Library to Restrict Faculty Offenders

Faculty members and University administrators who refuse to return overdue or recalled books to the library are being deprived of their borrowing privileges at Widener Library this Fall.

The new rule, unprecedented in Harvard's history, forbids professors to keep volumes for longer than ten days if the books are requested by students. Corporation appointees previously could keep a book for a full year without having to return it at a student's request.

Hard Core Offenders

Theodore G. Alevizos, associate librarian for Public Services, said yesterday that the measure is aimed at "a group of hard-core offenders" who have been abusing their privileges at Widener Library. Alevixos said there were approximately 100 people in the "hard core" but declined to blame any specific members of the Faculty or Administration for the problem. "Each department has its own culprits," he said.

Judith Harding, circulation librarian, charged that teaching fellows and administrative officers caused most of the problem. She said 250 books due last May were borrowed by teaching fellows who had moved over the academic year without leaving forwarding addresses.

Harding has supplied the Widener circulation desk staff with lists of delinquent borrowers, which she said must be checked before loaning books to professors, teaching fellows and administrators. Library officials declined to name any prominent offenders.

High Risk Borrowers

"Ten years ago I could just pick up the phone and call someone," Alevizos said. "Now, there are just too many." He said one reason for the upward trend in "high-risk borrowers" has been the expanded enrollment in the College.

Alevizos said the rule was initiated by disgruntled faculty members and students, who presented the issue to the Faculty Library Committee in early 1970. He said the Library Committee debated the issue for three years.

The Faculty Council unanimously approved the final proposal for im- plementation in 1973-74 at its meeting last May. No fines or other penalties were incorporated in the plan.

"Fines are great because we can use them to withhold grades from students," Alevizos said, "but that wouldn't work with Faculty. Somehow, they do it at Yale. But we don't really care about money, even though we once collected !1000 from a student.