Garber Prioritizes Library Reform

Having joined Harvard only a few months ago, Provost Alan M. Garber ’76 called reforming the Harvard University Library system his “number one” priority at Tuesday’s meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Professors packed into the meeting—the first of this academic year. Beyond the procedural necessities that are part of the year’s first meeting, professors in attendance at Tuesday’s gathering reviewed the evolving composition of the school’s faculty.

After the effects of the financial crisis constricted faculty searches, and the 2009 FAS retirement package shepherded the exit of many more seasoned professors, the seniority and demography of the existing FAS body has shifted.

Faculty members and administrators also discussed goings-on at the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and plans for Harvard’s upcoming 375th Anniversary.

TOP PRIORITY

In his remarks, Garber acknowledged that he is still learning to navigate the University’s organizational structure, after returning to his alma mater this fall. But he firmly defended the libraries as the top priority for the University.

In particular, Garber discussed the development of five library “affinity groups” as a step in developing the University’s vision of a collaborative, centralized library service.

“We have reached a milestone in this process with the decision of the library board to endorse an organizational change into five affinity groups,” Garber said at the meeting. “The purpose of this change is to enable the library system to work much better, to encourage coordination, and a better sense of shared service.”

The affinity group structure, announced late last week, will organize Harvard’s 73 different libraries into five different groups, each centered around a shared intellectual purpose.

“We are consolidating the libraries in a way that will save money, and that money saved will be plowed back into acquisitions and expanded services,” University Librarian Robert C. Darnton ’60 said. “It will make the library much stronger.”

Darnton affirmed that the library will be taking stock of its resources and will aggressively move toward its top priority of purchasing new volumes—or, as Darnton put it, “acquisitions, acquisitions, acquisitions.”

FILLING UP THE FACULTY

During the meeting, Dean for Faculty Affairs and Planning Nina Zipser addressed concerns that faculty attrition in FAS has been higher in recent years.

According to Zipser, FAS will engage more searches to ensure that the school will have the enough professors across its divisions to support its needs.

As FAS aggressively cut departmental budgets over fiscal years 2010 and 2011, faculty searches became more tightly regulated. In the Dec. 2008 Faculty Meeting, Smith announced the suspension the majority of faculty searches.

As a result of that regulation, the school-wide retirement package introduced in 2009, and natural faculty attrition, FAS faculty growth slowed to a halt.

This crunch followed nearly a decade of active growth in the school, expanding the faculty from 588 to 720 professors. Zipser said that while FAS did not intend to grow as rapidly in the coming years, she hoped that recent positive returns on Harvard’s endowment would allow the University to increase its proportion of senior faculty members.

“The number of assistant and associate professors is declining ... We are promoting faculty a little faster than they are retiring so we can keep the size of the faculty flat,” Zipser said.

There will be 43 searches across FAS this year—an increase from 34 in the previous academic year and a significant step-up from the 24 in 2009.

“We want to be between 40 and 50 searches per year to maintain the strength of each division,” Zipser said.

These searches are largely facilitated by the improved financial situation of FAS.

Formally announcing the decrease of its structural deficit to $16 million, Smith said that the recent announcement of the endowment’s 21.4 percent return was a welcome relief for the school.

“Budget discipline has also allowed us to pre-fund a number of capital projects, so we don’t have to take out additional debt,” said Smith, who again repeated his commitment to formally close the deficit by the end of the fiscal year.

ODDS AND ENDS

Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds affirmed that the College will continue to aggressively combat binge drinking, calling it a “very high and serious priority.”

Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds affirmed that the College will continue to aggressively combat binge drinking, naming its restriction as a high priority of the College.

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Allan M. Brandt also discussed the possibility of introducing new guidelines for graduate theses.

Finally, University Marshal Jackie A. O’Neill encouraged Faculty members to attend Harvard’s upcoming 375th anniversary celebration on Oct. 14.

—Staff writer Gautam S. Kumar can be reached at gkumar@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Julia L. Ryan can be reached at jryan@college.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction.

CORRECTION: OCTOBER 15, 2011

The Oct. 5 article "Garber Prioritizes Library Reform" incorrectly suggested that the size of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ tenured faculty decreased since the school-wide retirement package was introduced in 2009. In fact, while the number of total tenure-track faculty members has decreased, the number of tenured faculty members has grown.