Lamont: Success Story With Stale Air

For five years the rows of inverted ice trays that light Lamont Library have hummed nearly 13 hours a day, six days a week, above the heads of studying undergraduates. This month the cork, steel and glass structure celebrates its birthday. With certain reservations, it has fulfilled the expectations of its planners as America's model college reading library.

Like all successful brain children, Lamont is celebrating its anniversary by functioning. Already this year it has served more undergraduates than in any previous fall term, and business has reached an all-time peak this reading period. A committee of 125 faculty members has finished weeding out and revising the list of titles in the collection, and the now titles have been published in the library's first printed catalogue. Boyond this, the library is expanding its services in new fields in an effort to attract more adherents. The young library is a robust and active five year old.

Lamont stands today as a concrete and practical solution to one of the University's longest-standing bugaboos--the problem of making its vast collection of books more readily accesible to students. With the influx of veterans following World War II, this problem became appallingly clear: although the University has a larger number of books than any other organization in the country except the Library of Congress, it was harder for the student to get his hands on an assigned text than at many smaller and less well-equipped colleges.

In 1946 and the years following, more than 4,000 undergraduates in addition to graduate thesis-writers and visiting researchers had to draw their books from Widener Library. With its closed stacks and complicated card files, the parent library could distribute texts in only two ways--through its regular book desk, or through the reference desk in its main reading room. Frustrated undergraduates would wait endlessly only to discover that the books they needed to read for an exam were unavailable.

No Room at All

There was a pressing need too for a place to study. The House libraries and Widener would overflow during reading and exam periods until every restaurant in the Square was full of cramming students. And still there was not enough room. It was time for a new library.

Lamont was designed to meet these needs. It was designed to work efficiently, and not only to provide the student quickly with those books he knew he wanted, but to bring him into contact with others by placing them in open stacks right before him. And it was designed to provide him with an ideal environment for study, writing, and casual browsing. In all respects but the last it has succeeded admirably.

When Lamont first opened its doors in January 1949, it was an immediate sensation because of the unique appearance of its physical plant. Hopes for the future and its hypothetical standing as a model undergraduate library were bruited about, but it was the miles of fluorescent lights, the cork floors, the little holes in the ceiling and its general glass-place appearance that made an immediate hit.

In an editorial marking the opening of the library, the CRIMSON repeated the old story of the man who went through four years of Harvard without ever stepping into Widener, heartily praised the air-conditioned heaven of Lamont, and ended with a declaration that the new library was not deserving of the same fate.

Submarine Atmosphere

But in the past five years some of the enthusiasm for blonde wood and plate glass has evaporated, and unfortunately for Lamont, its machine-like, often submarine atmosphere has proved the main deterrent to its complete popularity. Nevertheless, by and large, the story of these five years is a success story.

The history of Lamont's successes and failures to date does not lie in an enumeration of specific events or accomplishments as much as in the position it has come to occupy in the mind of the undergraduate. With the possible exceptions of Eliot House, Cronin's, and the General Education program, Lamont is the butt of more jokes and the locale of more stories than any other Harvard institution. Whether he loves it or loathes it, almost every student is acutely aware of it. In its first five years it has become a legend.

Whether this is exactly what they had in mind or not, the planners of the library have every right to be edified. Among the major ideals behind the conception of the library was the hope that it would make the students aware of books, and although the positive personality of the building itself sometimes overclouds the significance of its contents, it has made an impression that Widener never could have. The older building represents the abstract idea of the great library; Lamont is its working avatar.

Much of Lamont's workability lies in the limited number of books kept in the building. At its opening the library offered students 80,000 volumes chosen from course reading lists and other lists of the books most often demanded by college students. Since then the collection has grown to a permanent figure of about 100,000 books, which includes some 39,000 different titles.

The empty shelves in Lamont will never be filled if future librarians continue to follow the plans of present Librarian Philip J. McNiff. As the demand for certain titles drops off, extra copies of the books are shunted off to the Widener stacks through underground tunnels, and replaced by other titles for which there is an increasing need. This keeps the library--which, as McNiff points out, was designed for reading rather than research--down to what he considers "a workable size."

Although Lamont fans like to consider it a model in every respect, McNiff does not proselyte for its list of titles, which fills a 572-page catalogue. In his introduction to the book, McNiff explodes any theories that it might be intended as an "ideal theoretical listing." The books in Lamont are chosen to serve the needs of undergraduates as far as required or recommended reading in their courses is concerned, nothing more.

Limitations

Because of these limitations on the size and scope of the collection, specialists will find little to interest them beyond the glass doors and the pink marble foyer. Lamont's collections of books on such subjects as law, business, education, agriculture, and the fine arts are purposely small. Although the percentage of books on science has risen somewhat since the opening of the library, by far the greater part of the collection falls under headings dean to the hearts of the humanities and social sciences instructors. The esoteric book has no place on Lamon's shelves. For better or worse, that seems to be that. At any rate, it's intentional.

Functionality was the keyword when Lamont was on the drafting board, and from the librarian's point of view it has lived up to this ideal perfectly. Despite increases in the number of books and in the number of people to use the building, the library staff is now smaller, than when it opened. A flexible coordination of work between Widener and Lamont makes this possible, with members of the staff scuttling through the tunnels from the old building to the new to meet rush hour demands. The worst press comes at night and on noon Saturdays, when reserve books go out for the night or for the weekend, and although the building was designed with four floodgates in the main entrance for checking out books at such times, more than two are seldom opened. This results in a good deal of confusion and delay, but that is the student's worry.

Like Jordan Marsh

Mobbing of the reserve book desk is another problem at these times, and the spirit of the occasion comes close to that of a Jordan Marsh reduction sale. McNiff sees no sure fire solution to this problem, but is considering establishing waiting lines for reserve books during rush periods. This might at least give the debacles the more dignified air of the Cambridge Trust Company at 1:55 Friday afternoon.

Nevertheless, McNiff likes his Glass Palace. His highest praise for it is this: "If the library staff were to start over from scratch with the experience of the last five years, we would make only minor changes." As far as its staff is concerned, Lamont seems to have passed the test of time as well as was expected--which was very well indeed.

To the undergraduate too, Lamont seems to have proven its worth. Not only has it made for itself a secure and prominent place in his mythology, but it has captured--either through its charm or more likely through its necessity--his statistical approval. Although McNiff belittles the importance of circulation figures in a library where books can be taken from the shelves, read, and replaced without anyone being the wiser, he does have records where records can be kept. They are impressive.

Reserve books, a category which includes almost all the assigned reading for Gen Ed and other required courses, have by far the largest turnover. The library did its best business last fall at the time of the November hour exams, when 3,200 reserved volumes were passed out in one day. The smallest single day's turnover so far this year was early in December when only 951 books crossed the reserve desk. In the month of November 22,000 books went into outside circulation, as compared with 20,000 the previous year. Despite his lack of concern for figures, McNiff displays suitable pride in the fact that Lamont has done more business this year than ever before, and hopes to do more still by expanding its services and attractions.

Distribution of required texts may be the library's basic concern, but its ambitions go much further. Lamont is already working with the aural end of education, and plans to do more. On the fifth level lies what is perhaps the library's greatest showpiece: the Woodberry Poetry Room. Here, surrounded by the supreme effort of Lamont's interior decorators, is the library's fast-growing collection of records and tapes--covering quite completely the fields of ballad and verse, with a good number of dramatic readings thrown in. The tape collection, as yet uncatalogued, includes a number of lectures and readings given at the University in the past few years, and is increasing in size from day to day. McNiff hopes to draw more attention to the collections through a proposed series of poetry hours, which might consist of readings, lectures, or discussion.

Criticisms

Another of his ambitions in the field of sound is to set up a freshman record library under the supervision of the Lamont staff, since freshmen have no access to House musical libraries. Already under way, although not as popular as he had hoped, are Friday symphony hours in the fifth level Forum Room. Here an FM radio is available each Friday afternoon for listening to the efforts of Boston's highly-touted symphony. Groups of listeners have been small to date, but McNiff intends to continue the practice with a little more publicity.

But in spite of all this, Lamont Library is not dear to the hearts of all undergraduates. The reverse is often the case. The bulk of criticism of the Glass Palace is aimed not at specific failures in its services, but at its personality.

Students level only two main criticisms at the service. One concerns the hours, the other the availability of reserve books just before exams and papers. McNiff feels that both are unjustified. Although Princeton's new Firestone library for undergraduates remains open until midnight on weekdays, McNiff thinks that Lamont's hours are long enough. He also points out that most House libraries are open for studying until after 10 p.m. If students find it impossible to work in their rooms. As for reserve books, an average of one copy for every ten students is kept on hand for long-term reading assignments, and the ratio diminishes with the amount of time allowed for the completion of the assignment. Obviously, says McNiff, the library cannot stock a book for each student in a course. "If this were the case, the University might just as well start giving away free texts."

The Monster

It is Lamont the structural entity that weighs on many. Too much like a huge machine, with the soft breathing of its air conditioning, the almost imperceptible but constant humming of its lights, its often subterranean atmosphere, the building seems to some students a monstrous trap or an educational processor--the Frankenstein's monster of a mechanistic age. In spite of all the glass, these dissenters feel sealed into the building. Even a member of the staff said it: "If only we could open a window!"

But this is a matter of taste, and thousands of the less imaginative or the better adjusted shun the airy domes of Widener for the efficiency, convenience, and comfort of America's model college library. As long as the right books are there, and as long as the undergraduate can get them and read them, Lamont is a success--despite the stale air.