The ideal answer, at least in the minds of some faculty members, is to appropriate a University owned lot across from Lamont, the former site of the Gulf station. Last spring, Harvard Real Estate acquired the lot and announced plans to build a hotel on it. But last December the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) passed a resolution calling on the University to use the space for some academic purpose--including a library.

Since then, FAS has purchased the Gulf station site from Harvard Real Estate and is currently deciding how best to use it.

"We could use [the Gulf site] for the library," Feng says, adding that although she does not view "the space crunch [as] the most fundamental problem for scholarship,...it's the most pressing."

And, according to Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba '53, who oversees Harvard's library system, "a very strong argument could be made as to why it would be good to have an additional library in that corner of the Yard--[the location of the Gulf site]."

But Verba says he would rather find a location which could be connected to Widener through an underground tunnel, much like the one connecting the research library with Pusey and Lamont libraries.

"My own preference would be that, if funds could be found for [building a new library], the Gulf site is not the best site. I would much prefer something in the vicinity of Pusey, 17 Quincy St., Lamont--in there if one could squeeze something in. It would be much much better to have the library a continuation of Widener, in the sense that Pusey is a continuation of Widener."

But Cowles Professor of Government Judith N. Shklar, who sits on the faculty committee which oversees the libraries, says she "would take the Gulf site, if we couldn't get [the other locations]."

"We always need more space," Shklar says. The use of the Gulf site for a library, she says, is "not out to the question."

Another suggestion that has been offered to ameliorate library space shortage is to make Widener's stacks closed, leaving more room for books. But Feng says this is an unacceptable solution because a researcher's ability to browse the stacks is a valuable asset.

Since "Widener is one of the largest research libraries that is totally accessible, I would be most reluctant to kill that one thing that makes us uniquely superior," Feng says.

And Verba agrees, saying, "it certainly is not as good if the material is not at your fingertips in a library that you can browse through the way you can in Widener."

The real problem, according to Cole, is that some professors are traditionalists, wedded to the old methods of research and resistant to the introduction of modern technology. Widener's floor plan is the sacred cow of the Harvard research establishment, Cole says, and faculty are reluctant to tamper with it.

"They're concerned that their library world is about to crumble," Cole says of the faculty members.

For instance, Shklar says, when the Widener catagories were shifted to the Library of Congress system, many FAS researchers balked. But, she adds, "it had to happen."

And Cole says that when she met with some faculty about the new HOLLIS system, they "weren't concerned with subject searches, they wanted to know, would I please tell them if an 'x' Widener class would be moved."