Harvard's BIG DIG

When Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles addressed the Faculty in his annual letter in January, one of his missive's more remarkable lines referred to the University's signature library.

"The odor of Widener's deeper recesses, while providing olfactory nostalgia to generations of readers, is actually the smell of decaying books," he wrote.

This problem--books decay due to heat, humidity and sunlight in Widener's non-climate-controlled stacks--will soon be tackled as Harvard's largest library receives its most significant renovation ever.

And, while little change will be visible from the outside, the massive project has been likened to Boston's "Big Dig" to place the city's Central Artery underground.

The project, slated to begin in June and cost $52 million, will include the addition of air conditioning, a sprinkler system, a new fire detection system and two new reading rooms.

The renovations will begin sometime after commencement with the erection of a sky crane at the Mass. Ave. gate near Wigglesworth.

"[We have been] in up to here with the planning. It's the biggest project any of us will ever be involved in," says Nancy M. Cline, Larsen librarian of Harvard College. "There are new construction projects here that would not impact as much...on the campus."

Susan A. Lee, Cline's deputy in charge of planning and administration says the project is one of the biggest library renovation projects ever undertaken.

By comparison, Yale's recent renovation of its main library, Sterling Memorial, cost just over $30 million.

And Faculty say the massive size of this project is justified by the potential consequences should the books continue to decay.

"It would be intellectual suicide not to go ahead with this project," wrote James Engell, professor of English and comparative literature.

Library officials say they are attempting to learn from the experiences of other major research libraries which have undergone similar renovations. Columbia University is currently working on a similar project.

They also looked to the experience at Langdell Library at Harvard Law School, which closed for a year while it was renovated earlier this decade. But because it shut down, Langdell offers few lessons for Harvard's biggest library, which has no plans to close and has exponentially more books than its law school counterpart.

"We can't do a Langdell. [There is] no place in the world to shelve that many books [and] we just can't close it," says Sidney Verba '53, director of the University library and Pforzheimer University professor.

Moving the Books

The most difficult problem then has been cooking up a way to move the books around inside Widener while construction workers invade the building.

According to Lee, Yale's project provided a powerful example of what not to do. For Sterling, Yale left its books on the stacks and attempted to work around them.

"They wound up with a mess on their hands," Lee says.

That mess was composed of metal filing s on the books and accumulations of dirt and dust on the volumes.

According to Cline, Yale now plans to build $1 million a year cleaning up the miss, including hand-vacuuming of each of the library 3.75 million books.

Harvard aims to do it's Ivy counterpart one better.

"I'm feeling very confident that we'll do this project and we'll do it with well with nowhere near the disaster as what happened at Yale," says David A. Zewinski '76, associate dean for physical resources and planning in FAS.

The University plans to divide each of Widener's ten stack levels into two sections, with each of these 20 sections containing roughly 2.5 miles of shelves and 300,000 books.

The process of shifting the books will work like this: D-level will first be cleared as overflow space, with half of its current books being shifted to Pusey library and half sent to the Harvard Depository.

The then-empty D-level will be renovated first. Then, as renovations move up the building, the floor being worked on will have its books shifted to the then-empty space in D.

In this way, library officials plan to have the books remain accessible in their temporary locations throughout the process except when they are in transit.

The renovations are expected to take between three and four weeks per section, with the exception of D-level, whose extensive renovations will begin the project with three to four months of work.

"It's a huge logistical operation, but they are confident they can do it," Zewinski says.

Great American Smoke Out

When Widener was built it was made of the most lavish materials available: a then state-of-the-art stack system and tons of marble and granite.

It was thought that with such quality materials the library would not burn--and administrators at the time did not want to put a sprinkler system that in the event of a fire would destroy the books with water.

"You have marble, you have steel, you have brick and you thought that with tightly packed books" there could not be a fire, Cline says. And the library's planners did not prepare for one.

An arson fire in the early 90s that destroyed much of the Los Angeles public library's collection altered that conventional wisdom. Library officials at Harvard and nationwide began to re-examine their notions about the security of their collections.

One myth about Widener holds that the library uses an oxygen-suppressant system, which would spray a gas like halon to snuff out the fire but make it impossible for humans inside to breathe.

Not true, says Cline.

There is a halon system in Pusey--one that accidentally discharged over the summer, resulting in a day-long evacuation. But those systems have since been outlawed and Pusey's will be replaced soon.

Additionally, the fear of water on books is much less acute now that technology allows wet books to be repaired, while burned books cannot be.

Permanent Changes

The renovation also seeks to address some of the other shortcomings of the original design.

The original notion that light was good for books has since been proved wrong--it hastens their decay.

Currently the temperature and humidity swing wildly, with temperatures in some areas topping 80 degrees on hot summer days. According to Zewinski, it is hoped that the project results in improved temperature control throughout the library--with the stacks kept at 68 degrees and 35 percent relative humidity.

There are still things the library's structure cannot accommodate in terms of renovation, including aspects of accessibility for the disabled.

Because the stacks are structural components of the building and its weight hangs on the cube of stacks they cannot be moved--nor altered much--although nearly 9,000 feet of stack space will be lost in the renovations to allow for new stairs and elevators.

"The physical construction is really unique. You can't remove floors or always widen an elevator, you can't get get rid of a couple of stacks, you can't widen the aisles," says Lee.

Another aspect is that the library will have to conform to some laws that, perhaps weren't designed for a building of its size and purpose.

According to new fire laws, a library of Widener's size must have the ability to evacuate 1,500 people, 150 for each stack level and well over the numbers the library contains at any time.

Other Details

Since the library intends to remain open during the construction process, library officials say they have spent a lot of time orienting construction workers to the labyrinthine library--and reminding them that people will be working as they work.

Still, they realize that some patrons will not want to work in the library given the necessarily increased noise.

In response they say that they are notifying other libraries to prepare to handle the overflow of patrons from Widener, and that they will notify students of underused facilities around campus.

Another potential complication to the renovations is that Harvard's library collection is not insured. The buildings are--through the University--but the collection itself has been called "priceless and irreplaceable," and the University has to swallow the loss if the collections are damaged.

Additionally, the library purchases $10 million in new materials a year, so the new construction is needed to "protect what we have, but [also] what we will," says Beth S. Brainard, Communications and Public Information Officer for the Harvard College Library.

But even after this massive construction, the library's renovators have been told to allow room for more changes in the future. Library officials say the circulation area and Loker reading room may be the next part of Widener to need a facelift.