'Trying to Keep Our Head Above Water'

Even the best-laid plans can go astray.

That's what University librarians are finding out, as they finish up the first academic year in which the new $3 million Harvard OnLine Library Information System--HOLLIS--was implemented.

Despite the hoopla surrounding HOLLIS's official unveiling last September and an ambitious schedule for future improvements, professors and administrators say the introduction of the new technology will not do much to improve the impending crisis in Harvard's library system, the largest private collection in the world.

Because the University's rapidly expanding collection can no longer be housed entirely in on-campus facilities, the resulting financial and logistical problems have put librarians in a quandary which they say HOLLIS does little to resolve.

The new computer system, which currently consists of a computerized card catalogue and various administrative functions, has changed the way the Harvard libraries are used, though.

"HOLLIS has had a tremendous effect on us," says Heather E. Cole, head of Hilles and Lamont libraries. Circulation has increased 25 percent over last year, and she attributes the growth to HOLLIS's introduction.

"It's got to be because of HOLLIS," Cole says.

But with success has come a new set of dilemmas. Because of the higher circulation, Cole says Lamont Library will be forced to relocate or shrink its reserve collection to make room for the increase in books needed.

Almost all of the volumes in Lamont and Hilles are kept in the buildings themselves because the undergraduate libraries can simply remove books from their shelves if demand for them wanes, Cole says. "We can take volumes out of the collection because they can be found elsewhere at Harvard," she says.

But most other University libraries must use the New England Depository Library or the Harvard Depository--storage facilities located miles off campus--for their overflow. And, although professors can recall a book from the warehouse within 24 hours, many faculty members complain that they have lost valuable aspects of their scholarship with the departure of whole library sections from The Yard.

"Just having books is no good if you can't use them," says Larsen Librarian of Harvard College Yen-Tsai Feng, who oversees Widener Library's more than three million books. Widener keeps more than 150,000 of its volumes in the depositories.

The University has long used its extensive library resources to attract internationally known scholars to Cambridge for research. Containing about 11 million volumes in 98 libraries throughout the campus, Harvard's system is anchored by Widener, the largest of the University's libraries and the only research library of its size whose stacks are totally accessible.

So Harvard's librarians have been trying to come up with a solution to the space crunch in an attempt to maintain the University's standing as a preeminent research facility.

One solution has been for departments to form collections of their own, using their own budgets and office space. But Cole says the growth of department libraries contradicts the stated University goal of having an integrated collection.

"The whole effort of constructing Widener was to centralize [the libraries]," Cole says, adding that a preferable solution to the space problem would require a library annex which is in proximity to Widener.

The ideal answer, at least in the minds of some faculty members, is to appropriate a University owned lot across from Lamont, the former site of the Gulf station. Last spring, Harvard Real Estate acquired the lot and announced plans to build a hotel on it. But last December the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) passed a resolution calling on the University to use the space for some academic purpose--including a library.

Since then, FAS has purchased the Gulf station site from Harvard Real Estate and is currently deciding how best to use it.

"We could use [the Gulf site] for the library," Feng says, adding that although she does not view "the space crunch [as] the most fundamental problem for scholarship,...it's the most pressing."

And, according to Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba '53, who oversees Harvard's library system, "a very strong argument could be made as to why it would be good to have an additional library in that corner of the Yard--[the location of the Gulf site]."

But Verba says he would rather find a location which could be connected to Widener through an underground tunnel, much like the one connecting the research library with Pusey and Lamont libraries.

"My own preference would be that, if funds could be found for [building a new library], the Gulf site is not the best site. I would much prefer something in the vicinity of Pusey, 17 Quincy St., Lamont--in there if one could squeeze something in. It would be much much better to have the library a continuation of Widener, in the sense that Pusey is a continuation of Widener."

But Cowles Professor of Government Judith N. Shklar, who sits on the faculty committee which oversees the libraries, says she "would take the Gulf site, if we couldn't get [the other locations]."

"We always need more space," Shklar says. The use of the Gulf site for a library, she says, is "not out to the question."

Another suggestion that has been offered to ameliorate library space shortage is to make Widener's stacks closed, leaving more room for books. But Feng says this is an unacceptable solution because a researcher's ability to browse the stacks is a valuable asset.

Since "Widener is one of the largest research libraries that is totally accessible, I would be most reluctant to kill that one thing that makes us uniquely superior," Feng says.

And Verba agrees, saying, "it certainly is not as good if the material is not at your fingertips in a library that you can browse through the way you can in Widener."

The real problem, according to Cole, is that some professors are traditionalists, wedded to the old methods of research and resistant to the introduction of modern technology. Widener's floor plan is the sacred cow of the Harvard research establishment, Cole says, and faculty are reluctant to tamper with it.

"They're concerned that their library world is about to crumble," Cole says of the faculty members.

For instance, Shklar says, when the Widener catagories were shifted to the Library of Congress system, many FAS researchers balked. But, she adds, "it had to happen."

And Cole says that when she met with some faculty about the new HOLLIS system, they "weren't concerned with subject searches, they wanted to know, would I please tell them if an 'x' Widener class would be moved."

But despite resistance to change among Harvard's researchers, the space shortage is so pressing, according to librarians, that must be solved soon--even if it means sacrificing some of the system's accessiblity.

"There is a grave, pressing, desperate concern about space...The library is in dire need," Feng says, adding, "there is an inescapable need to solve it in the short run of five to 10 years."

Finding an acceptable solution, however, is no simple task, whether or not it is a long-range one. "Ideally we would like to have [space], but do you keep on building? We are confined, you cannot expand forever," Feng says.

And in the meantime, University administrators assert that HOLLIS will be able to accommodate any new technology developed to help meet the rapidly expanding needs of Harvard's system.

"The HOLLIS catalogue, I think, is state-of-the-art from the perspective of a kind of massive, very large-use catalogue," Verba says.

"By that I mean a Boeing 747 is not state-of-the-art in anything--NASA does things that are much more fancy. But if you've got something that has to fly every day and carry hundreds and hundreds of passengers, it's almost always going to have proven technology that is somewhat older than what someone could imagine today," he adds.

And although Verba says other libraries have had automatic catalogue systems--like HOLLIS--ahead of Harvard, he attributes this to the size of the University's collection, which makes it harder to computerize. "We have a huge collection and therefore it's not only more difficult to do an automatic catalogue, but it's not the kind of decision you can make and then change," Verba says.

But library administrators acknowledge that the full installation of HOLLIS is behind schedule. Although University administrators originally said barcoding of Widener's volumes would be completed by this fall, library officials now say the research library's system will not be coded until the middle of next year.

Cole says Hilles and Lamont were denied funding for barcoding next year, leaving the job unfinished at least until the academic year beginning in the fall of 1990.

But even with HOLLIS's shortcomings, most say the new system has made the University's libraries more accessible to users and has improved Harvard's ability to organize its collection.

For example, Schlesinger Library Director Patricia M. King says the Radcliffe facility has particularly benefited from HOLLIS because many researchers--particulary undergraduates--were previously unaware of Schlesinger's resources.

Librarians, while touting the gains that HOLLIS has prompted in the past year, concede that new technology alone will not ease the vast library system's many problems.

And until a solution can be found, Shklar says, "keeping our head above water is all that we can do."