Grant Received for New Library

President Conant has announced the receipt of a $1,500,000 gift from Thomas W. Lamont '92, international financier, for the purpose of establishing a new undergraduate library. In its vote of acceptance, the Corporation announced that immediate steps would be taken to garner another $1,500,000, essential to the completion of the work.

In his letter of presentation, Lamont described "the sense of exhilaration and stimulus that the College gave to my undergraduate years," and claimed it "as vivid today as it was a half century ago." Accepting the girt, President Conant brought out Lamont's previous generosity, and described the banker as "a wise and far-seeing donor."

Lamont has served as an overseer of Harvard College from 1912 to 1918 and from 1919 to 1925, and has been president of the Harvard Club of New York. On the occasion of the Tercentenary Celebration, he established a fund of $500,000 to set up the Lamont University Professorship, now held by Sumner H. Slichter.

In outlining the need for the new structure, Keyes D. Metcalf, Director of the University Library, stated that "the present Widener Library building has not been and never can be a satisfactory headquarters for undergraduate library service. Ideally planned with graduate students and faculty in mind, it has a tremendously large catalogue which is unsatisfactory to the majority of younger students.... They need a much smaller library, of perhaps 100,000 volumes to which they can be admitted without restriction."