An active member of the former Library Implementation Work Group, he contributed to the most drastic recasting of the University library system in decades.

The reform will consolidate the many libraries at Harvard under a single administrative body, reducing barriers to facilitate access to the Univesity’s full collection.

“It has evolved over the years to truly be complex and labyrinthine,” says University Provost Steve E. Hyman, who oversaw the library redevelopment. “The goal is to make a great library better, to make it more efficient,” he says.

The new structure appoints a Harvard Library Board—a rotating collection of professors from each of the University’s schools—and installs an executive director of the library system.

Helen Shenton, who will serve as the first executive director, says that her charge means that she will coordinate across the University.

“We’re going in a collaborative direction,” Shenton says.

Shenton says Darnton has played a key role in the transformation of the libraries, calling him, as University Librarian, the “intellectual voice of the Harvard Library.”

GOING HIGH TECH

During his tenure, Darnton has already overseen the incorporation of some of the most advanced technology in the field as the library has sought to conserve its most valued volumes.

The library also began preserving its texts in digital form through state-of-the-art scanning machines, taking its first steps into the digitizing its books.

It’s an intensive process—in costs, personnel, and hours.

An archivist must go page-by-page—though some scanning technology can turn the pages automatically—as a camera scans all the images and text on an open spread of a book.

According to Darnton, the scanning of a vast collection like Harvard’s can run in the millions of dollars.

So it seemed like a great deal to Harvard library administrators when Google Inc. asked the University for permission to digitize its books, and would do it for free.

A SHATTERED ALLIANCE