At the end of last year, the FAS had raised 67 percent of its $965 million goal. The College Library (which includes Widener, Lamont, Yenching, Pusey, Hilles and all other undergraduate libraries) had raised only 22 percent, $17 million, of its $78 million goal.

None of this $17 million was earmarked for the $28 million needed to renovate and install climate control in Widener, according to Leigh Macintosh, an employee in the Development Office.

Harvard officials involved in fundraising say that as a fundraiser's rule of thumb, libraries are difficult to raise money for.

"There's a general law around fund raising that the library is everyone's second favorite part of the University," says University Librarian Sidney Verba, who chairs the Library Committee.

Renovating the Widener building, in terms of projects a donor might want to fund, is a lot less glamorous than constructing a new building.

A climate control system is "not a sexy thing for a donor," says Mellon Professor of History Edward L. Keenan.

But the Development Office's fundraising brochure for the library paints the needs in graphic terms.

"Anyone who has discovered an aging newspaper in an attic can vividly picture the condition of many of the books in the Harvard Library," the brochure says.

Others contend that Harvard's difficulty raising money for the libraries has resulted from a lack of emphasis on this area of the campaign.

"I don't think it's difficult to raise money for the library...perhaps there have been some other priorities in the campaign, but I'm certain that those people close to Harvard recognize the importance of the libraries and are going to be very supportive," says John K. Castle, who personally encouraged many of this weekend's guests to attend and who has been a major donor himself.

"Now that many of the other projects of the campaign have been totally or particularly taken care of...the library is a high priority," says Professor of Greek and Latin Richard F. Thomas.

President Neil L. Rudenstine says he has long been aware of the "brittle books" problem and has been involved with finding ways to solve it since he worked on a library committee at Princeton in 1978.

"We'll find a way because it has to be done," Rudenstine says.

The Problem

While Harvard struggles to find money to install a climate control system, much of the Widener collection continues to decay because of the way paper was milled beginning in the 1800s up until the 1950s.