Picture 3.5 million books held within the centerpiece of the Harvard Library system, built as a memorial after the Titanic's sinking. It houses some 3.5 million books. It honors Harry Elkins Widener, a 1907 Harvard College graduate and book collector, and was built by his mother Eleanor Elkins Widener soon after his death in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
Step closer and imagine the "vast and cavernous" stacks that hold works in more than one hundred languages, forming what has been called "one of the world's most comprehensive research collections in the humanities and social sciences. Picture 57 miles (92 km) of shelves, along five miles (8 km) of aisles on ten levels — a "labyrinth" that one student said she "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, where papers and mementos recall the life and death of Harry Widener, and where the Harry Elkins Widener Collection — "the precious group of rare and wonderfully interesting books brought together by Mr. Widener" — is kept.
Later the library added one of the few perfect Gutenberg Bibles, the object of a 1969 burglary attempt conjectured by Harvard's police chief. Picture the Gutenberg Bible still resting somewhere among these stacks that Harry Widener once loved.