Students have mixed opinions over Gov Docs’ planned move to Littauer. Some say that a new home out of the main Yard will be short-staffed and inconvenient, others say the documents’ locale doesn’t much matter.

Library workers say a plan to move the Government Documents Department, commonly known as Gov Docs, from the Lamont Library basement to Littauer Hall would deter undergraduates from using the resource, and hurt the department’s service.

The plan comes as part of the Harvard College Library’s (HCL) ongoing reorganization, which also includes the restructuring of Hilles and Lamont. Severe budget problems facing the department also have made for tension between library employees and administrators.

Those opposed to the Gov Docs move highlight the deleterious effects it would have on student users.

“There are a lot of disadvantages to students to have the Gov Docs materials in Littauer,” says Geoff Carens, a current Gov Docs employee and a representative of the Harvard Union for Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW). “The physical environment there is terrible. Moving [the department] to Littauer makes it less available.”

Beth Brainard, HCL’s director of communications, cautions that plans for Lamont as well as Gov Docs itself are tentative, but says that ideas about possible uses of the department’s space include the creation of a cafe and a general social area. While administrators emphasized the uncertainty of the Gov Docs relocation, a memo sent to library employees on October 3 cites the move as one of five steps HCL will take to lower expenditures.

According to Brainard, plans to relocate Gov Docs and install new facilities in its place are part of an effort to shape Lamont into a “service station for undergraduates.”

Jay Harris, vice chair of the Faculty Library Committee, says that undergraduates are not using the space as much as they would if it were replaced with different materials and facilities.

Harris explains that according to federal law, every Gov Docs collection must be open to the public.

“Lamont is a building that is otherwise secure to undergrads with the exception of that space. Undergraduates certainly use Gov Docs, and nobody’s suggesting otherwise, but the primary users of Gov Docs are...outside researchers who would probably be better served having [the department] over in Littauer,” he says.

According to John Collins, a longtime reference librarian at Gov Docs, HCL is operating on a misconception about Gov Docs’ users. Collins estimates that 90 percent of his reference time is spent with undergraduates.

“If they were pressing me to move something here that is more highly used by undergrads than Gov Docs is, I would carry our materials to Littauer for them,” Collins says.

Rohit Chopra ’04, president of the Undergraduate Council and a student employee of Gov Docs, says he is almost certain that “the students this move will affect most were not consulted.”

According to Diane Garner, librarian for the social sciences, statistics for Gov Docs’ usage and circulation were most recently compiled in 1993. Donna Koepp, head of the Gov Docs department, says that a steering group is currently being formed to investigate student opinion, the benefits of the proposed move and the logistics of the plan.

Collins and other Gov Docs regulars also worry that locating Gov Docs in Littauer would cut it off from the heart of Harvard’s libraries and discourage undergraduate use.

“If you’re doing humanities or social sciences research, chances are you’re doing research in Widener or Lamont or Houghton, all of which are a few feet from each other,” says Noah M. McCormack ’04, a history concentrator who voiced his concern about the relocation. “They’re all essentially one complex. It’s an integrated collection and [the relocation] is very shortsighted. I didn’t know where Littauer was until last semester.”