt to preserve relative standards now requires a raising of standards. This the Program has done.