IRIS Photos

University Librarian’s Update

What’s Happening with Undergraduate Libraries?

On April 21-22 I spoke at the University of Texas on trends in library facilities. My visit coincided with the announcement that the UT undergraduate library will be transformed into a student learning center. The library will collaborate with other university stakeholders (including the University of Texas Information Technologies) to create unified services for students, removing book collections and replacing stacks and tiered carrels with new study spaces that are less crowded and linear.

On April 29, when I attended the annual meeting of the Harvard Visiting Committee for the Libraries, we discussed the transformation of Hilles Library (formerly the library for Radcliffe) into the Quad Library, which will become a small reading room occupying only one floor of the building. The Hilles collection, with the exception of items unique to Harvard, has been donated to Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China. Harvard’s Lamont Library, which initiated the trend for undergraduate libraries when it opened in 1949, is undergoing selective renovation of reading rooms, including softer lighting and comfortable seating, and is introducing a two-year pilot of twenty-four-hour access. Meanwhile, Harvard undergraduates account for one-third of the circulation in Widener Library, the distinguished social science and humanities research building a few yards away from Lamont. The concept of the separate undergraduate collection is clearly changing at major institutions, with emphasis shifting to use of the space to support study and learning rather than “core” collections.

Song of the Vowels

On April 27 The Song of the Vowels was removed from its pedestal opposite Uris Library for conservation treatment. The statue, officially Le Chant des Voyelles, by the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, was the gift of Harold D. Uris and Percy Uris to the Library in 1962. There are others at Princeton, UCLA, Stanford, Kykuit Gardens in Tarrytown, N.Y., and Paris—and maybe more. It was originally created as a garden sculpture for Madame de Maudrot’s home at Le Pradet, which had been designed by Le Corbusier.

According to a Princeton Web site: “Song of the Vowels is one of a series of sculptures in which Lipchitz explored his ‘obsession’ with the harp.... Lipchitz commented in 1946 on the poetic title of the sculpture: ‘The title has no connection with the famous poem of Rimbaud, but rather with a legend of ancient Egypt, according to which it appears there existed a prayer, the Song of the Vowels, which the priests and priestesses made use of to conjure up the forces of nature.’”

Next: North Campus Book Drop