Nancy Cline
Roy E. Larsen Librarian of Harvard College
Academic Year 2009-2010 

Updike Acquisition

Houghton Library acquired the John Updike Archive, an extraordinary collection of manuscripts, correspondence, books, photographs, artwork and other papers.  Although portions of the Archive were given to the library during Updike’s lifetime, and have been available for research at Houghton since 1970, they represented only a small fraction of the full collection. For decades Updike also deposited papers including manuscripts, correspondence, research files, and even golf score cards in the library, but the material – since it was only on deposit at Houghton – was available only with the author’s permission and was not integrated with the material the library owned.  Now complete, the Archive forms the definitive collection of Updike material and will make Houghton the center for study on the author’s life and work. Cataloging the newly acquired material is one of the library’s highest priorities, and the Archive will soon be fully accessible.

Johnson Symposium

A three-day event, “Johnson at 300: A Houghton Library Symposium,” held in late August 2009 drew more than a hundred Johnsonians from all over the world and was the largest scholarly celebration of Samuel Johnson in the United States.  The event was complemented by an exhibition, “A Monument More Durable than Brass,” featuring Johnson’s earliest surviving letter, his earliest diaries (kept in Latin), rare manuscript fragments from the original “Dictionary,” and even the great man’s silver teapot.  The items on display were drawn from Houghton’s Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the world’s most important collections of 18th century literature, comprised of thousands of letters, manuscripts, first editions, portraits and other items.  Following the bequest of the collection, the library was able to fully catalog the entire collection making these amazing resources readily accessible to scholars.

HCL/National Library of China Digitization Project

One of the most extensive collections of rare Chinese books outside of China will be digitized and made freely available to scholars worldwide as part of a six-year cooperative project between Harvard College Library and the National Library of China. Among the largest projects of its kind ever undertaken between China and U.S. libraries, the project will digitize Harvard-Yenching Library’s entire 51,500-volume Chinese rare book collection. Librarians believe that worldwide access to these materials will have a transformative affect on scholarship involving rare Chinese texts.  Work is being done in two three-year phases. The first phase began in January 2010, with the digitization of books from the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties (approximately 960 AD - 1644). The second phase, beginning in January 2013, will digitize books from the Qing Dynasty (approximately 1644 – 1795).  The collection includes materials that cover an extensive range of subjects, including history, philosophy, drama, belles lettres and classics.

Collaborative Learning Space

In Fall 2009 the Collaborative Learning Space (CLS) opened in Lamont Library.  Located on the lower level in Room B-30, this innovative space was designed as a flexible setting in which librarians can experiment with the use of technology and different teaching methods.  The CLS is different from other HCL instructional spaces, as rather than having fixed rows of tables and chairs, its movable furniture allows for endless variations and for fostering collaborative work.  The CLS is outfitted with a range of technologies including: two built-in projectors and screens that allow instructors to display two images simultaneously (e.g., a librarian teaching a class on how to create a bibliography could show a course web site on one screen, while simultaneously demonstrating how to access related library materials on the other); ten laptops for classroom use; a DVD player and VCR; a document camera which can be used to project everything from hand-written materials to three-dimensional objects; and a wireless control system that can be used to remotely operate all the various systems.  A special feature of the CLS is TeamSpot, a software application that allows users to view, edit and annotate documents, presentations and web pages as a group; the software runs on a computer outfitted with a 46-inch plasma display, eliminating the need for students to huddle around a single laptop.  In total, bibliographic and library-related instruction amounted to 88 sessions for 31 courses.  Another 20 meeting and events utilized the CLS’ equipment and flexibility.

When not being used for library instruction, the CLS may be used as group study space, meeting a need continually expressed by students. 

Multimedia Lab

With video and music becoming a larger part of classroom instruction and assignments, and in response to a growing number of requests from students, a Multimedia Lab was established in Lamont Room A-10 in what had formerly been the Lamont Viewing Room.  This multi-media authoring facility has Mac and Windows equipment for creating, editing, and publishing a wide variety of multimedia projects; its video authoring software allows for fuller integration of audio, music, image, and video tools.  The Lab, which is open 24/5 and offers staff assistance, has been filled near to or at capacity every evening during the semester.  The majority of students, both undergraduate and graduate, have been utilizing the Lab for course projects, class assignments or academic research.  Usage has ranged from individual work, as when an undergraduate student edited a video documentary of her teaching experience at a school in a small village in China (as reporting and documentation for a Harvard grant) to group work, as when students from the Graduate School of Education worked on a special course project.  The Lab was also used by several Harvard Shorts Film Fest entrants this year.

Science Libraries

This past year HCL has been engaged in the process launched by Dean of Science Jeremy Bloxham in April 2009 to examine the organizational structure of the science libraries in FAS.  The goal of the planning process was to identify a set of principles and priorities for these libraries that will enable to meet the changing teaching and research needs of faculty and students more effectively and efficiently for the years to come.  In the past 15 to 20 years, discussions have been ongoing regarding how to increase coordination among the FAS science libraries given the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of scholarship and in order to effect an overall improvement in services to library users now and into the future.  A shared administrative framework appeared to be a necessary component of any plans to coordinate these resources. As a first step, for FY10 memoranda of understanding were written to facilitate the transfer of administrative and financial responsibility for Birkhoff Mathematics, Physics Research, and Chemistry & Chemical Biology libraries to HCL.  In addition, a letter of understanding was written for the Statistics Library to formalize its relationship with HCL’s Cabot Science Library and its participation in collaborative efforts.   Given the varying nature of each library’s budget, staffing levels and services, HCL worked closely with each library and its respective academic departments to develop a unique approach for the administrative transfer of each.  In addition, HCL continues to work with the museum libraries, the Harvard University Herbaria Botany Libraries and the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology; as well as with Gordon McKay and the Blue Hill libraries in SEAS and Wolbach Library in the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, to define potential areas of collaboration, which may include: strengthening outreach efforts to students and faculty; coordinating reference services (including virtual reference); and refining collecting and preservation priorities.

HCL/MIT

In April 2010, HCL and MIT Libraries launched a pilot program to extend reciprocal borrowing privileges to undergraduate students.  An extension of a 1995 reciprocal borrowing agreement for faculty and graduate students, this program offers students the best of both libraries’ collections, with MIT’s rich in science and engineering and HCL’s in humanities and social sciences.  Not only will this pilot provide an opportunity for our undergraduates to explore and make use of expanded collections, but it also builds on an existing collaboration with MIT, and may serve as a model for service relationships in the future.  Both HCL and MIT libraries are collecting data, and the pilot for undergraduates will be assessed after 14 months.

Collections Development

Over the course of AY2009-10, collection development and research librarians met with the academic departments, centers, committees, and institutes to elicit faculty input on collecting priorities going forward in the context of reduced resources.  The goal of the meetings was to discern what the faculty need the Library to be collecting for their research, for their teaching, and in order to support academic disciplines into the future.  Discussions with each constituency varied, but topics included the balance between collecting unique materials and mainstream trade books; tradeoffs between collections and services; and the faculty’s participation in depositing their articles in DASH, Harvard’s open access institutional repository.  These conversations have played an important role in informing the Library’s directions as it reviews its collections possibilities and delineates priorities.