’Round About Midnight

“The cold, white stillness of Lamont Library became increasingly attractive with the extension of its hours.”

For attendees of this past October’s infamous dessert riot, this Harvard Yearbook description may seem to describe Harvard College Libraries’ (HCL) decision to keep Lamont open 24 hours a day on weekdays. But this year-in-review blurb was actually written 50 years ago, celebrating a successful student campaign in 1955-6 to extend the undergraduate library’s weekday closing time from 10 p.m. to the wee hour of midnight throughout the school year.

Much like this past year’s decision to keep Lamont open all night, the 1956 campaign was a direct result of a lack of study space for students who wished to do work after 10 p.m., according to Albert B. Levin ’56, who was the president of the Student Council.

“Opportunities for studying outside your room during those years were slim to non-existent,” says Levin. “The basement under Memorial Chapel was opened to freshmen. There was clearly a need for extended library access.”

An October 11, 1955 editorial piece in The Crimson provides the first written account of the movement to extend hours in Lamont, which first opened its doors in 1949.

“Last spring, two-thirds of the Freshman Class in a poll again claimed that they were unable to study in their rooms after 10 p.m.,” the editorial reads. “Because the afternoons and early evenings of many freshmen are taken by jobs, physical training, and extracurricular activities, the need for better study conditions is acutely obvious.”

The College’s student government was equally intent on solving the problem of inadequate study space. The Freshman Union Committee backed a resolution demanding a 12 a.m. closing time for Lamont, while the student council, believing that a year-round extension was unattainable, favored making permanent Lamont’s extended reading period hours, which had been established as a temporary experiment the previous year.

By October 20, 1955, University Library Director Paul H. Buck had announced his support for later hours, and by November 14, the College had announced that Lamont would stay open until midnight starting that January.

The issue of staffing presented one of the main obstacles as the College prepared to extend Lamont’s hours. At the time, federal wage and hour laws prevented women from working late nights, and only three of Lamont’s 22 staff members were men. While the Freshman Union Committee offered to staff the library with volunteer freshmen after 10 p.m., Buck chose to simply use a reduced staff during the extended hours, saying at the time, “it isn’t fair to depend on anyone whom you don’t compensate.”

Buck also made clear that the hours would be instated on a provisional basis. If the library was used less than expected in the late hours, “a revision will of course be in order,” Buck told The Crimson at the time.

No such revision was necessary. Staffing issues did not seem to deter library users, who descended upon Lamont in droves. The Crimson reported on January 13, 1956 that almost twice the average number of students were using the library.

Lamont’s later hours also had more wide-ranging effects—more gates to Harvard Yard were kept open until midnight to accommodate upperclassmen using Lamont, and the student victory inspired Radcliffe students to demand later hours during their reading and exam periods as well.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE...

Fifty years later, students have later bedtimes—which their library demands have changed to suit. But two constants have remained—the perceived limits on study space and time, and vocal student movements to amend them.

“Harvard students have no truly adequate or appropriate quiet space in which to work late at night when much of the undergraduate work at Harvard gets done,” complained a January 10, 2005 Crimson staff editorial that also admitted that “the idea of giving Harvard students a late-night library resource is not a new one.”

The solution? Keep Lamont open 24 hours. Spurred once again by The Crimson and the Undergraduate Council (UC), which published a detailed report on students’ late-night study habits, HCL put in place a two-year pilot program that since last September has kept Lamont open from 8 a.m. Sunday to 9:45 p.m. Friday.

“Students were working in common rooms, dining areas, et cetera,” says Nancy Cline, the Larsen librarian of Harvard College. “But an analysis showed that there was a lot of disruption, a lot of noise, that it wasn’t the right sort of study environment.”

In addition, the College extended its shuttle service to avoid stranding Quadlings in Lamont, and in October ceded to protesters who were demanding extended hours for the Quad Library.

Cline says that the UC’s January 13 position paper supporting a 24-hour library “matched up with a longer-term interest [HCL] had in expanding library hours. We’re not going to go immediately to 24 hours, but it made sense for us to go ahead and extend the hours for a 2-year pilot project.”

The move was immediately immensely popular. Approximately 1,500 students showed up at Lamont on the night of October 17, 2005 for a party thrown by the UC to celebrate the Library’s new hours. Tempted by fruit tarts, chocolate mousse, and burritos, students arrived en masse at the dessert riot and disposed of the food within minutes.

Even without the incentive of food, students still stay at Lamont late into the night. Cline says that she has been pleasantly surprised by how many students have taken advantage of the new schedule.

“We’re seeing high traffic, high use of collections, and a lot of engagement with the staff,” Cline says.

STUDY CENTER, OR STUDENT CENTER?

One not-so pleasant surprise for Cline is the attitude shift accompanying the late-night Lamont use.

“Did we expect it to reach some of the noise levels?” Cline says. “Probably not.”

Indeed, this past reading period, reports abounded of students climbing between the third floor and the fourth floor mezzanine, eating takeout in the reading rooms, playing music, dancing on tables, and streaking, all while live-blogging their Lamont antics.

Cline hopes the Lamont Café, set to open in September, will attract and isolate these incidents, leaving the rest of the libary to more studious individuals.

“I hope the café will be a response that people will value, appreciate, and work to respect the library environment,” Cline says. “We may need to make some changes mid-semester or mid-year.”

In many ways, this may not be what the Class of 1956 had in mind when it first moved to extend library hours, but students today continue to carry on its preliminary efforts for a better study environment.

As one caption in the 1956 Yearbook noted, “Paul Buck brought Lamont two hours closer to the ideal library that never closes.”

—Staff Laurence H. M. Holland can be reached at lholland@fas.harvard.edu.