"By the 1970s, no one even knew [women had ever been barred]. It was a belief in the established way being that way because it was the correct way."

Open Ears

In recent years, the volume of student feed-back has multiplied, and Lamont is listening.

"I get much more of a sense of ownership of Hilles and Lamont from students now than I did when I started," Cole says.

A wave of changes swept the library in the '80s and '90s, including bar codes on books, consolidation of electronic catalogs under the Hollis Plus on-line system, computer access, carpeting of the reference room, the opening of the government documents and microfilm room on the first level, the Center for Students with Disabilities and the new language resource center on the sixth floor.

Perhaps the following passage, taken from the Jan. 15, 1949, Harvard Alumni Bulletin, best sums up the differences between Lamont then and now:

"[The student] sits down, opens to a passage, smokes a cigarette, reads another passage as he smokes, gets up and crosses the room to one of the five sound-proofed typing cubicles. He has his portable with him."

In addition to the absence of smoking rooms and the considerably reduced number of type-writers, the cataloging system has also seen a few changes since 1949.

As they saw their library improving, undergraduates began to take a greater interest in it.

In response to the increased number of student suggestions, the Lamont administration began to conduct surveys in the early '90s. Most of the changes in the past two decades, says Cole, have resulted from student input.

For example, in 1989, the first carpeting was installed in Lamont, in the third floor reference room in response to persistent student complaints about the noisy floors.

"In one stroke, Mr. Lamont's interest in and care for the library will eliminate the single most persistent irritant in the lives of hundreds of students," Cole told the Alumni Bulletin at the time.

The changes this summer, Cole says, will reflect students' wishes as well.

Over the past year, Lamont employees have conducted an occupancy study, observing where students choose to sit and how they arrange themselves in relation to others.

What they found, according to Cole, is that "students choose first places like carrels, small study tables, and the comfortable chairs in the Farnsworth Room."