Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library

They don’t want non-​Harvard attendees at this library. The general public can get books from here, but you have to sign up for a card and then sit in a segregated waiting room (with free WiFi) while a student worker goes to the stacks for you. This is a pretty lame technique to filter out researchers who are off in the head or insufficiently serious. If you want to do research at Harvard, take your card and go to a specific research library. It’s better than pointlessly giving Harvard a lot of money or putting up with Widener’s visiting researcher system which feels like sitting in detention. Most of the books cataloged as being here are in the depository anyway.

This library is easily one of the most beautiful I have ever studied in. It feels like I’m walking through a museum instead of a library whenever I use it. I also like how non-​Harvard students (I have a membership through my work at MGH) can use the internet. The one frustration I have with this library is that the hours are horrible. How can a college library close at 10PM? I went to a NESCAC, and my college closed at 1:30 AM – I would have expected even better hours at the intellectual bastion that is Harvard College!

I have a love-​hate relationship with Widener.
On the one hand, it does have perhaps the best collection of books in the world. Books are almost always on the shelves. The abundant albeit leaky skylights also provide wonderful natural lighting.
On the other hand, Widener’s policies are the very opposite of academic collegiality. I’m faculty at another institution, but I can’t get into Widener (forget about the other affiliated libraries) without paying through the nose, to the tune of $ 750 to $ 1K a year. The only other option is to use the reading room, which I may do ten days per year, which allows me to page but not check out books. Doing all of my reading in the library is hardly convenient, though, when the library closes every day at 5, as it does during the weekends, summers, and other vacation periods. (The hours here on Unilocal only apply to the regular academic workweek, which is approx. ½ of the year.)
Other major issues:
1. Staff are bad about returning books. Twice they lost two books I returned when I had my yearly library card, and tried to charge me for them. It turns out that they were back on the shelves.
2. Late fees are outrageous. A staff member half-​jokingly suggested that I pay in gold fillings.
3. There is not much non-​reserved seating. Most of it belongs to the carrels, computer stations, resource-​specific rooms, etc.
4. Harvard never, under any circumstances, lends books to libraries at any other libraries in Boston.
5. You get strip-​searched whenever you leave. Exaggerating here … a little.
I can understand that the Harvard library wants to preserve its elite reputation as the world’s best. But the air of exclusivity feels like a sin against the very nature of a library, which should be to disseminate knowledge. Anyone who has an academic interest should get lending privileges. And, indeed, other major university library in Boston provides open access. Of course, they don’t have nearly as much on the shelves.
I don’t know that much will change. Maybe when they threaten to tax endowment earnings and put the funds to public use? That wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Back in the nineteenth century, Thoreau had to harangue the Harvard college president so as to secure the borrowing privileges due to an alumnus. He’d been excluded because he lived farther than ten miles away. It’s astonishing to see how little has changed!

I love Widener Library so much that if I could, I would marry Widener Library and have little Widener babies. They’d be named things like Loeb, Houghton, Schlesinger, or Tozzer. They’d drip chocolate ice cream on my new pristine white sofa (because, in the fantasy, I live in a modernist wonderland, where there are tasteful white sofas and Barcelona loungers and I am a most happy hipster), and I’d scream, «Loeb Schlesinger Villa I Tatti Baker! You wait till your father gets home!» That’s how much I love Widener Library. You know that drooling sound Homer makes when he thinks of beer? I do that, except instead of saying «beerrrrr» it’s «Widenerrrrrr.» Mmmm. Yeah.
I love Widener even though I’d constantly get lost. But I loved having to pick up one of those cheat-​sheet location maps, every single I time I visited. To my mind, that is the mark of a great library. Give me floor plans! Make me go from 5 to some basement sub-​level! I’d plan my visits around which floors I needed to visit. And lord forbid if I needed stuff from Pusey. That was like an all-​day excursion. I felt the need to wear safari clothes and alert friends and family: perhaps I will not return. Do I need a malaria shot? Are my immunizations up to date? Will I run into wildlife (some crazed elderly emeritus faculty member, perhaps)? Of course, sometimes it would be just a quick trip, to pick up something from offsite, or perhaps DVDs. Yeah, I’m at one of the world’s great research libraries, and I’m checking out Season 4 of the Gilmore Girls.
What I loved most about Widener, however, were the joys that just waited on the shelf. Often I’d be looking for something, expecting it to be at Houghton (my nightmare; you want to bitch about libraries and wacky access policies, save that for Houghton. Seriously.). An early 18^th-​century German encyclopedia, in 24 volumes, with the original engravings? Just hanging out on the shelf? That I can photocopy??? (Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m an awful person. Don’t worry, I used the overhead copier thing – I’m not that evil).
Alas, I no longer have access (although, it’s apparently actually not all that hard to get access if you’re a legitimate researcher, and quite honestly, I’ve other libraries of some colleges that will not be named are far more irritating), so I can only dream of the joys. But, considering the irritating tourists who are constantly taking pictures and lurking about outside, I fully understand the access policy. Just imagine Irritating Italian Tourist Family roaming around, inside the library, misshelving things willy-​nilly and snappy pictures of crazed carrel dwellers? Not a pretty thought.

Having completely forgotten the sour-​grapes taste this library used to give me back when I was shut out with the rest of the hoi polloi, I suppose I should update my bad review. The Widener library gives me the same delicious drowsy feeling as snuggling into clean soft sheets. And yes I do get lost in the bizarre ancient tomes, and leave dazed and blinking with some strange volume that is not at all what I came for. This is not very practical, but has led to some serendipitous discoveries… I think Harry’s ghost likes me.

I tried to access it as an MIT grad student as a favor for a friend. 2 hours, 6 desks later I had a non working ID card and the book I was looking for was lost. I hate this library. Expect bureaucracy and idiocy wrapped up in a beautiful package, harvard style.

This is only a 3 star review because Widener is pretty. Otherwise it would be 2 stars.
Sure, this is a beautiful building, but when I walk into a library, I generally expect to see… well…books! Widener doesn’t seem to think this is necessary.
The first time I came here to check out a book, it took me a full 15 minutes to figure out that the books are actually off in some other wing, and not the main building. I’m pretty familiar with libraries, and was able to find what I was looking for easily enough, but it’s a confusing system, and Pusey is one of the creepiest places I’ve ever been. It’s this strange underground vault where several categories of books are kept and the tunnels that lead to it look as though they should be dripping water.
I always try to find books at other libraries on campus before resorting to looking for them here.

Great, beautiful library that is an important resource for Harvard students. Our class also took our senior photograph on the huge, famous steps! The reading room is a great place to study and the stacks are so huge with so many books that you could easily get lost!
There is also the special Harvard Widener stacks tradition… gotta love it! Whatever your reason for coming to Widener Library (wink wink), it’s worth the trip!

Can’t speak to the library itself but when it’s closed and the moon is out their steps are pretty nice to sit and people watch. Maybe do a little makin’ out. Whatev.
Good times.

i’m seriously obsessed with widener right now.
i stop by before my class to study and its absolutely gorgeous. the reading room is just what i was looking for — open, good lighting, decent seating… i could get locked up here for hours.

I have no idea how good this library is because they won’t let me in here. Harvard students only? WTF? Across town, MIT’s libraries are open to all — and nearly every other American college is the same way.

Yes absolutely one of the most important resources for Harvard students and faculty. I don’t know about that whole nookie in the stacks thing, I mean, who wants to do it with dust everywhere? But to each their own. Beware of the light switches on the stacks … when you touch them you’ll get a slight electric shock. It’s that dry in there.