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For more than three quarters of a century, Harvard undergraduates have hit the books in the armchairs and study carrels of Lamont Library.

Situated in the southeast corner of Harvard Yard, Lamont — which celebrated its 75th anniversary last month — holds the Harvard Library’s main undergraduate collection for the humanities and social sciences. It was constructed in 1949, funded by a donation from 1892 alumnus Thomas W. Lamont.

Access services coordinator Michael Arena — who oversees hiring, training, and supervising student workers at the circulation desk — said his favorite part of the job is “the students, by far.”

“People will come in as a shy first year student, and then they come back as a sophomore and they’re a little bit more confident, and then they’re more confident as a junior, and by the time they’re a senior, they’re giving me a hard time,” he said.

Arena, who started working at Lamont in 2014, said the pandemic was a particularly challenging time for staff — the library was closed for a year and a half, operating instead as a pickup service where patrons collected books without entering through the turnstiles.

“To go from a very vibrant library where there’s always people here to kind of a ghost town was difficult,” Arena added.

Access services librarian Laura Sherriff said she sees Lamont’s history as intertwined with Harvard’s.

“Lamont is kind of a microcosm of what’s been going on with campus over the last 75 years,” she said.

A Library for Undergraduates

A 1947 article in the Boston Sunday Globe, announcing the planned construction of Lamont, noted that students would be allowed to “smoke, talk, or typewrite” in the library. “The old New England schoolmasters would raise their eyes in disapproval,” the article quipped.

At its founding, Lamont had three central purposes — to concentrate library services for undergraduates, make books readily available to students, and to encourage reading, librarian Keyes D. Metcalf ’45 wrote in a 1950 edition of the Harvard Library Bulletin.

The Woodberry Poetry Room — which still exists in Lamont today — contained poetry books and four turntables to listen to records of poetry reading. In the library’s first ten months, more than 8,500 students listened to records.

Today, Lamont is still a hub for undergraduates. In 2005, the library lengthened its hours to 24/7 service, transforming it into a full-time study-space.

Undergraduates who spend long hours in Lamont are affectionately termed “Lamonsters” by their peers. Last year, the library mounted an installation of student-written haikus about their experiences and memories in the library system in its basement. One reads: “A midnight deluge / furious scribbling and then— / the sun rises. Peace.” Another entry, submitted anonymously, states: “I roam Lamont’s halls / searching to find a fun book / my homework? Not done.”

But Lynn Ansaldo, an access services assistant at Lamont since 2007, said she worried the “administrative merging” of library services would change Lamont’s character and make it harder for the library to focus on undergrads.

Ansaldo said a push for centralization began in 2009 when library staff were told some departments would be restructured to work under Widener Library offices. Lamont Circulation — otherwise known as “Access Services” — began reporting to Widener Access Services.

“They tried to de-emphasize and tell us that this really isn’t an undergraduate library, and that we can’t have that as our identity,” Ansaldo said.

Harvard Library spokesperson Kerry Conley wrote that in a statement that “Lamont continues to be dedicated to undergraduates at the university and will remain so for future generations of students.”

And librarians say Lamont continues to be an important site for Harvard College Students. Its legacy as an undergraduate-oriented space persists “in the middle of a huge, sometimes intimidating university,” librarian George E. Clark wrote in an email statement.

“We felt that anyone who came to Harvard College should know what the depths of the library were before they left, so that they would always see that as the context for their continuing development as thinking beings,” said Heather Cole, who worked in the Harvard library system from 1970 to 2008.

Turning the Page

Lamont has seen watershed moments throughout University history, from opening to women in 1967 to serving as a space for campus protests.

“Radcliffe women were really angry that they could not get into this library,” said Susan Gilroy, the College’s librarian for undergraduate writing programs. In 2003, Radcliffe class of 1953 alumnae arranged a 50th reunion “flash mob” celebration in Lamont, featuring singing and champagne “because they could come into the library,” Gilroy added.

In 2012, students organized an occupation in the library’s café to protest staff wage cuts — which Gilroy called an example of how Lamont has “been a space that’s had lots and lots of purposes.”

The café itself, which served as a reference room when the library first opened its doors, was added in 2006, amid a series of physical changes including a media lab in 2010.

Lamont has undergone major technological changes throughout the decades, particularly with the introduction of the Hollis catalogue, barcode scanners, and visual signifiers on shelves — changes that librarians said have paralleled shifts in academic instruction at the College.

And more changes are in the works as Harvard undertakes major renovations of four libraries, which it hopes to complete by 2036. Harvard’s chief librarian, Martha J. Whitehead, said in an April interview that renovations to Lamont — such as increasing window lighting in the library’s reading rooms and moving in Harvard’s Fine Arts Library — are “a first priority phase” of the project.

Clark wrote that he and many of his colleagues came to work at Lamont when the old Littauer Library, which held Economics and Government materials, closed. The move brought him closer with undergraduates and those in the humanities, he wrote, making him “a more well-rounded person.”

“My office overlooks the Lamont Cafe and Lamont’s big front window,” Clark added. “It lets me see the human ebb and flow of the academic calendar, with students studying, chatting, cramming for exams.”

—Staff writer Katie B. Tian can be reached at katie.tian@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Samantha D. Wu can be reached at samantha.wu@thecrimson.com.