Harvard College Library letters

By the early nineteenth century, the Harvard College Library had recovered from the loss of nearly 4,500 of its 5,000 volumes in the Harvard Hall fire of 1764, and had grown to house well over 12,000 volumes in the College's newly reconstructed Harvard Hall. In addition to accepting donations after the fire from benefactors such as Thomas Hollis and John Hancock, the library’s collections grew during the nineteenth century through active solicitation of material from alumni and from domestic and foreign booksellers, by librarians such as Benjamin Peirce (1826-1831), Thaddeus William Harris (1831-1856), and John Langdon Sibley (1856-1877). To further regular and more scholarly acquisitions, the Harvard Corporation (the governing body then responsible for purchasing decisions) delegated purchasing power in 1814 to a "Committee for the purchase of books" that would, by the middle of the century, come to include university and library staff and Harvard faculty. By the end of the nineteenth century, the library contained nearly 410,000 volumes, and had developed new collections in Americana, modern literature, and international works.

With the dramatic increase of the library's collections came a need for the categorization of materials and the division of labor. In 1841, Harvard's libraries consisted of the main College library, a theological library at the Divinity School, a library at the Medical School, and a library at the Law School. By the end of the century, the library network also included an anthropology library at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (established 1866, now the Tozzer Library); numerous scientific libraries including the Lawrence Scientific School Library (established 1847, now the Gordon McKay Library), the Harvard College Observatory (established 1849, now the Wolbach Library), the Museum of Comparative Zoology Library (established 1859, now the Ernst Mayr Library), the Gray Herbarium Library (established 1864, now part of the Botany Libraries), and the Arnold Arboretum Library (established 1874); and numerous departmental libraries, including the architectural library (established 1900, now the Frances Loeb Library at the School of Design), among others. Functional departments and new staff positions within the main library were also established. In 1841, John Langdon Sibley became the first official Assistant Librarian to Thaddeus William Harris, and by 1882, there were official positions heading the newly developed departments of Cataloging, Ordering, and University Archives (established by Harvard Corporation vote in 1851), as well as a position called Superintendent of Circulation. The library also employed other staff in these departments, including women beginning in 1859.

These new libraries, library departments, and library positions followed a trend at Harvard and throughout the country in the nineteenth century towards the professionalization of librarianship. Whereas early Harvard librarians (called “library keepers” through the seventeenth century) had short tenures averaging two to three years and little responsibility beyond opening the library and maintaining its physical condition, circulating books, and compiling basic catalogues, in the mid-nineteenth century, Harvard librarians began to shape the institution's collections and services. Beginning with Thaddeus William Harris, who served from 1831 to 1856 and created the first American card catalog around 1840, librarians' terms were longer, giving them time to tackle the problem of maintaining physical and intellectual control over rapidly growing collections, and advance new procedures in cataloging and library access and use. Harris's card catalog for accessions, while used only by librarians, moved away from the difficult to update printed catalogs and supplements previously in use; the implementation of the public author and subject card catalog did as well, and also greatly improved patron access to library materials. This card catalog was developed in 1860 by Assistant Librarian Ezra Abbot, and was refined in discussion with the Library of Congress and other major libraries and librarians, including Melvil Dewey. These discussions amongst librarians throughout the country (at university, regional, and government libraries), like many in the late nineteenth century regarding collecting practices and establishing standards for library work, reflect the early spirit of access and information sharing that has come to be associated with libraries. Furthering the professionalization of librarianship was the proliferation in the late nineteenth century of library schools providing professional training, and the creation in 1876 of the American Library Association (ALA), with two Harvard librarians-- Justin Winsor and William Lane-- serving as president in its early years.

The nineteenth century was a time when library use was also broadening. Although by 1841 John Langdon Sibley had moved Harvard's steadily-increasing collection into the newly built Gore Hall (the first building at Harvard to be used solely as a library, though it, too, would quickly become overcrowded due to new acquisitions), since the seventeenth century and largely through the end of Sibley’s term in 1877, the library was mainly used by and services aimed toward graduate students and scholars. Strict regulations on the hours of the library, the amount of books allowed to be taken out, and who had borrowing and visiting privileges were enforced. Justin Winsor (1877-1897), taking over from Sibley, relaxed or eliminated some of these restrictions. Winsor opened the library stacks to all undergraduates, established a reserve system, introduced interlibrary loan, and stopped closing the library for cleaning and recalling books for the annual inventory.

After Winsor's death in 1897, William Lane (1898-1928) led the Harvard Library into the twentieth century as Harvard Librarian, along with Archibald Cary Coolidge (1910-1928), who became the first Director of the Harvard University Library in 1910. Coolidge continued his predecessors' focus on acquisition, especially of international collections. Under Coolidge, the Library acquired nearly 100,000 volumes, including significant collections from Slavic, Scandinavian, and other European countries, as well as collections from the Ottoman Empire and East Asia. With the overcrowding of Gore Hall becoming increasingly problematic, it was fortuitous that the early years of Coolidge's term coincided with the gift of a new building to house, among other collections, the library of Harry Elkins Widener (Harvard class of 1907), who had died on the Titanic. The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library opened in 1915.