Even the best-laid plans can go astray.

That's what University librarians are finding out, as they finish up the first academic year in which the new $3 million Harvard OnLine Library Information System--HOLLIS--was implemented.

Despite the hoopla surrounding HOLLIS's official unveiling last September and an ambitious schedule for future improvements, professors and administrators say the introduction of the new technology will not do much to improve the impending crisis in Harvard's library system, the largest private collection in the world.

Because the University's rapidly expanding collection can no longer be housed entirely in on-campus facilities, the resulting financial and logistical problems have put librarians in a quandary which they say HOLLIS does little to resolve.

The new computer system, which currently consists of a computerized card catalogue and various administrative functions, has changed the way the Harvard libraries are used, though.

"HOLLIS has had a tremendous effect on us," says Heather E. Cole, head of Hilles and Lamont libraries. Circulation has increased 25 percent over last year, and she attributes the growth to HOLLIS's introduction.

"It's got to be because of HOLLIS," Cole says.

But with success has come a new set of dilemmas. Because of the higher circulation, Cole says Lamont Library will be forced to relocate or shrink its reserve collection to make room for the increase in books needed.

Almost all of the volumes in Lamont and Hilles are kept in the buildings themselves because the undergraduate libraries can simply remove books from their shelves if demand for them wanes, Cole says. "We can take volumes out of the collection because they can be found elsewhere at Harvard," she says.

But most other University libraries must use the New England Depository Library or the Harvard Depository--storage facilities located miles off campus--for their overflow. And, although professors can recall a book from the warehouse within 24 hours, many faculty members complain that they have lost valuable aspects of their scholarship with the departure of whole library sections from The Yard.

"Just having books is no good if you can't use them," says Larsen Librarian of Harvard College Yen-Tsai Feng, who oversees Widener Library's more than three million books. Widener keeps more than 150,000 of its volumes in the depositories.

The University has long used its extensive library resources to attract internationally known scholars to Cambridge for research. Containing about 11 million volumes in 98 libraries throughout the campus, Harvard's system is anchored by Widener, the largest of the University's libraries and the only research library of its size whose stacks are totally accessible.

So Harvard's librarians have been trying to come up with a solution to the space crunch in an attempt to maintain the University's standing as a preeminent research facility.

One solution has been for departments to form collections of their own, using their own budgets and office space. But Cole says the growth of department libraries contradicts the stated University goal of having an integrated collection.

"The whole effort of constructing Widener was to centralize [the libraries]," Cole says, adding that a preferable solution to the space problem would require a library annex which is in proximity to Widener.