Define reading room. That seems obvious enough, you say. A reading room is nothing more than a room set aside for reading in. Ha, I laugh. Things are never so simple. Sure a reading room can be such a place, but it could just as easily be Lenin's tomb. How do I know this? They kicked me out--they kicked me out of a book-lined room because I sat down to read in it.

I am a student of history. I like old movies, old stories, old styles. I am--and this not according to me--old school. Fortunately, I happen to go to the oldest school for college in America. When a guy with a penchant for bowties needs to write a history paper, he looks for someplace classy to study.

I went to Widener Library. I probably could have found what I needed in Lamont, but I try to avoid the "undergraduate" library on account of its boxy brave-new-worldishness. Modernity is no excuse for ugliness, as far as I'm concerned. Check this out: Lamont is only about five years younger than venerable Houghton Library next door.

Remarkably, Harvard has not gotten around to renovating Widener, though it has overhauled almost every other building in the Yard. The steel that holds it together is still peppered with rivets. The lights have actual bulbs, not the fluorescent tubes we called "death-rays" in high school. And of course, Widener has everything you could ever need for writing a paper--the books reek (literally) of knowledge (figuratively).

But though I dug up a pile of books to sift through, Widener doesn't provide much in the way of study space. The building doesn't even offer e-mail access. I could have situated myself at one of the carrels in the basement in dank air beneath leaky pipes, but I happened to find something better.

In the heart of that temple of knowledge lies the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Room: paradise for yours truly. The walls are made of books--leather bound, glass-encased and reaching to the ceiling. And a giant portrait of the almost-tragic millionaire watches over the Oriental rug and the mahogany paneling with goofy dead eyes.

I spread out my books on the long study table and settled into one of the heavy padded chairs. I rested my forehead on my hand in a very contemplative pose and set to work under the warm light of the study lamp on the table. Briefly.

"Ah, excuse me," came the unwanted voice. "You can't read in here."

I turned to face the woman charged with supervising the otherwise empty room and could only stare into absurdity. I turned my face to the walls of books, so high that a ladder on wheels stood by, ready to assist any eager scholar in finding that dusty volume stuck on the top shelf.

"You can't read?" I asked. "I thought this was a reading room."

"Well, it's a memorial room," she explained.

Oh. (A pause.) For Harry Elkins Widener? Yes. The book collector? Yes. But I can't read here? No.

I reassessed the situation. I had several papers due, and striving as I do for politesse, I did not want to upset this guardian of a dead man's books.

"Do people come in here often?" I asked. Well, some do, she said.

"To commemorate?" She didn't answer. She shouldn't have. She was hardly a policy-maker.