Word: bryants
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Harvard has used Bryant's skills to build itself a library system that looks to the future while not forgetting its past. The University has demanded a lot from Bryant but he'll argue forever that he's gotten back his investment. There is never a word that even faintly suggests ego. "If I ever got that modest," a colleague says, "people wouldn't know...
...Bryant says the most elaborate robbery attempt occurred in 1971, when an intrepid would-be thief stayed in the building after closing hours and climbed out onto the roof of the Widener rooms housing one of the few Gutenberg Bibles in the world. The man broke through two skylight windows, lowered himself into the chamber and removed the extremely heavy volumes from their case. Bible in hand, he began to climb the knotted rope, but midway up, he fell to the concrete floor. The robber's moans brought one of the night janitors running. "He was terribly injured...
...Bryant recalls the era of the Harvard strike in terms of a siege. There was "enormous concern for the physical security of the building," he says while he stands in his office, glancing about and noting, "This was general headquarters." Bryant spent nights and weekends camped out in Widener during the worst of the strike, joined by a small corps of concerned faculty members and a few members of the library staff. Ten years later, he attributes the incident "to an unbelievable lack of communication and understanding" between the faculty and students. While he says he did not oppose...
...Bryant sits forward in his chair again, always ready to talk shop. He points to the major problem which he will leave the library system--soon to be under Oscar Handlin, Pforzheimer University Professor. Harvard's tradition of excellence must not be sacrificed to multiplying costs, he insists. "In a library like Harvard's, whose expenditures are much larger than any University in the world, there is a necessity to maintain our commitments to collecting." From a man who first got interested in library work while dissecting German war papers at Stanford's Hoover Institution, this feeling comes...
...Bryant maintains a "sense of real pride" about his long association with the University. It took Harvard a while to lure Bryant away from his work in the foreign service, he recalls, "but I always have been glad I decided to come." Even so, Bryant does not believe that what Harvard does is always right...