College and Research Libraries


By WILLIAM H. CARLSON 

. ·Preparation for Progress 

I N COMMON WITH all the citizens of the world, we . librarians stand, in this year 
of 1947, at one of the critical mileposts of 

l JI~man destiny. We know that there is a 
.cF>rk in the road we all travel together, that 

. one turn may lead us to chaos, destruction, 
confusion, and the loss of all the values, 
accumulated and potential, which the hu-
man soul holds dear, values which, indeed, 
it must have if it is to remain human and 
not revert to bestiality. We know that 
another turn may tarry us, painfully and 
slowly perhaps, to a still further realization 
of the fulfilments, satisfactions, and achieve-
ments of which our remarkable race is · 
capable, toward values and performances 
which will at last justify that title which 
we have somewhat arrogantly assumed and 
applied to ourselves, the name of Homo 
sapiens. 

The roads that lie before us are not 
surely discernible, do not in fact exist ex-
cept in collective imagination, based on 
historical retrospect. They must really be, 
for each new generation, of their own 
maintenance and even of their own con-
triving. However, most of us will at least 
agree that there are two fairly well-defined 
and opposite directions in which we may 
travel. One of these is marked "narrow 
nationalism and economic self-sufficiency." 
This road has been much traveled in times 
past, with full satisfaction, for considerable 
periods at least, by the bold, aggressive, 
and fortunate few. For humanity at large, 
however, this road has been beset with many 
pitfalls, much suffering, and repeated 
periods of turmoil, strife, and mass killings, 
the most destructive, bitter, and appalling 

of which we have so closely behind u~ that 
we still look backward with blanched faces 
a'nd cry, "Never again!" We are all the 
more apprehensive because many of the 
books in our libraries lead us to believe that 
it always does happen again . 

The direction markers of another road 
and choice that lies before us are labeled 
"One World," a road which most of us, I 
am sincerely convinced, feel that we must 
travel if we are to leave to our children and 
grandchildren a world worth living in, a 
road that many of us believe must be 
traveled if indeed we are to have children 
and grandchildren. Some among us, how-
ever, a few sincerely perhaps, adroitly do 
what they can to keep us from traveling 
down this last road of promise. The most 
cunning of these know, or think they know, 
that there will not be found on it those 
special prerogatives and satisfactions, mostly 
material, which they would like to enjoy, 
and believe they have a right to enjoy, over 
and above the goods available to mankind 
generally. 

We are now busily engaged in fashion-
ing a chariot in which we may travel down 
the one-world road, a cumbersome and 
strange vehicle, with many steering wheels 
and drivers, a cautious vehicle, oversupplied 
with brakes and separate ignition switches, 
a vehicle such as no inventor or engineer, 
with the easy command of physical materials 
characteristic of the modern world, would 
ever fash'ion. This vehicle, carrying so 
many of our hopes, and ·our fears too, we 
have christened the United Nations. Its 
shakedown runs have not been propitious, as 
the various chief drivers have been valiantly 

195 



trying to drive in .different directions, twist-
ing and turning their respective steering 
wheels with mu~h groaning and creaking of 
the component parts, tramping emphatically 
on the brakes and pulling ignition plugs 
when progress has not been in the desired 
direction. At intervals, however, the steer-
ing wheels have coincided and we have 
inched forward a bit. In this we can take 
comfort and joy, such as the Wright 
brothers must have felt when their clumsy 
contrivance rose, for some seconds, a few 
feet above the earth. 

A particular part . of this vehicle of des-
tiny in which we librarians have special 
interest, which we have in fact taken some 
part in shaping, and which we confidently 
hope to be able to help steer and refuel, we 
have called UNESCO. Through it we 
hope to see citizens in all parts· of the world 
learn the magic of readily and easily inter-
preting the freely printed page, untainted 
and undistorted; through it we hope to 
establish free public libraries all over the 
world, for children and adults; to rehabili-
tate those large libraries destroyed or largely 
destroyed in our oickerings and our destruc-
tive tuggings and haulings; to eliminate the 
present barriers to the free dissemination 
of facts, ideas, and knowledge ; to secure 
the author internationally in his rights to 
the product of his brain; to promote the 
easy exchange and distribution of the 
world's literature; to establish a clearing 
house of knowledge, known as a library and 
bibliographic center; and to do many other 
good and wondrous things. 

Responsibilities 

Just what are the responsibilities of 
those of us who at this important junction 
point in world history are charged with the 
responsibility for the assimilation and or-
ganization for easy use of the world's accu-
mulated knowledge, now grown and grow-

ing so vast in bulk, and of the world's re-
corded wisdom, which is still comparatively 
an infinitesimal trickle? From the long 
viewpoint, it seems to this writer that the 
best promise for good use of our intelligence 
and rich fruition of our efforts is to help. 
streamline and steer our UNESCO chariot, 
to convey to, those at the controls of the 
parent United Nations vehicle assistance 
and information that may assist them in 
steering reasonably together instead of stub-
bornly straining against each ' other. In 
this perhaps only the press, daily and maga-
zine, the radio, the film, and the church, 
exceed our libraries in opportunity for con-
structive contribution. 

The temptation is strong to jump into 
or cluster about UNESCO at once and 
hopefully try steering and accelerating with 
a vengeance. Calm reflection, however , con-
vinces us that, if we are to do any good with 
and through UNESCO, and with and 
through the United Nations, or even in our 
more immediate affairs, we must first of 
all be united and strong ourselves, that in 
bibliographical and bookish affairs too we 
must have one world, that we librarians of 
all classes and special ties no less than those 
who sit in the mighty seats of the United 
Nations must steer together, and that in 
order to steer successfully it is necessary 
for us to be agreed among ourselves on the 
directions we need to go and want to go, 
and at what pace. 

We in the Association of College and 
Reference Libraries would be standing at 
this conference at an especially important 
point in our affairs, even if the times gen-
erally were not "big with tydings." This 
is so because we have during the present 
year made, in accordance with democratic 
processes, a most important decision. I am 
most happy to have this opportunity, as an 
elected officer of the association, to express 
gratification over the choice our members 

196 COLLEGE AND RES!f-ARCH LIBRARIES 



have made to work out our program as an 
integral and coordinated part of our parent 
American Library Association. I am glad, 
sincerely glad and happy, that we have not 
fallen prey to the divisiveness that has been 
an outstanding characteristic of the learned -
world of t~e twentieth century, that we 
have not fallen prey to the belief that only 
those interested in our narrow specialties 
can understand and be interested in them 
and that we have no common interests 
with those librarians not working in our 
specific field. Statesmanship and common 
sense in our library groups, a statesmanship 
which we may reasonably expect to increase 
generally, is reflected in this statement of 
Herman H. Henkle as president of the 
Special Libraries Association, one of our 
most highly specialized organizations. I 
quote with approval and pleasure: 

There is one profession of librarianship, not 
many professions. We are too few in num-
ber, even were our forces unite.d and co-
ordinated, to dissipate our energies in _the 
conscious cultivation of our differences. 
Rather should we face the realities of the 
problem we must solye, that of working 
toward common ends. 

It is a curious anomaly that for almost 
fifty years the college and reference li-
brarians have been a loosely organized, 
largely ineffective, and somewhat dissatisfied 
group within the A.L.A., attracting only 
minor interest and limited support from 
college and university librarians generally. 
During all this period, however, the con-
tributions of college and university li-
brarians individually to librarianship, in the. 
college field and generally, both nationally 
and internationally, have been signally out-
standing. Librarianship as a profession is 
far stronger and libraries are more effective 
instruments of scholarship and learning, be-
cause of the work of such men as E. C. 
Richardson, in the field of the location of 
books and promotion of union catalogs; 

JULY~ 1947 

James Thayer Geroul<l, in the planning and 
organization of union lists of serials and of 
newspapers; William Warner Bishop, in 
the international field; Louis Round Wilson, 
in the field of library administration and 
education for librarianship-all men drawn 
from our ranks. Many other college and 
reference librarians, past and present, could 
be quickly added to this brief list of men 
notable for their outstanding achievements 
and contributions. 

Tribute to Charles H. Brown 

It is appropriate and fitting that this 
issue of College and Research Libraries 
carry as a supplement, a festschrift volume 
in honor of a college librarian, Charles 
Harvey Brown, for more than three 
decades a dynamic and moving force in li-
brary matters, college and general. Brown, 
more than anyone else, held the old College 
and Reference Section together and infused 
it with what strength and vitality it had. 
It was he, too, who had a leading part in 
streamlining the A.L.A. and setting up the 
Association of College and Reference Li-
braries as an integral part of it. To him 
we are more indebted, also, than many of 
us know, for keeping us on an even keel 
and away from rash and precipitate action 
during the dissatisfaction and travail of 
this past year of decision. To the library 
he has administered, too, the librarians of 
the separate land-grant colleges have been 
able to point as an example of what a library 
of that kind could and should be. The 
honor the Association of College and Re-
ference Libraries now pays him through the 
special issue of College and Research Li-
braries is richly deserved. We hope that 
it will warm his heart and enrich the satis-
factions of his retirement. 

There is food for reflection in the curious 
fac't that college and referepce librarians, 
so early and so quick to sense the distinctive 

197 



separateness of their problems and work 
and so well-endowed with strong and dy-
namic leaders, have continued for so long 
to be relatively weak and disorganized as a 
group. It is strange too that our long-
sought autonomy, when finally achieved 
under the reorganization of the A.L.A., was 
grasped with a languid hand. This has 
undoubtedly been due, in part at least, to 
the fact that our best people have been 
drawn steadily into larger and more general 
fields of action. It seems evident to me 
that, on the whole, this has been good and 
that college and university librarianship has 
profited more by the activities of our 
leaders in the field of librarianship at large 
than if these activities had been sharply re-
stricted to affairs, problems, and needs fall-
ing specifically in the college, university, and 
reference field. 

Some may wish to rise to dispute this 
assertion. For myself, however, I shall hope 
that our membership will continue to make 
distinctive contributions to librarianship in 
the large. The worst thing that could hap-
pen to us, in my opinion, would be a 
narrow and restricting specialism and a con-
scious cultivation of the ways in which we 
differ from other librarians. I cannot agree 
with a recent assertion that the problems 
of college librarianship are so sharply dif-
ferent from those of public librarianship as 
to demand almost opposite answers. I am 
convinced that if college librarians and pub-
lic librarians had been meeting separately 
and independently in their own tight little 
groups ever since 1876, that neither librar-
ianship as a profession nor our college li-
braries and public libraries as entities 
would be as strong and as flourishin~ as 
they are today. A careful analysis of our 
history makes it clear that the basic and 
fundamental problems of librarianship are 
shared by all types and kinds of libraries 
and that each group gives strength to the 

whole. Certainly it is important for us, 
and highly important, vigorously to attack 
our special problems and needs together, 
but we still need to retain our interest, a 
well-defined, sympathetic, and informed in-
terest, in the activities and work of librar-
ians in other fields, as well as i~ many other 
areas and fields in the learned world gen-
er.ally that vitally concern all who in any 
way practice the profession of librarianship. 

Problems and Needs 

Of problems and needs 'there are many. 
For one thing we all stand together, librar-
ians in all fields, before the promises, por-
tents, and difficulties of. the times. Most of 
us, I think, are confused, not too certain 
about the answers to the fundamentals of 
the economic or political policies required 
by our increasingly complex world. One 
thing we are certain of, however, and that 
is that all of us, in. all kinds and types of 
libraries, are in a profession and in positions 
that can make a real contribution to a 
good life for men everywhere, if we can 
but surely know what should be done. To 
find the answers, we need to stand together, 
each helping to distil from our combined 
abilities and judgment a sound program of 
joint action. 

Important among the problems which the 
Association of College and Reference Li-
braries might at this moment single out for 
special attention, as already indicated, is 
what we should do about, for, and through 
UNESCO in behalf of the many interna-
tional problems which fall directly in the 
province and field of scholarly and research 
libraries. The spreading to higher insti-
tutional libraries everywhere of the gigantic 
task of encompassing and organizing the 
learned literature of the world through the 
Farmington Plan (in which incidentally 
college and university and reference li-
braries generally nave so far had little de-

198 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 

' 



terminative voice) ; the ever-pressing and 
ever-present problems of cataloging, ab-
stracting, indexing, filing, storage of books, . 
regional, national, and international biblio-
graphic centers and clearing houses; ways 
and means of getting our writings pub-
li~hed; cooperative book storage; micro-re-
duction of the world's literature, so seem-
ingly simple in the large but raising so many 
difficult questions in prospective application ; 
further application of machines and photo-
graphic procedures in library procedures, and 
practices; the relationship of our association 
to other learned societies and groups-these 
and many other problems demand and will 
have our attention, individual and group. 

Which of these and other problems should 
our association select for special emphasis 
this year? Because our history is what it 
is, because the events of this past year have 
been what they have been, because our long 
quest for a paid secretary at Headquarters 
has finally come to fruition, because we need 
group strengthening, integration, and pur-
pose if we are satisfactorily to meet the 
sharp challenge of the times, I have chosen 
for the year of my presidency to emphasize 
and promote, in every way I know how 
(and without in any sense forgetting the 
many problems detailed above), the instru-
ments through which we work: first, our-
selves, our personnel in the college and uni-
versity field, present and prospective, and 
second, the strengthening, sharpening, and 
improvement of our association, the agency 
in which we merge and combine our intel-
ligence and our efforts. 

Top Priority Concerns 

I do this in the belief that the most 
important thing in any profession is the 
people who practice it and the new people 
it attracts. If I am right, then our first, 
major, and continuing concern needs to be 
with people, those now in our ranks and 

JULY~ 1947 

those who will join us-their education, 
integrity, zeal, public spirit (and this all 
good librarians must have), and devotion 
to duty. Recruiting, professional education 
for librarianship, and in-service training and 
growth, therefore, become our top priority 
concerns. What we do about these three 
things will determine what we become and 
how effectively we meet our responsibilities, 
in our various libraries and individually, just 
as surely as what was done about ~hese 
things in years past largely determines 
what we are and do now. Through a 
strong association whatever we do will be, 
or at least can be done, better than through 
the weak association we have been and 
still are. 

To make these assertions something more 
than pious expressions of opinion and glitter-
ing platitudes, to bring us progress toward 
the strong association we need, I intend to 
suggest to the Board of Directors of 
A.C.R.L. that we set up at once four spe-
cial committees, not of the American Li-
brary Association, but independent com-
mittees of the Association of College and 
Reference Libraries, as follows: 

1. A committee on membership in the As-
sociation of College and Reference Libraries 

2. A committee on recruiting the type of 
librarian needed in the college, university, 
and reference fields ' 

3· A committee to consider the educational 
preparation and qualifications needed by col-
lege, university and reference librarians, to 
promote development of these qualifications 
through in-service training, and to work closely 
with the library schools to assist them in trans-
mitting to their students the needed qualifica-
tions 

4· A committee to consider the financial 
needs of our association and to suggest a pro-
gram for their realization. 

The first of these committees I think of 
as a large committee, with members in 
every state and perhaps several in the larger 
states, all under the direction of one national 

199 



chairma~ ass.isted by a central steering com-
mittee. This membership committee I 
would charge with the responsibility of 
contacting every practising college and uni-
versity librarian in America, extending an 
invitation to membership in our association. 
It is my hope and belief that such a com-
mittee, aggressively and intelligently di-
rected, could double, or very nearly double, 
our present membership of some 2400. I 
should not, of course, expect all this to hap-
pen in a single year, but I should and do 
expect very significant progress. We will 
not of course expect either that every pro-
fessional member of a college and university 
library staff will be a member of our asso-
ciation, but certainly we can expect every 
staff member to carry membership in some 
professional library organization. For a 
few college librarians, we realize that mem-
bership in a division by type-function may 
be desirable. The great majority of our 
college librarians, however, should be in our 
folds. I, therefore, now publicly declare 
open season on all professional college li-
brarians who are not now members of 
A.C.R.L. 

R,ecruiting 

The committee on recruiting can be a 
standard size group of some five or six 
members. Its task will be so complex and 
difficult that little more than a beginning 
can be made in one year. It will need to 
persuade prospective librarians, and some 
practising librarians, that librarianship is 
one of the more honorable and useful pro-
fessions and that, while its practitioners 
can never look forward to great wealth in a 
material sense, they are able to live 
in comfort, that they generally lead con-
structive, happy, and useful lives, and that 
they enjoy some prestige and regard in 
society . . 

Few of us are satisfied with ourselves as 

individuals or with ourselves in the aggre-
gate. This is evident from the sharp and 
frequently caustic criticism to which we sub-
ject ourselves, criticism which has played 
some part no doubt in the popular type-
conception of what kind of a person a li-
brarian is. We should, of course, always 
be self-critical in a constructive sense but, 
rather than exposing ourselves to self-flagel-
lation before the bar of public opinion, in 
and out of our profession, as we have some-
tim~s been wont to do, I suggest that we 
proceed to our tasks with such spirit and 
vigor that we do not have time to be at-
tracted by or much concerned over portraits 
of the librarian as a gray, mousey, timid 
creature, withdrawn from the world and 
living vicariously (and safely) by books. 
There will probably always be some among 
us, not too many; I believe, who will justify 
such a caricature, but, rather than rising in 
shrill protest over sweetiepies and sour-
pusses and over unfavorable and distorted 
fictional or film presentations of the librarian 
as a person or type, I suggest that we smile 
tolerantly and go busily on not being that 
kind of a librarian and, as time and op-
portunity permits, demonstrating what the 
librarian and librarianship in the best sense, 
or at least in a good sense, can be. If we 
do this extensively, I predict that high 
caliber recruits, men and women, can be 
much more readily attracted to our ranks. 

A recruiting committee might well give 
serious thought and study to what important 
characteristics we should seek to attract in 
our new recruits. It is my firm conviction 
that it is not academic background and 
qualifications, within reason, that matter 
most ; not brilliance or glamor or good 
looks, important as these may be; not even, 
and this thought I voice in six-point lower 
case, the time-hallowed love of books. The 
all-important thing, and this must be true 
for all the professions, is a capacity for 

200 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



. 

growth. How we are to determine this I 
do not know, certainly not through any neat 
and automatic formula. We all know, 
however, that the graduates of laboratories 
and schools in various fields go on to suc-
cess, fame, and signal achievements in much 
greater proport.ion than the graduates of 
other equally well-equipped and staffed 
laboratories and schools. In these matters 
some professors, athletic coaches, and, yes, 
library school teachers and library adminis-
trators, too, definitely have a "green 
thumb," the knack of encouraging unusual 
success. Whether this is through ability to 
attract only good people in the first place 
or whether it comes from an ability to en-
courage and stimulate subordinates to make 
the most of their abilities, to go further 
than they had thought they could go, and 
do more than they had any idea they could 
do, I do not know, but I strongly suspect 
that it is in large part the latter. Whatever 
the secret of this catalytic gift, let us hope 
that it will be increasingly found among 
all of us in the college and university li-
brary field who have the privilege and op-
portunity of directing the work of young 
people. To the extent that it is found, will 

. our various in-service programs be success-
ful and our juniors grow and develop · into 
readiness for positions of leadership and 
responsibility. 

One contribution that a recruiting com-
mittee, or some other cqmmittee, could make 
to an understanding of our personnel prob-
lems would be a series of studies, studies of 
the professional responsibilities of the li-
brarian, the availability of professionally 
prepared people in proportion to the de-
mands, and the changing economic status of 
librarians. The need of librarians trained 
in .various subj~ct fields, too, could be in-
vestigated with profit. On studies such as 
these we could perhaps base our quest for 
the strong competent young people we need 

.IULY~ 1947 

and must have if we are satisfactorily to 
meet the challenge of the times. 

Education for Librarianship 

The proposed committee on education for 
librarianship I do Iiot think of as duplicating 
the work of the Professional Training 
Round Table or the Board of Education for 
Librarianship. Rather will its work com-
plement that of these two groups, by special 
consideration and attention to the kind of 
formal preparation needed by college and 
reference librarians and particularly to the 
consideration and development of in-service 
training programs through which practising 
librarians can steadily increase their value 
to their respective libraries and their eligi-
bility for advancement. This committee 
should, and will need to, work closely with 
the new Division of Library Education, a 
division which, I hope, will have the co-
operation and sympathetic support of all col-
lege librarians. It seems to me that this 
would be a continuing committee, as wou1d 
be the one on recruiting, since the activities 
of both are concerned with the very bedrock 
on which our work and our hopes for prog-
ress rest. 

The fourth committee, - on finances, will 
have the knottiest and in some ways the 
most difficult assigqment of any of the four. 
It is quite evident that no continuing pro-
gram of significance can be undertaken on 
the 20 per cent of our dues now fed back 
to our association by our parent organiza-
tion. While all of us, I am certain, deeply 
appreciate the funds that have been made 
available to us for this year by the A.L.A. 
out of principal, all of us must surely be 
uneasy over the fact that we are, in effect, 
living on seed corn. We must all know, 
too, that financing of this kind cannot long 
go on. 

While I would not undertake to solve 
the problems of this committee, it seems 

201 

I 



pretty certain that its considerations will 
sooner or later, and perhaps it would be 
better sooner than later, include the matter 
of the percentage division of the dues o~r 
association, th'rough its individual members 
and institutionally, pays into the A.L.A. 
We know that the present and proposed 
program of the A.L.A., as a whole, requires 
far more money than it now has in prospect. 
But we also know that A.C.R.L. can do 
nothing much of importance unless it can 
look forward to stable, regularly recurring 
financial support above our present dispen-
sation from principal, and particularly after 
there will be no such dispensation. This is 
one area of our relationship with our parent 
organization that will require st.atesmanship, 
goodwill, and an appreciation of mutual 
probi'ems on the part of both organizations. 

'·" I belie e and hope that we have the leader-
ship at}.4\ the intelligence in both groups to 
solve tpi ~ ~ problem on a permanently sat-

.. 
.... 

isfactory basis to all concet ned. 

First Years Important 

All of us must surely approach the work 
of the forthcoming years with a sense of 
unusual opportunity. What we do in these 
first years, with and through our new ex-
ecutive secretary at Headquarters, with and 
through the increased strength in numbers 
and in financial support, and through the 
increased professional spirit and zeal which 
I am confident that we can find among our-
selves, may determine the pattern of 9ur 
development and the effectiveness of our 
work for a long period of years. The next 
very few years will determine whether we 
are to shape and sharpen, whether we can 
shape and sharpen our association into an 
instrument equal to the times. We must 
succeed. With the help, support, and active 
work of every college, university, and refer-
ence librarian we will succeed . 

Changes 1n Curricula at California 
In both the first-year and second-year programs of the School of Librarianship on the 

Berkeley campus of the University of California increased attention will be given in the 
future to tailoring the student's courses to previous background and to his special field of 
interest. Greater opportunity will be given the student to elect courses in other depart-
ments of the university. 

The first-year program has been somewhat revised, and a new course on the develop-
ment of media of communication from the growth of language to the latest devices will be 
required in the first semester, and another new course, reading and reading interests, has 
been instituted as a second-semester elective. · 

New courses in the maste.r's degree curriculum include a basic offering in the principles 
and practice of library administration, the library in the community, content analysis, 
and advanced classification. 

Prospective first-year students who have taken some work in Type I or Type II schools 
and have a high scholastic record will, in some cases, be given credit in the university's 
school for up to four units of such work. A similar provision already applies for second-
year students. 

202 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES