ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


4

Inside Washington
Christopher Wright 

Assistant Director
ALA  Washington Office

A college business officer complained during 
a meeting in Washington in mid-November that 
ALA’s latest draft Standards for College Li­
braries was a “self-serving document.”

He meant that a professional document re­
quiring the college to supply a minimum num­
ber of books and staff and a building that 
“shall harmonize with its function and shall be 
pleasing to the senses” would give the library 
unfair advantage at budget time over other de­
partments.

What wasn’t clear was who the “self” being 
served by these standards might be. A careful 
reading of the new draft Standards is an object 
lesson in the pleasures and problems of trying 
to speak in one voice for the patrons, employ­
ees, administrators, and owners of an enter­
prise. If there is anyone being “served” by 
these requirements, it is the patrons—the stu­
dents and faculty who use the library.

At the November meeting at which the draft 
was presented to representatives of professional 
associations and accrediting bodies for advance 
comment, a faculty member attacked the stan­
dards for being too weak on faculty status, col­
lege officials challenged them for meddling in 
the affairs of presidents and boards of trustees, 
and library administrators criticized them for 
prescribing how a library should be run.

The draft calls for the librarians to be orga­
nized as an academic department and to admin­
ister themselves in accordance with the Stan­
dards for Faculty Status. Feeling this was not 
a sufficiently militant stance, a spokesman for 
the American Association of University Profes­
sors complained the statement represented a 
“fundamental ambivalence” because it didn’t 
make faculty status a requirement of accepta­
bility.

But the message wasn’t lost on college admin­
istrators who announced “our presidents would 
explode” if faculty status became an issue in li­
brary accreditation.

Representatives of the colleges also com­
plained that the document dwelt on dreary de­
tails of book collections, budgets autonomy, and 
work space. Instead, said one spokesman, the 
standards should contribute inspiring prose on 
the importance of libraries in the educational 
process. They should allow accreditors an 
“open-ended evaluation based on how ready 
and determined a library was to adapt to new 
ideas,” said one. “Hortatory, not mandatory” 
language, said another.

Library administrators themselves objected 
to some standards which they felt trespassed 
on their territory by saying how a library 
should be run. The standards say “all corpuses 
of recorded information owned by the college 
for educational, inspirational and recreational 
purposes” belong in the library. In addition, the 
standards say, this material must be delivered 
for use within the library building and a high 
percentage of it must be provided “quickly.”

Words like these, said one administrator, “go 
beyond telling institutions what is good prac­
tice and get into telling them how to do it.”

As the briefing session drew to a close one 
college official turned to the members of the 
ACRL committee across the table. “If you want 
this to be a political document you’ve got to 
eliminate the grading. Otherwise the problem 
is librarians are going in to the college presi­
dent and say ‘look here, we’re grade B.’ ”

Or grade F.
The new draft Standards is hardly a political 

document, some self-serving piece of propagan­
da to stir up more jobs for librarians and bigger 
budgets for libraries.

Many of us, at one time or another, have had 
the misfortune of working or studying in an in­
stitution where the books in the library seemed 
to have no relation to courses in the catalog. It 
is the people who teach and take these courses 
that the new standards are designed to protect.

Library standards, said the ACRL committee, 
have previously been considered ideals for 
which to strive and models on which to devel­
op. But this time “their main thrust will be to 
provide a means for assessing the adequacy of 
college libraries.”

True, the committee admitted, certain ele­
ments in the standards would have to change 
from institution to institution, but the quality 
is the same everywhere. “A certain minimum 
level of library quality must exist before any 
college can be allowed to grant a degree, and 
that level can be stated once and for all.” ■ ■