In fact, the entryway adopted the carpeted, fifth-floor Farnsworth Room as their second home.

"Before people started to discover [the room], we'd lay down on the floor four or five at a time, all in a row [and sleep]," he says.

Widener Library is named after Harry Elkins Widener, who died aboard the Titanic in 1912.

His mother then donated money to the college to build a library in his honor, with three stipulations: that no stone, brick or mortar in the structure be changed, that every Harvard undergraduate pass a swim test and that a memorial room be built and supplied with fresh roses every day.

The only stipulation not upheld was the swimming requirement, dropped in the late 1970s because it was deemed discriminatory against physically disabled students.

Promises Kept

Some traditions are semi-eternal, however.

Yesterday, close to a dozen fresh, red carnations--which replaced the roses when they became too expensive--sat atop Harry Widener's desk in the memorial room.

And when it became necessary to connect Widener to the Houghton-Pusey-Lamont complex, the University kept its promise to Mrs. Widener and took out a window--moving neither brick nor stone nor mortar--to build a bridge between Widener and Houghton.

According to a Crimson Key guide yesterday afternoon, Widener is the hub of the world's largest private library system, which has more than 100 separate libraries across the globe.

Widener itself, according to the guide, contains an astonishing five miles of books.

"It's incredibly large," she says.

Some students say the size of the library alone, not to mention the perplexing north-south-east-west directions and the two separate cataloguing systems, can be intimidating.

"I think it could be thinner. It's much too wide," says one Leverett sophomore. "Widener is confusing; it's not organized. It doesn't know what it wants to say. It's just there."

Even Cort, a Widener employee, admits that during his college years, he avoided the marble and brick monument.