Widener Library

Departments in Widener

HCL Administration

Administrative offices of the Harvard College Library—the major libraries that support the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—are located in Widener Library. The HCL Administration includes the Roy E. Larsen Librarian for Harvard College, the Associate Librarian for Research, Teaching, and Learning; Associate Librarian for Preservation, Digitization, and Administrative Services; Associate Librarian for Collection Development; and the Associate Librarian of Harvard College for Collection Management. In addition to their organization-wide responsibilities, the HCL Administration also oversees and coordinates the departmental activities of Widener Library, including Access Services, Collection Development, Research Services, and HCL Technical Services.

HCL Administrative Services offices are housed in Widener and include Communications, Financial Services, Human Resource Services, Information Technology Services, and Operations.

Divisions of Preservation & Imaging (Conservation, Imaging Services) and the Development office are also housed in Widener.

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Access Services

Widener Library, Room G-30
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
Tel: 617-384-5003

Access Services actively supports the teaching and research mission of the Harvard College Library by managing programs, projects, and services dedicated to providing access to the Widener Collections, housed in the Widener and Pusey libraries and the Harvard Depository, to members of the Harvard University community and beyond.

The divisions of Access Services are organized by functional expertise.

Collection Management is responsible for the daily operations of Widener stacks including Periodicals stacks, Periodicals Reading Room, Newspaper Microfilm Reading Room, and the Materials Transfer, a division of Collectioin Management that handles Harvard Depositiory orders, Tracing, and quality control functions including management of Serials processing and centralized retrievals for Access Services workflows.

Reader Services is responsible for Library Billing & Privileges, Circulation, and the Phillips Reading Room.

Resource Sharing is responsible for Interlibrary Loan and the Scan & Deliver program.

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Collection Development

Collection Development
Widener Library, Room 140, G-60
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-495-2425
Fax: 617-496-8704

The Widener Library collections are focused on support for teaching and research in the social sciences and humanities. Collection Development is responsible for the selection of library materials in English, the languages of Western Europe, and the languages of Sub-Saharan Africa for the Widener collections.

Collection Development is organized into the following divisions: American and English (currently includes East, South and Southeast Asia); Western European; Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese; Modern Greek; and Sub-Saharan African. Each area is overseen by a librarian who selects materials for purchase and guides the acquisition process with the assistance of a staff of bibliographic assistants who are part of Harvard College Library Technical Services.

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Judaica Division

Judaica Division
Widener Library, Room M
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-495-2985, 617-495-5335
Fax: 617-495-0403

The Judaica Division of the Harvard College Library has as its mission the documentation of the Jewish people throughout history in order to support teaching and research at Harvard and to serve as a resource for the scholarly community. The division is responsible for acquiring, cataloging, and providing reference and other public services for materials in Hebrew, Yiddish, and other languages, dealing with all aspects of Jewish culture. It maintains the largest collection of Israeli and Israel-related materials outside of the State of Israel.

The Judaica Division strives to make meaningful contributions to the research library community, particularly through sharing Harvard's electronic bibliographic data and by fostering cooperative projects with other institutions.

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Middle Eastern Division

Middle Eastern Division
Widener Library, Room S
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-495-2437

The Middle Eastern Collection of the Harvard College Library has as its mission the documentation of the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus throughout history in order to support the teaching and research at Harvard and to serve as a resource for the scholarly community. The division is responsible for the acquisition, cataloging, and public services of materials from what is broadly referred to as the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus and from related émigré communities. This includes resources from over 40 countries and in some 60 languages.

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Research Services

Research Services
Widener Library, Rooms 220, 230, 240
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-495-2411
Email: libref@fas.harvard.edu
Fax: 617-496-0403

Research Services supports the research and teaching needs of Harvard faculty, students, staff, and other individuals affiliated with the University. The division oversees Reference Services, in the Atkins Reference Room, where librarians are available to answer reference and research questions in person and via e-mail, fax, telephone, and letter.  It also works extensively with Harvard students, faculty, and visiting scholars, assisting them individually and within the context of their course-work, by providing in-depth research consultations by appointment, as well as course-related research instruction tailored to individual classes.

Additional information on the division's services is available in Widener's Reference Desk section. The Reference Desk is located in the Atkins Reference Room on the second floor of Widener.

Priority is given to Harvard affiliates; limited assistance can be provided, as time permits, to researchers and scholars not affiliated with Harvard University.

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Slavic Division

Slavic Division
Widener Library, Room R
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-495-2458
Fax: 617-496-2902

The Slavic Collection of the Harvard College Library has as its mission the documentation of the Slavic and Baltic countries throughout history in order to support teaching and research at Harvard and to serve as a resource for the scholarly community. The division acquires, catalogs, and provides public services for material from Russia, the former Soviet republics, and Eastern Europe, in all Slavic, Baltic, and Western languages, and publications in Slavic languages outside these geographic areas.

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HCL Technical Services

HCL Technical Services is located off-site at:

HCL Technical Services
Harvard College Library
625 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel: 617-495-1685
Fax: 617-384-7170

Contact information is available in the HCL Staff Directory.

HCL Technical Services is comprised of acquisitions and cataloging staff in language-based technical services divisions responsible for materials processing from purchase through provision of intellectual access.

HCL Technical Services has a Resource Web Site devoted to the collection and organization of documents, policies, and tools related to the acquisition and cataloging of library materials for Widener Library and other affiliated units of Harvard College Library.

The divisions of HCL Technical Services are based on language expertise and on geographic specialization in the publishing and book trades:

Other teams within HCL Technical Services perform specialized functions in support of the entire department, and in some cases offer services that reach beyond the Harvard College Library:

Individual specialists include the Principal Cataloger and the Projects Cataloger.

English Division

The English Division is responsible for acquiring and cataloging monographs in all formats in the languages of the British Isles and Ireland, Canada and the United States, Australia and the South Pacific.

In addition to cataloging English language materials, including Old and Middle English, the Division is responsible for cataloging Austronesia, Cornish, Eskimo, Fijian, Gaelic, Galla, Irish, Manx, Maori, Palauan, Papiamento, Papuan-Australian, Samoan, Scots, Welsh and Native American languages such as Blackfoot, Cree, Dakota, and Navajo.

French/Italian Division

In addition to acquiring and cataloging monographs in French and Italian, the Division is also responsible for collections in Romanian, and other related languages and dialects: Albanian, Creole French & Pidgins, Old and Middle French, Langue d'oc, Maltese, Provencal, Rhaeto-Romance, and Romany.

Germanic Division

The Germanic Division is responsible for acquiring and cataloging monographs in German, the Scandinavian languages, and other related languages. In addition to German, the languages for which the Division is responsible include: Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch and Middle Dutch, Esperanto, Faroese, Finnish, Frisian, Middle High and Old High German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Sami, romanized Serbo-Croatian, Swedish, Ugaritic, and Wendic.

Spanish/Portuguese Division

The Spanish/Portuguese Division is responsible for acquiring and cataloging monographs in Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, Catalan, Galician, Austurian, and in the indigenous languages of Mexico, Central and South America.

Serials Cataloging

The Serials Cataloging Team provides bibliographic access, authority control, and holdings information for serial publications, handling material in most languages written in the Roman alphabet. The team works with serial materials in all formats, including printed text, microforms, phonodiscs, CD-ROM and other electronic media.

As part of the University's commitment to the national CONSER Program, bibliographic records for all currently received titles are created and maintained according to the standards and agreed-on practices of the Program. Name authority work for headings on CONSER records is submitted to the national authority file through the NACO (Name Authority Cooperative) Program.

HCL/FAS Cataloging Support Services (CSS)

Cataloging Support Services is responsible for cataloging materials in all formats for a diverse group of over 30 libraries in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

African & Asian Unit

The African and Asian Unit is responsible for acquiring and cataloging materials published in Sub-Saharan Africa (including African islands of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans), South and Southeast Asia. In addition to cataloging English and French monographs published in the above mentioned geographic areas, the Unit is responsible for cataloging items in a variety of African and Asian languages when these are written in Roman, Brahmi-derived, or Ethiopic scripts. These languages include Akan, Amharic, Assamese, Balinese, Bambara, Bemba, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Braj, Burmese, Efik, Ewe, Fon, French Creoles, Fula, Hausa, Hindi, Gujarati, Igbo, Indonesian, Javanese, Kongo, Kannada, Khmer, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Konkani, Krio, Lao, Lingala, Lozi, Luganda, Luo, Maithili, Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam, Mandingo, Manipuri, Marathi, Marwari, Mende, Mooré, Mundari, Nepali, Newari, Oriya, Pali, Portuguese Creoles, Prakrit, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Rundi, Sanskrit, Santali, Shona, Sindhi, Sinhalese, Sotho, Swahili, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Tigrinya, Tongo, Tswana, Tulu, Tumbuka, Twi, Vietnamese, Wolof, Xhosa, Yoruba, Zulu.

Materials Management

The Materials Management Team is responsible for organizing and providing access to Widener Library's uncataloged or in-process holdings. The Team ensures that newly received materials are stored safely while awaiting cataloging, and then routed efficiently for cataloging and processing. Materials Management strives to make all materials available promptly upon request.

Principal Cataloger

The Principal Cataloger is responsible for the interpretation of rules, national standards and local policies and procedures. He coordinates descriptive cataloging policy for the divisions and teams in HCL Technical Services, develops training programs and provides training in both descriptive and subject cataloging to catalogers in HCL Technical Services and other HCL units, and to library assistants performing advanced cataloging. He is responsible for maintaining timely access to descriptive cataloging documentation for staff in HCL Technical Services and to subject cataloging documentation for staff in HCL Technical Services and other HCL units.

The Principal Cataloger also serves as the subject specialist for the Harvard University Library. He is responsible for the integrity of subject cataloging data in the HOLLIS system; performs database maintenance, including global change, for new and changed Library of Congress subject headings; and interprets policy for all units, HCL and HUL, contributing subject data into HOLLIS. The subject specialist serves as the main resource to other departments in HUL for questions related to policy for subject analysis in HOLLIS.

Projects Cataloger

The Projects Cataloger designs, implements, and monitors specialized cataloging projects tailored to the elimination of specific cataloging backlogs designated by the department head. The Projects Cataloger is also responsible for cataloging materials in Latin and in Ancient Greek.

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