What may be one of the most important pieces of paper installed in the Harvard University Library over the past couple of years isn’t found on any shelf.

It lies instead on checkout counters and drawers close at hand, and it offers protection for those who protect and sustain the intellectual privacy of Harvard’s scholars.

The sheet tells Harvard’s librarians how to respond to unexpected requests for information from federal agents. Since Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act passed in October 2001, government officials no longer need a court order to review records—including users’ borrowing histories—at libraries and bookstores across the nation.

But within the University, some say the new investigative standards, designed to help federal agents keep track of potentially subversive lines of study, are at odds with the values of academic freedom traditionally found at a research university like Harvard.

Concern at Harvard peaked at a series of Faculty meetings last spring, when some faculty members criticized the Patriot Act’s library clause as a violation of their academic freedom. Some expressed concern that the nature of their own research could be misinterpreted if it were to come under scrutiny by federal agents not acquainted with their fields.

Sidney Verba ’53, Pforzheimer University professor and director of the University Library, says he was concerned about the intellectual integrity of Harvard’s libraries—10 divisions of the Harvard College Library and 90 University-wide—following the passage of the Patriot Act.

“Of the various concerns people had about the Patriot Act, I think that this was a very legitimate one,” he says. “We take the Library and free access to it and the like very seriously.”

Still, Verba says concern has subsided in the ensuing months while word of the University’s standardized response system—as spelled out on the ubiquitous quick-reference sheet—has spread. He says he hasn’t heard concerns from faculty members or researchers since the Faculty meetings last year.

Many faculty members agree. John Womack Jr., Bliss professor of Latin American history and economics, said he was concerned about the influence the Patriot Act could have on his own research, which sometimes brings him into contact with materials that could conceivably be traceable to Latin American terrorist organizations.

“I had questions, serious questions about it then,” he says.

But reports in the ensuing months suggest the new protocol is very rarely invoked. A University of Illinois survey of public libraries before Sept. 11 and a year after shows no significant increase in the percentage of respondents who have received information requests from law enforcement agents, and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said last year that the provision had never been used.

According to Nancy Murray, director of the ACLU’s Bill of Rights Education Project in Massachusetts, Ashcroft’s statement was false—and librarians nationwide have not been afraid to call the government on it.

“The people who have been driving them crazy are the librarians,” she says.

Concerns about civil liberties sent shock waves through the community of librarians and library users throughout the country. Some librarian organizations have even created a line of sarcastic signs informing patrons that their privacy rights are being violated.

But at the world’s largest academic library, fearful voices have quieted. Womack says his own worry has subsided over the course of the year.