Lamont Library

---

title: "Lamont Library" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["library-buildings-completed-in-1949", "university-and-college-academic-libraries-in-the-united-states", "harvard-university-buildings-and-structures", "libraries-in-middlesex-county,-massachusetts", "lamont-family", "harvard-library"] description: "Harvard undergraduate library" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamont_Library" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Harvard undergraduate library ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Lamont_Library,_Cambridge_MA.jpg" caption="Loeb House]]"] ::

Lamont Library, in the southeast corner of Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, houses the Harvard Library's primary undergraduate collection in humanities and social sciences. It was the first library in the United States specifically planned to serve undergraduates. Women (that is, Radcliffe College students) were admitted beginning in 1967.

Overview

Lamont was built as part of a program to address dwindling stack space, and patron overcrowding, at Widener Library. Keyes D. Metcalf, Librarian of Harvard College and Director of the Harvard University Library from 1937 to 1955, planned the building with Boston architect Henry R. Shepley. Opened in 1949, it is named for its principal donor, Harvard alumnus Thomas W. Lamont.

Lamont's general collection of 200,000 volumes{{cite web |title= Lamont Library Collections |url= http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/lamont/collections/index.cfm|website= Harvard |access-date= 26 October 2025|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091007134546/http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/lamont/collections/index.cfm |archive-date=7 October 2009}} began with transfers from Widener, the Boylston Hall reserve-book collections, and the Harvard Union Reading Room. A modified Dewey classification scheme was used, and the main spaces included capacious open-shelf alcoves for browsing, study, and research. The Library of Congress Classification system was adopted in the 1970s.

After Littauer Library closed in 2007, Lamont became the home library for HCL's former Social Sciences Program. Four units of the Social Sciences ProgramDocuments Services, Microform Services, Numeric Data Services, and Environmental Information Serviceswere combined with Lamont Reference Services. Lamont houses the College Library's major research collections in government documents and microform collections across all disciplines.

References

References

1. "Harvard Libraries: Lamont Library".
2. (26 April 2012). "Hard-earned gains for women at Harvard". Harvard University.
3. (September 3, 2008). "History - Lamont Library".
4. [[Allen Kent]]. (1981). "Encyclopedia of library and information science". CRC Press.
5. (1975). "University Library". Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments. 1974-1975.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::