Speaking the name of Harvard in the contemporary age invokes imagery of a powerful and elite university, second to none in both physical and intellectual wealth. The place today produces the nation’s titans of industry and serves as a fertile social networking hub for the most influential men and women entering into corporate and public space. Seven presidents of the United States studied there, and dozens of more senators, congressmen and electors. Yet Harvard was not always as it is now. In the formative centuries of its history the place was not a university but a college, and was dwarfed by the grandeur of the European places of learning, inhabiting a single, poorly constructed hall, prone to fire hazards. Matthew Battles called Harvard “traditionally little more than a boarding school for elite youth.â€
This paper aims to examine the critical development which contributed to Harvard’s elevation from a colonial school for preachers’ sons to an international leader in academia: the expansion, refinement and institutional integration of its library. And at the heart of this latter flourishing are two central veins: the evolution and usage of the catalog system, and the methods and extent of acquisitions. Both faculties began in disarray or neglect, and through their fortification and enrichment, made marriage with the success of the Harvard Corporation. What follows is a brief history of the library, accompanied by precise examination of those significant areas.