Lamont Library
{{short description|Harvard undergraduate library}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2025}}
Image:Lamont Library, Cambridge MA.jpg ]]
Lamont Library, in the southeast corner of Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, houses the Harvard Library's primary undergraduate collection in humanities and social sciences.{{cite web|url=http://lib.harvard.edu/libraries/0027FULL.html|title=Harvard Libraries: Lamont Library|access-date=2011-11-17|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111127195405/http://lib.harvard.edu/libraries/0027FULL.html|archive-date=2011-11-27}} It was the first library in the United States specifically planned to serve undergraduates.{{r|history}} Women (that is, Radcliffe College students) were admitted beginning in 1967.{{cite news |last1=Walsh |first1=Colleen |title=Hard-earned gains for women at Harvard |url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/04/hard-earned-gains-for-women-at-harvard/ |access-date=20 November 2019 |work=The Harvard Gazette |publisher=Harvard University |date=26 April 2012}}
Overview
Lamont was built as part of a program to address dwindling stack space, and patron overcrowding, at Widener Library.{{Citation needed|date=October 2014}} Keyes D. Metcalf, Librarian of Harvard College and Director of the Harvard University Library from 1937 to 1955, planned the building with Boston architect Henry R. Shepley.{{cite web|url=http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/lamont/history.cfm|title=History - Lamont Library|date=September 3, 2008|access-date=2011-11-17}} Opened in 1949, it is named for its principal donor, Harvard alumnus Thomas W. Lamont.{{cite book|title= Encyclopedia of library and information science|author=Allen Kent |author2=Harold Lancour |author3=Jay E. Daily |publisher= CRC Press|year=1981}}
Lamont's general collection of 200,000 volumes{{refn|name=general|[http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/lamont/collections/index.cfm]}} began with transfers from Widener, the Boylston Hall reserve-book collections, and the Harvard Union Reading Room. A modified Dewey classification scheme was used, and the main spaces included capacious open-shelf alcoves for browsing, study, and research. The Library of Congress Classification system was adopted in the 1970s.{{Cite journal|year=1975|title=University Library|url=http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.ARCH:30166064?n=430|journal=Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments. 1974-1975}}
After Littauer Library closed in 2007, Lamont became the home library for HCL's former Social Sciences Program. Four units of the Social Sciences Program{{mdashb}}Documents Services, Microform Services, Numeric Data Services, and Environmental Information Services{{mdashb}}were combined with Lamont Reference Services. Lamont houses the College Library's major research collections in government documents and microform collections across all disciplines.
References
External links
- [http://hcl.harvard.edu/lamont/ Lamont Library]
{{Harvard}}
{{Coord|42.37277|-71.11548|display=title}}
{{Authority control}}
Category:Library buildings completed in 1949
Category:University and college academic libraries in the United States
Category:Harvard University buildings