The rotary phone and the mimeograph have charted its path, but the typewriter is putting up a fight.

Sprinkled about the campus in various houses and libraries, the vestigial office tool still maintains a subtle presence on Harvard's campus.

Many students, buoyed by a desire to put their best face forward on applications for graduate schools, fellowships and grants, say they have no choice but to rely on the technological dinosaur, dwarfed as it is by the advances of the computer generation.

But students also say years of heavy use and neglect have taken their toll on the College's handful of public typewriters, leading some to purchase their own typewriters and forcing the rest to make do.

The College Heard Clacking

According to Suzanne G. Kemple, associate librarian and head of reference for Hilles Library, the library purchase a new typewriter for the first time since 1985.

Kemple says the five typewriters that Hilles maintains in its first-floor typing room do sustain heavy use: since students must check out the typing cartridge before using the equipment, the library can gauge the frequency of student use.

Kemple says Hilles recognized students shouldn't have to buy their own typewriters just for occasional use.

"We just decided to bite the bullet and order a new typewriter," she says. "Nobody wants to have a typewriter hanging around their room."

And for the price of a computer printer, Kemple says it was practical for the library to offer improved service to a large clientele.

"It's much more efficient for us...to save all of these students the expense of having to buy or rent a typewriter," she says.

Treasure Hunt

For those students who have been forced to rely on the College's current typingresources, the library's purchase comes just intime. Especially during the heavy use periodssurrounding key deadlines for fellowships and gradschools, students say finding a functioningtypewriter is like striking gold.

Hoping to make a few last-minute corrections toa Harvard Foundation grant she recently submittedfor the South Asian Women's Collective, Harini K.Reddy '01 says she was frustrated by a pronouncedpaucity of working typewriters on campus.

Reddy says that in the two hours before thegrant was due, she trekked to Eliot, Winthrop,Kirkland, Lowell and Quincy houses, coming upempty-handed in her search for a goodSmith-Corona.

"All of the typewriters were either broken orout of ink," Reddy says.