1905
While President Eliot continued to push for offsite storage with courier service to Gore Hall, William Coolidge Lane countered by describing the experience of sending a group of “dead” books to Robinson Hall. The result was a high demand on the library messenger to retrieve books for use by readers. Meanwhile, the over-crowding of books in Gore Hall hindered access and damaged books.87
1906-1908
A final—two-story, reinforced concrete—addition was made to the north side of Gore Hall’s east stack. One new feature was the Treasure Room, where valuable books could be kept secure and used under supervision. This room had twenty-three sliding book cases: an early example of compact shelving. Gore Hall’s new Map Room stored maps and atlases on sliding horizontal shelves. Several reading rooms were lit by tungsten lamps. There was still not enough space to house all of the library’s books.88
March 4, 1907
A fire at the residential hall of the Observatory was extinguished before the arrival of the city fire department, thanks in part to experience gained from frequent fire drills.89
1907-1908
William Coolidge Lane noted that the annual cleaning of the Gore Hall’s books now took four men working over three months—“a constantly increasing, but apparently unavoidable, item of expense.” He blamed the Cambridge air, full of coal- smoke, for the dust that accumulated on the books. Lane considered several future preventative measures, including filtering the air being introduced to the library and applying “dust-laying compounds” to paths and streets in Cambridge. The library experimented with a book-cleaning mechanical vacuum, but chose not to purchase one.90
1908
Caroline Farley, Librarian of Radcliffe, resigned due to poor health. Her successor, Rose Sherman, often included specific statistics about binding costs in her annual reports. She did not specify where the binding was done.91
1910-1911
Gore Hall was too small and not fireproof. Thousands of books were stored in basements around campus. Other books were piled on tables or on the floor of Gore Hall. A committee of architects submited a plan for a new library building, but there were no funds available to build it.92
1911
The libraries of the Harvard Divinity School and the Andover Seminary were united in a new fireproof stack in Andover Hall. The schools separated in 1926, but the libraries remained united as the Andover-Harvard Theological Library. In June 1912, this library extended privileges to officers and students of Radcliffe College.93
November 1911
Radcliffe College began to pay an annual fee of $500 (“to defray the expenses incurred”) so that its students could continue borrowing books from Gore Hall.94
References
87 Charles W. Eliot, “The President’s Report,” and William Coolidge Lane, “The Library,” Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1904-1905 (1906): 42-43 and 226-227.
88 William Coolidge Lane, “The Library,” Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1906-1907 (1908): 190-196.
89 Edward C. Pickering, “The Observatory,” Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1906-1907 (1908): 261.
90 William Coolidge Lane, “The Library,” Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1907-1908 (1909): 215-216.
91 See Caroline Farley’s and Rose Sherman’s annual reports of this period (in Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Radcliffe College).
92 A. Lawrence Lowell, “The President’s Report,” and Archibald Cary Coolidge, “The Library,” Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1910-1911 (1912): 22-23 and 160.
93 W. W. Fenn, “The Divinity School,” Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1911-1912 (1913): 134; Rose Sherman, “Report of the Librarian,” Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Radcliffe College 1911-1912: 18.
94 L. B. R. Briggs, “Report of the President,” Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Radcliffe College 1911-1912: 17.