Gorillas and Greek Lit

IMAGINE this conversation during next year's reading period: "Sorry, I can't meet you for lunch today. I've got to take the train to Southborough."

"Southborough? I though intramural crew races start at the MIT boathouse."

"Oh, they still do. This trip is for a class I'm taking. Didn't you hear? They've moved Widener Library. I've been taking my meals at the Southborough coffee shop."

IT ALL BEGAN two weeks ago. The unprecedented project will begin with the removal of 25,000 volumes from Widener. When the last truck has pulled away from the Yard, according to University officials, at least 700,000 books will have been removed from Harvard's Cambridge campus.

Of course, southborough is only a half-hour van ride away. And the library's depository department has guaranteed next-day delivery of requested books. But despite these preliminary assurances, there is a danger: By next spring--should the literary exodus continue unabated--Widener will have become an empty shell in the middle of the Yard. We will spend reading period travelling round Massachusetts in search of the books that have been missing all semester.

What is in Southborough, anyway? Won't Crimson backpacks seem out of place there? Wouldn't the town of Harvard, Mass. have been a more logical choice for the depository?

One of the main attractions in Southborough is the New England Regional Primate Research Center. Run by the Medical School, it is a Harvard institution built on Harvard land. Cheap land. When depository had to be built five years ago, Southborough was the natural choice. So gorillas and orangutans will be reading Greek literature. At least some of us will be getting good educations.

One would think that Harvard, with its multi-billion-dollar endowment and recent penchant for construction, could have found a location close to home for the overflow volumes. But a new building wouldn't be necessary if the University would make clever use of some abandoned real estate nearby.

What's wrong with housing the excess books in the basement of Weld? How about the unoccupied Pizzeria Regina building? Maybe the spacious Pi Eta club would open its doors to some of the Widener overflow, perhaps even to books written by women.

What about the president's house on Quincy St.? President Derek C. Bok doesn't even live there. We could honor the outgoing president by naming the new annex the Bok Book Box and Widener's collection would remain in the Yard.

THIS IS NOT what Harry Elkins Widener's mother had in mind. Since they're removing books that haven't been checked out in five years, won't they eventually haul away the volumes of Harry's book collection that haven't been touched for 50? Will his Guttenberg Bible, printed in the year 1450, end up in a monkey cage next to copies of recent dissertations from the Government department?

And then there's the rule that Harry's mom inserted in the Harvard contract: that if a single brick is removed from the building, the property will be returned to the city of Cambridge. What if there's a little accident during the transfer of books? No doubt Cambridge would be happy to accept the vacated building. But there is an even more threatening prospect: Once the contract is broken, would Mrs. Widener's provision for our daily ice cream be forgotten too?

Harvard's current storage woes are commonplace. When Chicago's main library building was no longer able to contain its full collection of books in 1976, the city divided the volumes among two "temporary" locations and converted the old building into a cultural center. Fifteen years later, the entire collection is finally being housed under one roof.

France's national library system is in even worse shape. There are no open stacks, a library used may request only three books at a time, and no one can ever take books out of the library.

The Bibliotheque de France, now under construction in Paris, will hold its millions of books in four 20-story glass skyscrapers. (A previous plan would have placed the volumes in a series of silos in the countryside.) The new library's restrictive policy will make books virtually inaccessible to the general public.

Cyril Roux, a Dunster House economics tutor from Paris, says many French academics prefer to conduct their research in America's libraries, which are much more user-friendly.

Will Harvard turn away prominent European professors and all scholars who enjoy open stacks? Will it begin to pour the cement for new southborough silos?

What if the idea of exporting the University's goods to safe storage havens catches on? Poor John Harvard will end up in a box somewhere. Mass Hall will be hauled up and set on a new foundation in Southborough. The Straus Cup will be tossed around by chimpanzees.

There seems to be only one advantage to Harvard's new book removal project: The wandering maniac who tears out the pages of Widener's books will spend most of his time off campus.

But he had better hurry. The monkeys may beat him to it.