Word: houghtons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Harvard's Devito said the buildings affected included: the Faculty Club; the Union Dorms; the Freshman Union; Widener, Lamont, and Houghton Libraries; Claverly Hall, Dudley House's Apley Court; Stillman Infirmary; the Kennedy School of Government; Kresge Dining Hall at the Business School; and parts of Kirkland, Leverett, Lowell, Mather, Quincy and Winthrop Houses...
...microfilming can only go so far. Many of the books in Houghton need to be preserved in their original form. "There are certain things that you cannot allow to be worn out because they cannot be replaced," says Stoddard. "Microfilm serves the needs of most readers," he says, but "microfilm won't show you how the book was put together... There is no substitute when it comes to evidence for the book itself...
Funding for Houghton's microfilming comes mostly from outside endowments, which include the Title 2C grant from the Department of Education, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Stoddard says. Other preservation efforts are paid for out of the library's own budget...
...Although Houghton is doing a lot of microfilming, other techniques of preservation are being used to preserve original volumes. Pamphlets are bound in cloth to prevent them from falling apart, and endangered books are kept in specially constructed hinged boxes. These boxes are used both for books bound with sharp clasps and for those with "a fragile wrapper or cover...
Even if the efforts in Houghton and other libraries succeed, officials agree there is no way to save every book. The answer to preserving Harvard's written legacy, they say, lies in extensive microfilming, laser disks, special preservation sprays and other solutions which are still in the experimental stage. Whether Harvard can afford these solutions, officials say, remains an open question...