ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


127

Monke Joins Committee 
to Revise Standards

Arthur Monke, librarian at Bowdoin College 
in Brunswick, Maine, has been appointed to the 
ACRL Committee to Revise the 1959 Standards 
for College Libraries. Mr. Monke replaces Bar­
bara G. LaMont, who has recently resigned 
from the committee for personal reasons.

The committee, chaired by Johnnie Givens, 
librarian at Austin Peay State University in
Tennessee, has prepared a set of background/ 
working papers which are available from the 
Executive Secretary, ACRL, 50 E. Huron St., 
Chicago, IL 60611. Miss Givens has discussed 
the progress of the committee at a recent meet­
ing of the Pennsylvania Library Association and

 

at the Midwest Academic Librarians Confer­
ence in Milwaukee.

At the ALA New York Conference in July, 
the committee will hold a series of hearings. In ­
terested persons are invited to present their 
comments on the revision of the standards at 
any time during the following scheduled hours: 
Wednesday, July 10, from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m., 
and Thursday, July 11, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 
noon.

The committee acknowledges its apprecia­
tion for the support of a J. Morris Jones-World 
Book Encyclopedia-ALA Goals Award, which 
has funded the first year of the project.

Inside Washington
Christopher W right 

Assistant Director
A L A  Washington Office

subcommittee’s chief counsel, Thomas C. Bren­
nan, told librarians and publishers over lunch 
that he too saw “absolutely no chance” of the 
bill’s passage during this Congress.

As a result, said Brennan, there would be in­
terim legislation aimed at specific immediate 
problems, including library photocopying. 
Something must be done to get the various par­
ties back speaking together and on the road to 
a solution.

Brennan suggested that Congress might en­
act Title II of the bill, which establishes a na­
tional commission on new technological uses of 
copyrighted works, and give the commission 
eighteen months to come up with a solution to 
the photocopying problems.

Ringer told the meeting of federal librarians 
that she expected Congress and the publishing 
interests to press for establishing the commis­
sion as part of the copyright office itself. Asked 
if she was requesting funds for such a project, 
she said, “No, but I think others will.”

Although the principal stumbling block in re­
vising copyright continues to be the endless 
dispute over cable television, the issue of 
photocopying is rapidly becoming, in Ringer’s 
words, “the most dangerous, most difficult, and 
most urgent problem. . . .” Photocopying would 
be the commission’s first order of business.

Like some wayward streetcar, copyright law 
revision continues to grind along, passengers 
grumbling, stops bypassed, schedule lost, desti­
nation forgotten. Exhausted riders still shout 
directions: “that way to Fair Use,” “turn at 
Manufacturing Clause,” “when do we get to 
Cable Television?” Among themselves, some 
have resorted to epithets, calling each other 
“record pirates” or “systematic copiers.”

Observing the faltering progress of this ten- 
year odyssey, passenger Barbara Ringer, the 
Register of Copyrights, announced last month 
that “at some point you have to say this street­
car’s at the end of the line and it’s time to get 
another one.” The copyright revision omnibus, 
S.1361, was breaking down. There was now 
“no chance” it would reach its destination this 
Congress. “In my opinion, it’s had it.”

Instead, Ringer urged fellow passengers to 
abandon their seats and resort to other means 
of transport taking them to their own separate 
destinations. Russian authors this way, expiring 
copyrights there, sound recordings th at way, 
photocopying there.

Ringer’s announcement came only days after 
the latest version of the copyright bill, a com­
mittee print of Senator John McClellan’s Sub­
committee on Patents, Trademarks and Copy­
rights, was made public. Early in April, the