This month Harvard commemorates the 100th anniversary of the opening of Widener! Also I need to get around to reading Widener: Biography of a Library
“The life of Widener emerges from the archival traces of those people who worked in and used the library; in library rules and regulations; in the letters of students and staff; in the notes and reports of its caretakers; in the photographs and drawings of it, inside and out. Amid its products—the stream of publication, lectures, and courses that flow from it—traces of Widener and its history are obscure. In our historical sensibility, libraries are transmitters not subjects, of historical knowledge. Historian Alistair Black has called the library a transparent institution—its condition is that of medium, not message, and still less messenger.”
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird