Widener Library

Harry Elkins Widener
Memorial Library
"You could destroy all the other Harvard buildings and, with Widener left standing, still have a university." — G. L. Kittredge[1]
42°22′24.4″N 71°06′59.4″W / 42.373444°N 71.116500°W / 42.373444; -71.116500
LocationCambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
TypeAcademic
Established1915
Branch ofHarvard Library
Collection
Items collectedPrimarily humanities and social sciences
Size
  • 3.5 million (onsite)
  • 3 million (offsite)
Access and use
Access requirementsHarvard faculty, students & staff
Circulation600,000 items/year
Other information
WebsiteWidener Library

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, housing some 3.5 million books,[2] is the centerpiece of the Harvard Library system. It honors 1907 Harvard College graduate and book collector Harry Elkins Widener, and was built by his mother Eleanor Elkins Widener soon after his death in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

Widener's "vast and cavernous" [3] stacks hold works in more than one hundred languages which together comprise "one of the world's most comprehen­sive research collec­tions in the humanities and social sciences." [4] Its 57 miles (92 km) of shelves, along five miles (8 km) of aisles on ten levels, comprise a "labyrinth" which one student "could not enter without feeling that she ought to carry a compass, a sandwich, and a whistle." [5]

At the building's heart are the Widener Memorial Rooms, displaying papers and mementos recalling the life and death of Harry Widener, as well as the Harry Elkins Widener Collec­tion,[6] "the precious group of rare and wonder­fully interesting books brought together by Mr. Widener",[7] to which was later added one of the few perfect Gutenberg Bibles‍—‌the object of a 1969 burglary attempt conjectured by Harvard's police chief to have been inspired by the 1964 heist film Topkapi.

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