Harvard College Library Circulation and Reference letters, 1919-1976

In its early years, the Harvard College Library did not place great emphasis on patron services, nor were collections intended for wide use. Through the end of Librarian John Langdon Sibley's term in 1877, the Library was mainly used by and its services were aimed toward graduate students and scholars, with regulations on the hours of the Library, the amount of books allowed to be taken out, and borrowing and visiting privileges strictly enforced. Justin Winsor (1877-1897), taking over from Sibley, relaxed or eliminated some of these restrictions, including opening the stacks to undergraduates, establishing a reserve system, and introducing interlibrary loan. These policies represented a turn for the Harvard College Library toward patron services, and included a greater focus on reference service.

In 1914, while the building that would become the Widener Memorial Library was under construction, two students at the Graduate School of Business Administration surveyed Harvard's libraries in order to comply with then Director of the University Library Archibald Cary Coolidge's wish that work in the new building should begin with efficient systems and administration in place. The students recommended the creation of a reference department, and though this suggestion was adopted-- with Assistant Librarian Walter Benjamin Briggs serving as head of the Circulation and Reference Department beginning in 1915-- the Library provided minimal reference services until the late 1930s.

Over the broad time span of this collection, the Circulation and Reference Department underwent numerous changes, shifting with modernized library processes and technologies. Namely, with the growth of the Harvard Library system (which includes 72 libraries), the functions of the department were distributed amongst various staff within specific libraries, with greater knowledge of their specific collections. Still, the essential task of reference service remains the same.