Houghton Library Abounds In Valuable Old Volumes

With a primary purpose of making the University's rare books "earn their keep" by exhibition to the public eye, Widener, Jr., otherwise known as the Houghton Library, was completed less than two years ago. Formerly the ancient manuscripts and priceless leather-bound and gold-stamped volumes had been stored in the deepest dungeons of neighboring Widener.

The public part of the Houghton Library is centered in the Oval Lobby, the walls of which are occupied by 12 collections, ranging from 181 editions of Persius behind one set of glass doors, to the original Harvard College textbooks and the Charter of 1650 behind another.

Left of the lobby a wealth of medieval manuscripts fill a well lit, spacious Exhibition Room, so arranged as to illustrate the spread of printing across Europe. On the other side of the Lobby is the Reading Room, open only to students, but a push button at the librarian's desk can shut the bridge off from ineligibles. Behind the librarian a book elevator goes down to the stacks.

The marble stairway which winds around a long chandelier chain goes up to the Keats Memorial Room, and to a long corridor occupied by collections of Kipling, Lafcadio Hearn, and other modern authors. In the other direction, the stairs wind down to the Department of Graphic Arts, the seminar room, and the administrative offices.

There are two floors of stacks below the building, having a capacity of more than 1,000,000 books. The present collection about half fills them, and about a tenth of these are on exhibition. Unlike the dingy labyrinths of Houghton's senior partner, the stacks are bright with fluorescent lighting that penetrates even to the bottom shelf, but only members of the staff are allowed to appreciate them. The light and humidity of the entire building are so regulated as to prolong the life of the manuscripts