And that type of storage would be inconvenient for researchers as well, Feng says, adding that she is particularly proud of the fact that Widener is the only library of its size with open stacks: "I like to call this browsing feature the eighth wonder of the modern wold, and we'd like to preserve this special feature as long as we can."
Feng says she expects a change involving some tradeoff among the options by 1986, but adds that while each can contribute to finding more room for Harvard's comes, they all have certain disadvantages.
Preserving the vast collection also occupies a major part of the Library's concerns. "The danger to me, particularly, is that for a large and old collection like ours, it's hard to detect what's quietly deteriorating in the stacks," Feng says.
One person in total agreement is Sidney Verba '53, who has just taken over Handlin's post as director of the system. "All of a sudden," he says, "I'm lying awake at night worrying about the fact that the books in Widener are rotting. It's a very serious, expensive issue."
The University employs a full-time staff, led by Doris Frietag, book conservator in the Harvard University library, for just the cleaning and repairing of old books. Harvard has received about $1 million in government grants over the last four years to microfilm endangered material, and to date more than 10 million deteriorating pages have been preserved on film. And in the University Archives, the process has been used to preserve more than 250,000 photographs.
Widener, in particular, is in the midst of significant renovation designed to create a more conducive environment for book preservation. In 1982, an anonymous donor gave the Harvard Campaign $2 million to install a new copper roof on Widener. Workers will begin replacing many Widener windows--but not all, because of fiscal constraints--with double-glazed units in preparation for installing air conditioning and humilty control. And the building's electrical wiring--geared to a 1915 burden of just larger not electric typewriters or computer terminals--also needs substantial work.
Computers are also gradually coming into the system, with a computerized acquisition system going on-line next year. But "we are slow, I don't mind admitting, in plunging in," Feng says. "We are very conservative in converting things to computer use. We have to be prudent because we are so old, large and complex. We'd rather let other institutions do the pioneering and get the glory--we like to learn from their mistakes."
Harvard began putting its card catalogue on a computer database in 1976, and created the Distributable Union Catalogue (DUC), a set of microfiches covering all books bought since the mid-70s. About 130 stations--with fiches and readers--have been installed around the system, but Feng says that while Harvard could completely computerize the system and have researchers call up catalogue information on a computer screen, officials feel the convenience doesn't justify the expense.
In addition to the arduous task of typing in information on each of the 11 million volumes, computers would cost money every time they are used--while the DUC stations' only ongoing expense is for the light with which to read the fiches and for replacing damaged materials. Feng also says. "We have been very happily surprised about how good people would be with the fiche," and that the system has held up far better under intensive use than anyone had expected. Other areas where computers might be called is to help include the reserve books system, which is "growing and needs a computer assist," according to Feng.
The Harvard Campaign has made aid to the library a major part of its fundraising effort. In 1962, when the system comprised four libraries, endowment provided 65 percent of the cost of buying books, and the Faculty only had to contribute two percent.
But the 11-library system in 1982 could only count on 36 percent of its book-buying budget coming from endowment, and the Faculty had to give a whopping 46 percent. During the same period, book costs have outstripped the Consumer Price Index by more than 80 percent, library salaries have fallen in real terms, and the need for preservation work has grown more desperate.
But the University now gets income from more than 600 named book-buying funds, is seeking more, and recently established several named endowment funds for which it seeks donors. At the top are a $5 million bibliographers program, a $3 million microforms center, a $2 million preservation center, and a host of other funds to support senior librarians' salaries, compact shelving, curators, and other goals.
In his final annual report as director of the University Library, Handlin candidly acknowledges that the centrifugal force generated by Harvard's system being composed of dozens of decentralized libraries poses a major threat to effective, integrated improvement. A University Library Council, headed by the president, supervised the whole system from 1867 to 1909, but had little effect on daily administration and failed to achieve its goal of maintaining direction over all of Harvard's libraries.
As a result, the governing Corporation directed in 1880 that all books, except those for the Law School, should be bought through the Harvard College Library and that books donated to Harvard be catalogued through the College Library. But that arrangement quickly broke down--and a century later, Handlin says, "the basic situation remains unchanged. The absolute autonomy of each individual unit sometimes creates an infuriating impasse at the center, which is armed only with the instrument of moral suasion."
Each library manages its own collections, but some coordination has been achieved through the Union Catalogue, and Handlin says that the computerized acquisition system will further promote collaboration and centralized management.
What library officials and scholars agree on, a heart, is that Harvard's reputation as a scholarship university stands directly on the strength of its research library, and that the problems of space and preservation are acute. The size and scope of the system offer tremendous bait to professors being courted by Harvard, Feng says, and scholars here concur.
"The wonderful thing about the place is that it has source material on so many topics and historical figures," says Porter University Professor W. Jackson Bate '39, who says he has been using Widener since he was a 17-year-old stack attendant and knows the nine-story building "blindfolded."
But he adds, "It has become increasingly difficult to keep the Library up to par. If the Library doesn't receive support to alleviate some of its major problems, it will be extremely difficult to recruit University faculty in the future. Just as a scientist needs a modern laboratory, so must a scholar have a library of quality in which to carry out his work."
"Widener is Harvard's distinction and pride," says Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara V. Tuchman '33. "Yet, a library can be no better than its program of collecting, which must be alert, uninterrupted, and unfailing, and--needless--to say--reliably funded."