Using the Archives and Special Collections Reading Room

To make an appointment, visit the ASC Reading Room scheduler. You can use the scheduler to reserve a single seat for individual use. You can also reserve the Group Study Room, which accommodates 2-4 researchers.

Use the search tool to find available appointments at your desired date and time.

The Capacity drop down can be used to choose between single seats and the Group Study Room:

Choose either "Single Seat Booking" for an individual seat or "Space For 1-4 people" for the Group Study Room. (Please note that the numbers in the capacity dropdown are misleading. In actuality the Group Study Room requires a minimum of 2 researchers for use. It cannot be booked for an individual researcher.)

Use the date field to enter the day you wish to make an appointment. Then set the beginning and end of your desired appointment in the from and until fields. Reading Room hours can be found on the Houghton Library calendar.

Finally, click the Search button.

If you selected Single Seat Bookings in the search box, the results will list all individual seats available for the full time you entered.

Choose a seat by clicking Book Now for one of the available seats. The seat numbers do not correlate to a specific seat, so you can choose any of them unless you are working with microfilm. Microfilm users will need to choose the Microfilm Reader seat.

After clicking on Book Now you will be directed to the the booking form. Fill out the form, including acknowledging all the room requirements, and click the Submit My Booking button. You will then reach the Booking Confirmed screen, meaning you have successfully made your appointment for the time and date indicated. You will also receive a confirmation email.

After selecting Space for 1-4 People in the search box, the results will populate with the Group Study Room if it is available at that time. If the Group Study Room is unavailable, the list will be blank.

Click on Book Now to book the room for the time you selected to bring up the booking form.

Your group only needs to create one appointment for your visit. The group member who fills out the form is asked to include the names of the rest of the researchers.

However, each member of the group will need to register through HOLLIS Special Request in order to sign into the reading room on their arrival.

If you are consulting material that your instructor has placed on hold for your class, please enter your instructor's name and the course number in the relevant field.

Once you have completed the form click Submit my Booking. Upon reaching the confirmation screen you have successfully booked your appointment. You will also receive a confirmation email.

If you will be visiting over multiple days and do not wish to submit separate booking forms for each appointment, you can select multiple time slots over multiple days and submit them together.

Run a search for the hours and date of your first date. From the search results, click on the name of the seat (in this example 13):

On the resulting screen, choose Change Booking Time:

This will lead you to a time selection grid for that seat. Select the times you want on the seat grid. Available times are in blue. As you select times, they will be changed to yellow.

As you select times they will appear in a list underneath the selection grid. If you wish to delete one of the time selections you can do so by clicking on the trash can icon.

In order to select time in more than 30 minute increments you can click on the drop down menu next to the trash can icon in order to change the end time of a particular selection:

Once you have selected all of the times for that day that you wish to reserve, click on Go to Date and choose the next date you wish to make an appointment for.

Repeat the time selection process for this new date. If you wish to add more dates, click on Go to Date and repeat as many times as necessary.

After you have entered all the appointments you wish to enter, click on the Submit Reservation button.

This will bring you to the booking form. Fill out the form according to the instructions above. After you have submitted the form you will be taken to the Booking Confirmed screen, and your appointment will be complete for the selected dates and times. You will also receive a confirmation email.

Your confirmation email includes a link that you can use to cancel an appointment. If you did not receive that email, or cannot find it, you can contact either the Harvard University Archives (archives_reference@harvard.edu) or Houghton Library (houghton_library@harvard.edu).