But despite resistance to change among Harvard's researchers, the space shortage is so pressing, according to librarians, that must be solved soon--even if it means sacrificing some of the system's accessiblity.

"There is a grave, pressing, desperate concern about space...The library is in dire need," Feng says, adding, "there is an inescapable need to solve it in the short run of five to 10 years."

Finding an acceptable solution, however, is no simple task, whether or not it is a long-range one. "Ideally we would like to have [space], but do you keep on building? We are confined, you cannot expand forever," Feng says.

And in the meantime, University administrators assert that HOLLIS will be able to accommodate any new technology developed to help meet the rapidly expanding needs of Harvard's system.

"The HOLLIS catalogue, I think, is state-of-the-art from the perspective of a kind of massive, very large-use catalogue," Verba says.

"By that I mean a Boeing 747 is not state-of-the-art in anything--NASA does things that are much more fancy. But if you've got something that has to fly every day and carry hundreds and hundreds of passengers, it's almost always going to have proven technology that is somewhat older than what someone could imagine today," he adds.

And although Verba says other libraries have had automatic catalogue systems--like HOLLIS--ahead of Harvard, he attributes this to the size of the University's collection, which makes it harder to computerize. "We have a huge collection and therefore it's not only more difficult to do an automatic catalogue, but it's not the kind of decision you can make and then change," Verba says.

But library administrators acknowledge that the full installation of HOLLIS is behind schedule. Although University administrators originally said barcoding of Widener's volumes would be completed by this fall, library officials now say the research library's system will not be coded until the middle of next year.

Cole says Hilles and Lamont were denied funding for barcoding next year, leaving the job unfinished at least until the academic year beginning in the fall of 1990.

But even with HOLLIS's shortcomings, most say the new system has made the University's libraries more accessible to users and has improved Harvard's ability to organize its collection.

For example, Schlesinger Library Director Patricia M. King says the Radcliffe facility has particularly benefited from HOLLIS because many researchers--particulary undergraduates--were previously unaware of Schlesinger's resources.

Librarians, while touting the gains that HOLLIS has prompted in the past year, concede that new technology alone will not ease the vast library system's many problems.

And until a solution can be found, Shklar says, "keeping our head above water is all that we can do."