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Grossman Library

1964 establishments in Massachusetts2018 disestablishments in MassachusettsAC with 0 elementsHarvard Extension SchoolHarvard Library
Libraries disestablished in 2018Libraries established in 1964Libraries in Massachusetts

Grossman Library, located at its closure on the third floor of Sever Hall in Harvard Yard, was the Harvard Extension School's primary library. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library system of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It was a reserve reading and study library, named in 1982 for alumnus and benefactor Edgar Grossman.The library was established in 1964 in Lehman Hall, along with study spaces, conferences rooms, library facilities, and a dining hall for Extension students. In 1983–84 the library moved to Sever Hall and saw a doubling of usage to nearly 30,000 student visits, with 13,000 reserve books being circulated for in-library use.It had on permanent display a number of works from the famed artist Allan Rohan Crite, including a collection of sketches, The Revelation of Saint John the Divine, and illustrations. Crite was a member of the class of 1968. In 2018, the Extension School announced enhanced access for its students to the entire Harvard University library system, and closed Grossman Library, with its collections to be distributed among other libraries of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Grossman Library (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Grossman Library
Quincy Street, Cambridge Cambridgeport

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N 42.374388888889 ° E -71.115472222222 °
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Sever Hall

Quincy Street
02163 Cambridge, Cambridgeport
Massachusetts, United States
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Widener Library
Widener Library

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, housing some 3.5 million books in its "vast and cavernous"  stacks, is the center­piece of the Harvard College Libraries (the libraries of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences) and, more broadly, of the entire Harvard Library system. It honors 1907 Harvard College graduate and book collector Harry Elkins Widener, and was built by his mother Eleanor Elkins Widener after his death in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. The library's holdings, which include works in more than one hundred languages, comprise "one of the world's most comprehen­sive research collec­tions in the humanities and social sciences."  Its 57 miles (92 km) of shelves, along five miles (8 km) of aisles on ten levels, comprise a "labyrinth" which one student "could not enter without feeling that she ought to carry a compass, a sandwich, and a whistle." At the building's heart are the Widener Memorial Rooms, displaying papers and mementos recalling the life and death of Harry Widener, as well as the Harry Elkins Widener Collec­tion, "the precious group of rare and wonder­fully interesting books brought together by Mr. Widener", to which was later added one of the few perfect Gutenberg Bibles‍—‌the object of a 1969 burglary attempt conjectured by Harvard's police chief to have been inspired by the 1964 heist film Topkapi. Campus legends holding that Harry Widener's fate led to the institu­tion of an undergrad­uate swimming-proficiency requirement, and that an additional donation from his mother subsidizes ice cream at Harvard meals, are without foundation.