# 1897-1899 ## expand\_more ### **1897-1898** The reading room of Gore Hall was poorly ventilated and very uncomfortable in the summer. A rotary ventilating fan, designed to pump warm air into the room in the winter and to draw warm air out of the room in the summer, was installed. It was apparently ineffectual.67 ### **Summer 1898** Radcliffe College undertook renovations to a wall of Fay House, due to concerns that the weight of books in the third-floor library might do structural damage to the building.68 ### **1897-1898** The Fogg Art Museum instituted regulations and record-keeping for use of its collections of prints and engravings. Permission was required to consult and copy materials; only pencils were allowed for note-taking; visitors must sign in and be supervised duringuse.69 ### **1898-1899** President Eliot began to use the term “dead books” to describe those books in a library that were seldom or never used. He believed that they should not be stored with the “living” collection (which was used primarily by “young men”), but rather elsewhere—either in more compact storage or somewhere off-site. William Coolidge Lane, Librarian of Harvard, would come to acknowledge that off-site storage was a better option than overcrowding the library or deaccessioning books, but he resisted the term “dead book.” Discussions of a storehouse, perhaps shared with other New England libraries, continued over the next few years.70 ### **1898-1899** William Coolidge Lane described access to Gore Hall during this period: “Cards of admission to different departments of the Library are given, on recommendation of an instructor, to all advanced students who need to go directly to the shelves for purposes of investigation in connection with their work.” Radcliffe students might consult books in a small reading room.71 ### **1898-1899** A new method of checking the stacks was introduced in Gore Hall. Previously, the stacks were checked against a shelf-list twice a year. Now they would be checked each month. A list of books that were out of place was checked against circulation and cataloging records. If a book had not reappeared after several months it was declared missing.72 \----- 67 William Coolidge Lane, “The Library,” *Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1897-1898* (1899): 208; William Bentinck-Smith, “Archibald Cary Coolidge and the Harvard Library, II. Facing the Question as a Whole,” *Harvard Library Bulletin* 21, no. 4 (1973): 426. 68 Agnes Irwin, “Report of the Dean,” *Annual reports of the president and treasurer of Radcliffe College 1897-1898*: 20-22. 69 Charles H. Moore, “The Fogg Art Museum,” *Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1897-1898* (1899): 281. 70 Charles W. Eliot, “The President’s Report,” *Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1898-1899* (1900): 29-30; William Coolidge Lane, “The Library,” *Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1901-1902* (1903): 215-216. 71 William Coolidge Lane, “The Library,” *Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1898-1899* (1900): 219. 72 William Coolidge Lane, “The Library,” *Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1898-1899* (1900): 225-226.