24-25 January, 1764
The General Court of Massachusetts held session at Harvard Hall during a smallpox outbreak in Boston. A fire began in the library and spread, destroying the Hall; severe winter weather hindered firefighting efforts. Most of the library collection (5,000 volumes) was lost. About 400 books survived: they were either out on loan or in boxes, waiting to be unpacked. President Edward Holyoke wrote: “In a very short time, this venerable Monument of the Piety of our Ancestors was turn’d into a heap of ruins.” Early Harvard records were saved because they were stored in President Holyoke’s office in Wadsworth House. The General Court paid to rebuild Harvard Hall and donated a “water engine” for future firefighting efforts. The library collection grew by donation in the following years.11
1765
The president and fellows approved a new set of Library Laws. The Librarian (no longer referred to as “Library Keeper”) should be appointed for no more than three years. He was responsible for keeping the building aired, swept, and dusted. A fire should be lit once a month from October to April, but the Librarian must monitor it and make sure it is properly extinguished. Juniors may now borrow books from the library, a privilege previously reserved for seniors. It was easier to borrow books from the “smaller” library of books for common use, but it was also possible for these students to borrow from the “great” library with permission from the proper authority figures. Each year, every borrower must return his books to the library by the end of June, so they can be dusted and inspected. It was now explicitly forbidden to bring a candle or a lamp into the library.12
1764-1766
The second Harvard Hall was built. (It still stands today albeit heavily renovated and expanded.) The library collection, organized in alcoves denoted by the names of major donors, took up half of the second floor of this building. Early shelf-lists and catalogues were attempts to keep track of the growing collection. Certain books of philosophy and medicine were prohibited to students.13
-----
11 Clifford K. Shipton, “The Collections of the Harvard University Archives,” Harvard Library Bulletin 1, no. 2 (1947): 176; Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636-1936, 95-98; Kenneth E. Carpenter, The First 350 Years of the Harvard University Library: Description of an Exhibition (Cambridge: Harvard University Library, 1986), 12-13.
12 Potter and Bolton, The Librarians of Harvard College, 45-47; Metcalf, “The Undergraduate and the Harvard Library, 1765-1877,” 29-30.
13 John Perkins Brown, “The Second Harvard Hall Library,” Harvard Library Notes 29 (March 1939): 226-232; Potter, The Library of Harvard University: Descriptive and Historical Notes, 14-16; Douglass Shand-Tucci and Richard Cheek, Harvard University: An Architectural Tour (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001), 33-36; Carpenter, The First 350 Years of the Harvard University Library, 18; Ernest John Knapton, “Pitt Clarke’s Harvard Diary, 1786-1791,” Harvard Library Bulletin 21, no. 2 (1973): 167-170.