Widener under construction is a fantastic world. Predictably monumental in summer, the building takes on an imperial quality against the pale blues and violet greys of a winter sky, perpetually half-scaffolded like a Christo installation or the Sphinx.

Like all construction sites, the library is fascinating in its assemblage and disarray. Concrete and glass are shored against future crises of construction or history. Of course, it's hardly the largest project around: beyond Cambridge, the Big Dig spills into campus life by means of odd detours en route to the North End and Hadean holes surrounding the airport.

But unlike the rest of Boston, whose Norman Rockwell qualities have gradually given way to human landscapes, my mental images of Widener have become daguerrotypes, gauzy and greyscale. A shot of the pillars at night, spilling down and across a frozen Yard. A slow panning of the benefactor's full name carved into stone. The inviting wasteland of snowy steps. A clump of visitors posed longingly or curiously on the very top step, taking photographs of each other.

These images fall against ones from this past semester: the metal bird straining against the sky. Large windows boarded up or lit through odd hours of the night. Naked lightbulbs illuminating empty stacks. A figure disappearing suddenly into one of the side entrances.

In deference to what seemed like epic construction, I had avoided venturing in to the stacks for several months, skirting the blocked Yard entrance and gazing up at the huge crane. But I couldn't stay away long. My Cabot-stocked shelves were not enough: I dreamed of books with titles like "Aspiring to the Condition of Language: An Examination of Aesthetic Considerations in the Aspect of Structural Principles to Musical Problems."

One early evening near the end of reading period, I was crossing the yard from Emerson to Grays Hall when a woman passed me in the opposite direction en route to the T. (Perhaps an opening piece for "Women in Ancient Societies: An Illusion of the Night," WID-LC HQ1127.W63?) As I redirected her, she explained her disorientation. It's the Widener renovation, she said: it completely turns you around.

Completely? I was intrigued. The next day I set off with an ostensible list of call numbers as if fulfilling a Yeatsian prophesy.

Entering the library, expectant, it seemed at first as if the previous night's promise had been a bit overstated. The way to Pusey and back was exhaustively labeled in visually arresting orange. And despite some disconcerting piles and xeroxed books, I was happy to see the decimal system work its usual magic.