1850-1851
Manuscript papers relating to the earliest days of Harvard were discovered to have suffered damage and losses during storage in Gore Hall. The Corporation decided to have them classified, arranged, and bound, “for their preservation and for preventing future loss.” They would be stored in a safe in the President’s office in University Hall. This event constituted the formation of Harvard’s first Archives.28
1856
John Langdon Sibley, previously Assistant Librarian, became Librarian of Gore Hall. Despite the resistance of President Walker, Sibley increased the building’s storage capacity by installing movable shelves in the alcoves. Sibley began to employ women in the library, first to clean books and then to work on the catalogue (a women’s restroom was added in 1860). Harvard students and young boys were often hired to dust the books.29
1856-1857
Francis C. Gray bequeathed his collection of engravings to Harvard. His nephew, William Gray, established conditions for the bequest, including a requirement that the collection would be kept with special care for “security against fire and other injury.” By 1896 the engravings had become the responsibility of the Fogg Art Museum, where they were stored in “dust-proof cases, of handsome quartered oak with interior fittings of Spanish cedar.”30
1857-1860
Harvard undergraduates submitted two proposals requesting better library facilities. A committee appointed by the Faculty suggested that, if particularly valuable books were locked up and patrons were inspected at the exit, Gore Hall’s alcoves could be opened to undergraduates. Sibley resisted, reasoning that increased access would cause damage to the books and inconvenience to the staff. A compromise was reached: library hours were extended, the hours during which books could be borrowed were extended, and current periodicals were made available (before they were bound). The alcoves remained off-limits to undergraduates.31
1858
During this period the library was inspected every year. All books were recalled and shelved. John Langdon Sibley noted (on June 23) that there were “fifty-seven persons delinquent, among the worst of whom are some of the College Officers.”32
1859
John Langdon Sibley hired John Maccarty, who subsequently trained as a bookbinder. Sibley hoped to establish a small workshop and bindery in which Maccarty could do binding work for the library, and thereby save money on binding costs. However, Maccarty died before this plan could become a reality.33
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28 Jared Sparks, “Report,” Annual Report of the President of Harvard University to the Overseers on the state of the university for the academic year 1850-1851 (1852): 11-12; Jared Sparks, “Report,” Annual Report of the President of Harvard University to the Overseers on the state of the university for the academic year 1851-1852 (1853): 10-11; Carpenter, The First 350 Years of the Harvard University Library, 84-85.
29 Shipton, “John Langdon Sibley, Librarian,” 236-261.
30 James Walker, “Report,” Annual Report of the President of Harvard University to the Overseers on the state of the university for the academic year 1856-1857 (1858): 17-19; Charles H. Moore, “The Fogg Art Museum,” Annual reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1896-1897 (1898): 256.
31 Elkins, “Foreshadowings of Lamont: Student Proposals in the Nineteenth Century,” 42-53.
32 Metcalf, “The Undergraduate and the Harvard Library, 1765-1877,” 48.
33 Shipton, “John Langdon Sibley, Librarian,” 247-248.