76 



A\ 



100 YEARS EXPLORING LIFE, 1888-1988 



The main reading room, as it looked in the fifties. Recently 

 refijrbished, it is now called the Bay Reading Room. 

 MBL Archives. 



researchers might even claim that the MBL Library is a useful convenience 

 but hardly the real core of the research center. Yet they too publish their 

 results, in journals and books that become part of the long-term scientific 

 world housed in the library. 



Each year scores of scientific researchers recognize the value of that 

 resource. They come to the MBL as library readers to write books, revise 

 textbooks, or complete long reviews. One recent year found more than 150 

 readers from many states and countries working on a wide range of histor- 

 ical and biological projects. People go to great effort to spend a sabbatical 

 year in the MBL Library, where more than 400 years' worth of biological 

 literature is kept. As Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has said, "The 

 library at the MBL is an institution that has its own humanity and seems to 

 me more an organism than a place." 



As such, it has been the recipient of practical jokes. In 1926, at the height 

 of the first major American bout with creationism in the wake of the Scopes 

 trial, the editors inserted the following item into the MBL's newspaper, the 

 Collecting Net: 



We were shocked beyond measure last Sunday morning when an ex- 

 haustive seai'ch failed to reveal that classic book on evolution — tlie Holy 

 Bible — in what is supposed to be one of the finest libraries of its kind in 

 the world. The situation was untenable. It could not be allowed to stand. 

 Fortunately the Trustees of the laboratoiy saw fit to severely censor 

 [sic] the Librarian at a special meeting on Tuesday afternoon called for 

 that purpose. The Editorial Staff wish to commend the Trustees for their 

 prompt and efficient action in relieving the situation. 



