Library Fundraising Campaign Falling Short

While Harvard's Capital Campaign recently surged past the 70 percent mark, the College Library--having raised at most 25 percent of its goal--has been left in the dust of its crumbling books.

In an interview yesterday, President Neil L. Rudenstine said that the library's campaign effort will receive increased attention in the coming months and should soon see results.

"My guess is that in the next six months we will see that number go up," Rudenstine said. "I sense already some feedback that's positive...in the one to five million dollar range...[and] who knows, we may find more."

"It wouldn't take all that many gifts in that range to get us to our goal," he said.

In the past month, the University has hosted at least two library weekends for donors to help raise the library's $85-million goal, a fraction of the University's $2.1-billion Capital Campaign.

But Rudenstine said yesterday that the lag was not cause for alarm.

"It's not a very large sum of money, fortunately," he said.

The library's money problems are exacerbated by what is known in preservation circles as the "acid paper problem," which has caused a sizable portion of Harvard's collection to turn brittle from decay.

Harvard plans to renovate Widener Library and install a $28-million climate control system to curb the decay.

The University plans to fund the project with revenue from the library's portion of the campaign, but almost none of the millions needed have been raised.

Larsen Librarian of the College Nancy M. Cline said last month that the Widener stacks are "turning to dust" because of the combined problems caused by acid paper and a lack of climate control.

"We're baking those books," she said. "We're not providing them with the proper level of stewardship.

Harvard fundraising officials have said that as a fundraiser's rule of thumb, libraries are difficult to raise money for.

Renovating the Widener building, in terms of projects a donor might want to fund, is far less glamorous than funding a new building, officials said.

Rudenstine said yesterday that he saw the problem differently.

"I don't think the main issue is whether Widener has a name on it," Rudenstine said.

"I think the main issue is that the library is in a state of change between being essentially a book and manuscript collection to being...a collection and a technological vehicle."

Rudenstine also said that it will be important to take greater care in explaining the libraries' needs to potential donors.

In the long run, Harvard has plans to preserve its collection through scanning and micro-fiching its decaying books, but doing so to most of Widener's 3.2 million volumes will take much longer than the quickly expiring books will allow.