No Bargain Basement

The space crunch which precipitated the microfilm’s move may cause further relocations out of Lamont’s basement, officials said, though there are no definite plans yet.

In particular, they cited the possibility of moving the government documents collection out of Lamont’s basement.

“We’re at a point where because space is tight that we’re always evaluating options for the collections,” Cline said. “With all of the collections growing, and with so much material available now in electronic format, it’s really going to be essential for the libraries that we periodically assess what’s located where.”

But Diane L. Garner, librarian for the social sciences, said there are issues beyond immediate overcrowding at stake.

“There’s an inherent tension in the use of the Lamont building between the Harvard users, especially undergraduates, and the space that government documents take up,” she said.

This tension, Garner said, is both pragmatic and philosophical.

Because the government documents collection is a U.S. government library, it has to remain open to the public. But Lamont is primarily intended as a private library for Harvard students.

“It’s hard to control the movement around the building,” Garner said.

This problem is compounded by attention to Lamont’s target audience in the University, she said.

“There’s always been concern that Lamont be a special library for undergraduates, that the focus be on undergraduates and not be diluted by other things,” she said.

And some worry the government documents collection gets in the way of that undergraduate mission. As a result—though officials emphasized that plans were tentative—the documents may clear out to make room in Lamont for more books now held in the Harvard Depository or for cutting-edge multimedia archives.

“One wants to reclaim Lamont for more general undergraduate use or reading use for people in general, so the question is can one find a better place for government documents,” said Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba ’53, who is the director of the University library.

If the government documents do leave Lamont, officials said they would not follow the newspaper microfilm in its hop, skip and jump across Harvard Yard.

“The main reason they couldn’t move to Widener is there’s no space there now,” Cline said. “The government documents collection is an extremely large collection.”