Editing Widener Library (section)

===Amenities and deficiencies===

Touted as "the last word in library construction",{{r|contract}}
the new building's amenities included telephones, [[pneumatic tube]]s, book lifts and conveyors, elevators,{{r|snead}}
and a dining-room and kitchenette "for the ladies of the staff".{{r|lane_mem|p=676}}
Advertisements for the manufacturer of the building's shelving highlighted its "dark brown enamel finish, harmonizing with oak trim",{{r|snead_ad}}
and special interchangeable regular and oversize shelves meant that books on a given subject could be shelved together regardless of size.{{NoteTag
|{{r|snead}}
In the basement (later converted to additional shelving as stacks levels C and D after a further donation by Eleanor Widener in 1928){{hsp}}{{r|crime_1928}} were
:the [[dynamo]]s which run the five elevators and two book-lifts, the compressed air machinery for the pneumatic tubes, the dynamo and fan for the vacuum-cleaning system, a pump connected with the steam-heating apparatus, enormous fans which pump warm air into the Reading-Room and the stack, a filter through which passes all water which enters the building, and the connec{{shy}}tions for electric light and power. The building is to be heated by steam, conveyed through a tunnel from the plant of the [[Boston Elevated Railway|Elevated Railroad Company]], which also furnishes heat to the other buildings of the [[Harvard Yard|College Yard]] and to the freshman dormitories.{{r|lane_mem|p=328}}
{{paragraph break}}
The marble floors were polished using a machine "so simple that any laborer of ordinary intelli{{shy}}gence can operate it to advantage [yet it] can do the work of ten men rubbing by hand."{{hsp}}{{r|engineering}}
}}

''The Library Journal'' found "especially interesting not so much the spacious and lofty reading rooms"{{hsp}}{{r|tlj_may1915}} as the innovation{{r|metcalf1965|p=255}} of placing student [[carrel desk|carrels]] and private faculty studies directly in the stack, reflecting Lowell's desire to put "the massive resources of the stack close to the scholar's hand, reuniting books and readers in an intimacy that nineteenth-century ['closed-stack' library designs] had long precluded".{{ran|B|p=45–46}}
(Competition for the seventy{{r|lane_libj|p=327}} coveted faculty studies has been a longstanding administrative headache.){{NoteTag
|"The [faculty studies] are not all fully used," Coolidge wrote in 1917, "but you will understand that I can not go to a professor and tell him that I think he is not making use of his space and had better give it up. I have tried in some cases hinting to people that if they did not need their quarters there were others who could make good use of them. These hints have usually met with conspicuously little success."{{hsp}}{{ran|B|p=72{{hyp}}75}}
}}

Nonetheless, certain deficien{{shy}}cies were soon noted.{{ran|B|p=107|canoe|page2=89}}
A primitive form of air conditioning was aban{{shy}}doned within a few months.{{r|metcalf1965}}<!--<<need page #-->{{r|metcalf1988|p=97}}
"The need of better toilet facilities [in the stacks] has been pressed upon us during the past year by several rather distressing experiences," Widener Superintendent Frank Carney wrote discreetly in 1918.{{NoteTag
|"At present", Carney continued, "everyone using the stack is obliged to go to the basement to reach the public toilet. This in the case of a man using one of the top floors of the stack is a particularly long trip{{nbsp}}... An emergency toilet{{nbsp}}... would be a desirable thing."{{hsp}}{{ran|B|p=59}}
By 1937 security changes had made the situation even worse, so that someone on the lowest stack level had to climb seven flights of stairs, exit the stack, then descend another set of stairs to reach the basement toilet. Eventually toilets were installed in the stack by Harvard Librarian Keyes Metcalf, who later wrote that "As far as graduate students are concerned, I will go down in history as the man who provided toilet facilities in the Widener stack."{{hsp}}{{r|metcalf1988|p=139–40}}
}}
And after a university-wide search for castoff furniture left many of the stacks' 300 carrels still unequipped,{{r|furniture}} Coolidge wrote to {{nobr|[[J. P. Morgan Jr.]],}} "There is something rather humiliating in having to proclaim to the world that <!--we have 300 [carrels in the stacks] which furnish--> [Widener offers] unequalled opportunity to the scholar and investigator who wishes to come here, but that in order to use these opportu{{shy}}ni{{shy}}ties he must bring his own chair, table and electric lamp."
(A week later Coolidge wrote again: "Your very generous gift [has helped] pull me out of a most desperate situation."){{NoteTag
|{{r|bentinck1976|p=102}}
Even during construction Harvard officials worried about financing the new library's furnishings and equipment, which Eleanor Widener did not undertake to supply except in the case of the building's "great public rooms [which she] handsomely furnished".{{r|furniture}} In early 1914, for example, a series of letters between Lane and [[Snead & Co.]] (the builders of the stacks) discussed the design of signs which would direct patrons to the various subject classifications; but in June, Lane apologized for being unable to finalize a planned order for these signs:
:Our situation in regard to this is an embarrassing one{{nbsp}}... The College has no means in hand to cover this expense, and we do not see where we are going to get what is needed for this and other similar purposes. We do not feel ourselves in a position to ask Mrs. Widener or Mr. Trumbauer to provide these necessary fittings, indispensable as they are for the proper use of the shelves. The labels for the ends of the stack and the number plates we can of course do without by fastening up cardboard signs{{nbsp}}...

In another letter Lane proposed the economy measure of using bricks wrapped in paper as bookends.{{r|lane_snead}}
}}

Later-built tunnels, from the stacks level furthest underground, connect to nearby [[Pusey Library (Harvard University)|Pusey Library]], [[Lamont Library]],{{r|beefs}}
and [[Houghton Library]].{{r|kent}}
An enclosed bridge connecting to Houghton's reading room via a Widener window{{mdashb}}built after Eleanor Widener's heirs agreed to waive{{r|metcalf1988|p=75}} her gift's proscription of exterior additions or alterations{{r|bentinck1976|p=79}}{{mdashb}}was removed in 2004.{{r|bridge}}
Houghton and Lamont were built in the 1940s to relieve Widener,{{r|relieve}}
which had become simultaneously too small{{mdashb}}its shelves were full{{r|widener_history}}{{mdashb}}and too large{{mdashb}}its immense size
and complex catalog made books difficult to locate.{{NoteTag
|{{r|metcalf1988|p=27}} On any given floor of the stack, it is 400 feet (120&nbsp;m) from the entrance stairwell to the furthest shelves, and a patron "concerned with material in widely different fields may find that a tiresome amount of walking and stair climbing is involved."{{hsp}}{{r|metcalf1965|p=91,74}} English professor [[Howard Mumford Jones]] complained in 1950 that in preparing a lecture on [[Robert Frost]], after a long hunt for a bibliography listing works he would need to consult, then locating those works in the complicated catalogs, he found that
:the ''American Scholar'' is shelved on Floor A; the ''New English Quarterly'' under New England; the ''Classical Journal'' is shelved on Floor 5; and ''College English'' is in Educ on Floor B. I shall not go into the matter of distribution [of these works among wings] East, South, and West&nbsp;...{{ran|B|pp=133–34}}
}}
But with Harvard's collections doubling every 17 years, by 1965 Widener was again close to full,{{r|deficit}}
prompting construction of Pusey,{{r|newpusey}} and in the early 1980s library officials "pushed the panic button"{{r|panic}} again, leading to the construction of the [[Harvard Depository]] in 1986.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Rayman |first1=Noah S. |last2=Spitzer |first2=Elyssa A. L. |date=April 1, 2010 |title=Beyond The Stacks: Inside Harvard University Library's Depository |url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/4/1/depository-library-books-facility/?page=1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220813025353/https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/4/1/depository-library-books-facility/?page=1 |archive-date=August 13, 2022 |access-date=June 21, 2024 |work=[[The Harvard Crimson]]}}</ref>