The Organization of the University Library

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University Governance

The following description comes from the University Structure and Responsibility for Implementation section of the Harvard University Affirmative Action Plan Summary:

"Harvard University is best understood as a confederation of its various Faculties with a Central Administration. Decision making is decentralized, and high degrees of responsibility for governance are vested in its various academic units. Consequently a great deal of cooperation, consent, and consultation characterize the governance process of the University. A collegial environment for decision making prevails, allowing for the combination of freedom and control that best suits an academic institution.

The Office of the President is the central governance unit of the University. Five Fellows of the University along with the President and the Treasurer comprise the Corporation, the principal governance board. This board is charged with the responsibility of maintaining the University’s resources. The Board of Overseers, composed of 32 persons, reviews certain academic affairs and the management of the University through its visiting committees. The Provost works in close concert with the President on the major policy, planning, and administrative issues that are important to the University as a whole.

There are ten Deans whose responsibilities include management of both academic and administrative affairs of the following academic units: the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School of Business Administration, the School of Dental Medicine, the Graduate School of Design, the Divinity School, the Graduate School of Education, the John Five. Kennedy School of Government, the Law School, the Medical School, and the School of Public Health. Each Faculty holds considerable autonomy in terms of determining academic purpose and management policy, and each has developed its own structure to meet the needs of its students, faculty, and staff. Coordination and communication among the Deans and Faculties occurs through the University’s Academic Council. The President meets regularly with the Council to discuss, review, and recommend University-wide policies and procedures.

The Central Administration, structured around five vice presidents, holds responsibility for formulating and implementing University-wide policy and for providing administrative support for the Faculties as needed. The five administrative departments headed by vice presidents are: Vice President for Administration; Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development; Vice President for Finance; Vice President and General Counsel; and Vice President for Government, Community, and Public Affairs. An Overseers' Committee to Visit the University Library, consisting of about thirty individuals from all parts of the country, annually visits the Library and reports its findings and recommendations to the Board."
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  University Library Committee

The University Library Committee, appointed by the President, consists of members drawn from the staff, the faculty, and the administration. The Director of the University Library serves as chair. The Committee provides a forum for the discussion of library issues of general University significance in order to bring a wider range of experience to bear on matters of mutual concern. There are also faculty, departmental, and institutional library committees, of which the Director is a member ex officio.

A list of Visiting and Library Committee members may be found in the Harvard University Library's Annual Report and its Directory .

Organization and Governance of the University Library

The Harvard University Library consists primarily of the libraries that are administratively part of one of the University's faculties or related research institutions, including over ninety individual library units. While most are located in the Boston/Cambridge area, there are a few as far away as Washington, D.C. and Florence, Italy. They vary greatly in size of collections. Some have only a few hundred volumes, while others have over a million.

The Harvard University Library (HUL) Administration

The Pforzheimer University Professor serves as the Director of the University Library and has an important role in interpreting the functions and programs of the Library to the president and the Corporation. The Director represents the Library to external national and international organizations and coordinates Library activities. Through a number of administrative mechanisms, the Director provides oversight and advice, fosters cooperation, and coordinates policy-making and planning among the units of the library system.

Under the Director, the Harvard University Library Administration consists of a number of departments with Library-wide responsibilities. These include the Office for Information Systems (OIS); Harvard University Archives and the records management office; the Harvard Depository in Southboro, Massachusetts; the Preservation Center; the Publications Office; the Office for Cooperative Cataloging Programs, including CONSER; and the administrative staff in Wadsworth House.
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These members of the HUL Administration offer assistance in their areas of expertise to other librarians throughout the system. For example, the Associate Director for OIS manages the Harvard On-Line Library Information System (HOLLIS) and the Library Digital Initiative (LDI). The Assistant Director for Research Resources edits specialized HUL research publications and may advise individual librarians on publications projects. The Malloy-Rabinowitz Preservation Librarian coordinates multi-library preservation programs and oversees preservation funding proposals submitted to national and other agencies. The University Personnel Librarian serves as chief personnel officer for the central University Library Departments and is a University-wide resource and contact person on career development and employment opportunities within the library system.

Faculty Libraries

Most of the University's libraries are administratively a part of one of the nine faculties: Arts & Sciences, Business Administration, Design, Divinity, Education, Government, Law, Medicine, and Public Health. The Schools of Dental Medicine, Public Health, and Medicine are all served by the Countway Library of Medicine. These libraries are supported by their faculties, and the faculty librarians report to their deans. Together with the departments of the University Library Administration and other Harvard libraries and affiliates, these make up the federation that is the Harvard University Library.

University Library Council (ULC)

The University Library Council advises the Director of the University Library on matters of policy and planning. It also sets the charges and deliberates on the recommendations of its committees on issues of concern to libraries across the University. The Chair of the ULC is the Director of the University Library. Other members of the Council are the chief librarians of the faculties mentioned above, the Associate Directors in HUL and the Associate Librarians in the College library.
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  University Library Council Committees

ULC standing committees represent major areas of concern to the University Library. Their charge is to addresses Library-wide issues within their areas of responsibility. These committees may develop policy for review by the Director and the ULC. Membership is drawn from senior-level personnel in the various libraries, and includes a representative from the HUL Administration staff, who serves as liaison. Members may also include relevant senior-level, non-library staff.

Most ULC Committees have subcommittees, and some have special interest groups and task groups. The charges to subcommittees are based upon the areas of responsibility of their parent committee. Special interest groups provide educational and networking opportunities for library and non-library staff with similar job interests. Task groups are appointed to perform specific tasks usually to research a topic or to analyze a problem and produce recommendations to solve it. Once their charges have been executed, Task Groups cease to exist.

Librarians' Assembly

The Harvard University Librarians' Assembly is a deliberative body consisting of all members of the professional and administrative staff. It provides a forum for the effective participation of members in the affairs of the University Library and the University. Formed in 1973, the Assembly meets once or twice a year. The president of the University is the ex officio presiding officer, with the Director of the University Library presiding in the president's absence. The Assembly is directed by an executive committee and governed by its own bylaws. The Assembly receives reports from the Director, its standing committees, members of the Library staff, and its Executive Committee, which sets the agendas for its meetings.
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The Executive Committee consists of the chairs of the Assembly's four standing committees and five elected members-at-large. They select their chair from among their number. The standing committees -- Benefits, Communications and Orientation, Professional Development, and Rights and Responsibilities -- report to the Director through the Executive Committee. Members are appointed for three-year terms. Membership comes from all levels of the Library professional and administrative staff and attempts to be geographically representative of the University Library. Throughout the year, the Executive Committee sends out requests for volunteers to fill vacancies on the committees.

Publications of the University Library

Library Notes is the monthly newsletter for the staff of the University Library. It contains official announcements, news stories, calendars of library events and exhibitions, listings of professional development opportunities, reports of professional staff activities, and personnel changes. The editor welcomes information on library events and professional activities of the staff and maintains a calendar of events across the Library.

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The Harvard Librarian also contains news of the libraries, but is directed more to interested persons outside the University. The Librarian derives many of its articles from Library Notes and from other pieces written specifically for this external readership, often by members of the Library staff.

The quarterly Harvard Library Bulletin serves as a Harvard journal of the humanities and contains scholarly articles based on Library collections and on developments of interest both to researchers and librarians. Submissions are welcomed from members of the staff.

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  A Guide to the Harvard University Library is an annual brochure that is published as a brief guide and map to the University Library. Giving location, hours, telephone numbers, and thumbnail descriptions of the libraries, the Guide is often distributed at library orientation programs. The Guide also has an online counterpart, available on HOLLIS as the "LG" (Library Guide) database.

Harvard University Library Research Forum. Begun in 1991, this quarterly publication aims to help the Library's users carry out research. Contributions are welcomed from members of the staff.

Cooperative Programs

The University Library, as a whole, and many of its individual units cooperate in various ways with other libraries and library organizations locally and throughout the nation. The New England Deposit Library (NEDL), the Boston Theological Institute (BTI), the New England Library Information Network (NELINET), Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN), the Regional Medical Library Program of the National Library of Medicine, and the New England Law Library Consortium are some of the well-established, successful cooperative efforts. The Library also participates in national cataloging programs such as CONSER (Cooperative Online Serials Program) and NACO (Name Authority Co-Op).

The University Library is a member of the Chicago-based Center for Research Libraries (CRL), which provides cooperative acquisitions and lending services for little-used research materials and whose cataloging records are included in HOLLIS. As an institutional member of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Library reports information each year to the ARL Statistics and ARL Annual Salary Survey. The Library is also an associate member of the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and belongs to its law, fine arts, and preservation and archives and manuscripts programs.