ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


271

To Our Readers …
people. They do a brilliant job in turning 

 “ amateur editor”  requests into a professional 
product.

 Most of our effort in the past two years has 
been to make the  News easier to read— more 
boxes, headlines, boldfaces, and so on. W e 
think it will work out well that Ms. Collins 
hopes to expand the content of the News. W e 
wish her the best, and hope all of you will as­
sist her as much as you did us.

Sincerely, 
A l l a n  J . D y s o n  

and S u s a n a  H i n o j o s a  
Editors, C&RL News

This is our last issue as editors of the News. 
To all of you that have taken the time
to send us personal letters, news releases, no­
tices of new publications, and everything else
(yes, even the occasional correction), we say
thank you. W e couldn’t have done it without 
you.

W e would particularly like to compliment 
Eileen Mahoney and her staff at the A LA Cen­
tral P roducion Unit in Chicago for the excel­
lent job they have done for us. Not enough peo­
ple know of and appreciate this staff; they pro­
duce almost all of A LA ’s publications, and are 
some of the world’s kindest and most patient

Christopher Wright 
Assistant Director 

A LA  Washington Office

There was genuine excitement in his voice 
when Joseph Howard, chief of the Library of 
Congress’ Serials Cataloging Division, suggest­
ed to a room full of librarians in October that 
a new U.S.–Canadian cataloging project might 
someday mean “ a serial can be cataloged once 
in the U.S.— once in the world— and never be 
cataloged again.”  The amount o f work saved 
would be staggering.

Howard was talking about CONSER, the Co­
operative Conversion of Serials project, which 
is designed to build a 300,000-title computer 
catalog describing the serials held by eight ma­
jor North American libraries. The file will be 
stored on the Ohio College Library Center com­
puter and will be made available to the public 
at the cost o f reproducing the computer tapes. 
The project is scheduled to begin operation 
early next year. Initial funds have been pro­
vided by the Ford Foundation through the 
Council on Library Resources.

CONSER is an important development for 
the whole world. The way it has come about 
says something about the energy and resource­
fulness o f librarians and raises some questions 
about the way library cooperation is evolving 
in the United States.

The project began, at least formally, in the 
summer o f 1973 when about two dozen people 
formed another of the library world’s myriad 
ad hoc discussion groups at the ALA Confer­
ence in Las Vegas. Encouraged by staff from 
CLR and led by a small steering committee, 
the group produced a plan. After some discus-

Inside Washington
sion with the library community, not all of i
friendly, CLR and the principal participatin
libraries began negotiating with OCLC, and
the project is hoped to be underway by the
beginning of 1975.

There are three important elements to this
story.

First is the fact that CONSER developed
more or less spontaneously. Participants at th
Las Vegas meeting have said there appeared
to be a general feeling among a number of li­
brarians that the time had come to try apply­
ing modern technology to the intractable an
expensive problems of serials cataloging. The
idea was the product of a committee and not
the brainchild of one person or one institution.

Second, the project has remained throughout
a nongovernment operation. Even though i
will use a version o f LC ’s MARC format and
the resulting computer tapes will be distributed
through the Library of Congress and the Na­
tional Library of Canada, the ultimate control
of the project remains in the hands of CLR and
the participating libraries (four government
and four private).

Third, the operation is, for the moment at
least, critically dependent on a private founda­
tion for support. Also, the Ford Foundation has
announced that because of its own economic
problems it will not be able to provide long­
term operating funds for projects such as this,
and once the seed money runs out the libraries
must seek help elsewhere. Unofficially, the par­
ticipants hope that the Library of Congress will
find room in its appropriations for the modest
cost of maintaining the CONSER network and
data base. But for the moment CONSER re­
mains privately funded.

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272

O f course, this is a simplified account. Events 
were hastened through the leadership o f ener­
getic people and the support o f key institutions.

But the fact remains that a major internation­
al project has been launched through the e f­
forts o f a handful o f professionals w orking as 
a simple discussion group trying to solve a 
problem.

Over the years America’s libraries have de­
veloped in this manner— often informally, re­
sponding to the needs o f the moment. Programs 
such as C O N SE R  were born out o f a general 
agreement that the time had come, and then 
sent out into the w orld to find a home.

But there is a problem with this system. T o ­
day, advances in the techniques o f disseminat­
ing information, and increases in the volume o f 
information, are occurring so fast that our old 
haphazard ways are becom ing too risky.

A C R L  Membership

O ctober 31, 1974 13,729

O ctober 31, 1973 13,075

O ctober 31, 1972 12,333

W hat is going to happen when the Ford 
Foundation m oney runs out? Is the Library of 
Congress the proper sponsor o f C O N SE R? H ow  
does this fit into a national program for li­
brary service? H ow  can the government best 
encourage these problem -solving informal dis­
cussions? W hat is the role o f the Library o f 
Congress? W h en  should tax money subsidize 
interlibrary cooperation? These are questions 
which must be addressed soon. They are ques­
tions which a W hite House conference on li­
braries could bring out in the open.

One hundred seventy-five library adminis­
trators and catalogers came to Atlanta in O c­
tober to attend an Information Science and Au­
tomation Division conference on automated 
serials control. At that meeting one o f the prin­
cipal criticisms o f C ON SER they voiced was 
that there had been so little communication 
with the library community.

H ow  many other discussion groups are out 
there working away? H ow  does their work fit 
into a national plan? This is w hy we need a 
W hite House conference.

W e  need a forum for communicating the re­
markable steps being taken b y librarians to 
help themselves.

D I R E C T O R Y  O F  L I B R A R Y  
R E P R O G R A P H I C  S E R V IC E S

T he Resources and Technical Services 
Division o f the American Library Asso­
ciation is seeking information from li­
braries offering copying and loan services 
for a project sponsored b y the R eproduc­
tion o f Library Materials Section.

T he publication o f  the sixth edition o f 
the D irectory o f Library Reprographic 
Services is tentatively scheduled for Jan­
uary 1976. The primary objective o f  this 
publication is to provide current informa­
tion about copying, duplicating, and loan 
services offered by the institutions listed 
in the directory. The data-gathering 
questionnaire is now  ready and will be 
forw arded automatically to all the institu­
tions listed in the fifth edition o f the di­
rectory. A ny other institutions offering 
reprographic and loan services are urged 
to request the questionnaire from the ed­
itor o f the publication: Mr. Joseph Ni- 
tecki, Associate Director for Technical 
Services, Tem ple University Libraries, 
Philadelphia, PA 19122.

T o assure the inclusion o f your insti­
tution in the next edition o f the direc­
tory, please ask for the questionnaire 
now.