College and Research Libraries


Perhaps we approach the end of a period. 
M a n y of these surveys occurred in an admin-
istrative interregnum, laying the foundation 
for a new program. Within the decade of 
these comprehensive surveys much change in 
chief administrative positions has taken place. 
It is conceivable that this crop of vigorous 
regimes will adopt a new attack. T w o alter-
natives suggest themselves: the survey by non-
librarians, supplementing modern administra-
tive theory; and the limited, specific study of 
a single problem. 

M o s t library surveys are made by li-
brarians. Although they may add the weight 
of outside authority to locally-held views, they 
are drawn f r o m a common reservoir of wis-
d o m ; a survey by experts is next door to a 
self-survey. It would be interesting to experi-
ment with an examination of the end-products 
of library techniques and administration by 
the users, rather than the manufacturers. 

An alert administration can readily identify 
a handful of specific local problems that will 
certainly yield to determined expert study, 
without being able to supply—from stock— 
the expertness required, or the time needed. 
This calls, not for the grand, comprehensive 
survey, but f o r a concentrated attack. W h a t 
university administration will be so realistic 
as to employ a specialist in research, or a 
series of experts, to explore its community's 
needs f o r the subject cataloging of certain 
kinds of materials; the relation between 
undergraduate teaching methods and library 
services; or the analysis of the reference func-
tion in the large university library system? 
These are matters which commend themselves 
to the graduate library schools, but there is 
some doubt that libraries can await the neces-
sarily slow processes of such agencies.—Donald 
Coney, University of California Library, 
Berkeley. 

T h e Survey at Columbia 
"Report of a Survey of the Technical Services 

of the Columbia University Libraries," by 
Maurice F. T a u b e r [and] L . Quincy M u m -
ford. " A Report on Certain Problems of 
the Libraries and School of Library Serv-
ice," by Louis R. Wilson, Keyes D . Metcalf 
[and] Donald Coney, chairman, N e w Y o r k 
N . Y . , Columbia University Libraries, 1947. 
57P-. 85p. ( M i m e o g r a p h e d ) . 
These two publications, taken together, 

constitute a survey of the most important 
problems which confronted the new library 
administration at Columbia when it assumed 
responsibility f o r the libraries and the School 
of Library Service about five years ago. T h e 
release of these reports has been delayed be-
cause they were prepared in 1944 f o r the guid-
ance of the university administration and the 
library administration, and these purposes 
could be served without publication. T h e 
reports have now been made available because 
it appeared that many of the problems faced 
at Columbia are not unlike those to be found 
in other large university library systems, and 
hence the solutions proposed by the surveyors 
for Columbia might be considered to have 
applications in other institutions. Even 
where the problems of an institution's libraries 
may seem quite unlike those at Columbia, it 

is not unreasonable to expect that the recom-
mendations made for Columbia may suggest 
solutions which might be suitable. 

These survey reports may be considered as 
administrative reports, since they deal in very 
considerable part with problems which had 
been identified by the library administration, 
and for which, in at least some instances, 
tentative solutions had been proposed. T h e y 
are concerned primarily with problems that 
fall within the jurisdiction of the administra-
tive officers of the libraries and of the univer-
sity rather than with matters of interest to 
members of the faculty or to the administra-
tive officers of the various colleges and schools. 
Although this type of survey has apparently 
come into fairly common use by administrative 
officers of large libraries, the reports prepared 
as a result of these studies are seldom made 
available in published form, and are not widely 
known. These Columbia reports are the 
more welcome for this reason. 

A second feature of these survey reports is 
the method by which they were prepared. 
They are not based so much on extensive 
compilations of data and extended series of 
conferences with faculty members and gen-
eral university administrative officers as are 
some library surveys. Instead, the reports 

368 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH. LIBRARIES 



appear to be based on data submitted by the 
library administration and by responsible li-
brary staff members through the form of 
written reports or conferences or both. Using 
these sources for data bearing on the prob-
lems, the surveyors have proceeded to outline 
their proposed solutions in the light of their 
personal experience and of general principles 
of library administration and operation. This 
type of survey was well adapted to Columbia 
since it was not faced with the problems 
which have confronted many other institutions 
that have used surveys as means of working 
toward the solution of their problems. In 
many institutions where surveys have been 
made it has been apparent not only that an 
impartial outside view on the problems of the 
library was desirable, but that, in addition, 
it was necessary, both in assembling the infor-
mation on which the survey report was to be 
written and also through the instrument of the 
report itself, that strong support for the rec-
ommendations be developed among the faculty 
and administrative officers of the university. 

The report dealing with the technical serv-
ices is concerned largely with the clarification 
of lines of authority and responsibility. The 
identification of the functions to be performed 
by the various departments and divisions and 
the recommendations as to assignments of 
responsibility necessary in order to effect a 
proper ordering of all of the activities involved 
is dealt with in a thorough manner. The 
chief recommendation of this report is that a 
responsible administrative officer be placed in 
charge of the technical departments and that 
he be authorized to act for the director in 
these areas except in matters of broad policy 
with which the director might consider it de-
sirable to concern himself. The analysis of 
the activities of these departments and of the 
staff required to perform them, in itself con-
stitutes justification for the position. 

The second report represents more com-
pletely than that on technical services the 
"general impression" survey rather than the 
detailed factual survey. It is concerned with 
the government and administration of the li-
braries, personnel, budget, accounting and 
fiscal procedures, the program for the library, 
the building needs of the library, library priv-
ileges, exhibits, and the School of Library 
Service. In the area of government, the re-

port considers the responsibilities of the li-
brary council and the representation of the 
libraries, in the person of the director, on the 
university council. Suggestions are also made 
for a closer integration of the libraries of the 
institutions associated with Columbia and the 
Columbia University libraries themselves. 

T h e administrative organization recom-
mended for the libraries and put into effect 
shortly after the reports were written, pro-
vides for three assistant directors responsible 
for general administration, readers' services 
and technical services. The division of 
authority and responsibility set up for these 
positions is indicated only briefly in the report 
and has been worked out through experience 
over the past few years. The wisdom of this 
form of organization for a library system as 
large as Columbia's has now been demon-
strated by experience. 

The chapter devoted to the library program 
might be called the charter for the libraries. 
The importance, in such an undertaking, of 
assessing, first, the place of the libraries in 
the university, next, the place of the university 
libraries in the metropolitan area, and finally, 
the place of the university libraries in the 
national and international intellectual and 
cultural world, is presented with a clear 
realization that the potentialities of the C o -
lumbia libraries are very great and that they 
can be fully realized only if they are conceived 
on a high plane with clear perception of all 
the possibilities presented by the physical lo-
cation and the position of leadership which 
has already been achieved. That it is easier 
to describe such a program in terms of its 
elements than actually to produce it, and that 
it is still more difficult to realize in actuality 
the program which may be set forth is readily 
acknowledged, yet the importance of the basic 
conception of the program is apprehended as 
vital to any accomplishment which is not to 
fall far short of the objectives which may be 
reasonably set up. 

The chapter dealing with the School of 
Library Service identifies the chief problem of 
the school as a financial one, and suggests that 
the solution to many of its problems cannot 
be found until a stable annual budget can be 
assured. Means by which the educational 
program of the school may be expanded and 
strengthened so that a program leading to the 

OCTOBER, 1948 
35 7 



doctorate may be reasonably undertaken are 
outlined. In the discussion of the curriculum 
the analysis is not as thorough and detailed as 
might have been expected, nor does it concern 
itself fully with some of the questions which 
library school administrators and faculty mem-
bers have had to face in the past few years. 
T h e question of the degree to be granted after 
a one-year course is settled in favor of the 
bachelor's degree and some doubt is expressed 
concerning the comprehensive examination 
program. T h e new curriculum which is being 
inaugurated at Columbia this fall undoubtedly 
drew some of its elements and its guiding 
principles from this chapter, particularly as 
regards the strengthening of the graduate pro-
gram. T h e chapter, however, seems to accept 
the traditional first year program as settled, 
whereas the new program at Columbia repre-
sents significant departures f r o m the first year 
program of the past twenty years. 

As informed studies by experienced univer-

sity librarians of important problems in one 
of the major university library systems in the 
country, these reports are of value not only 
to the institution for which they were pre-
pared, but as contributions to the literature 
of university librarianship. It is to be hoped 
that at some date in the not distant future a 
well-qualified person, perhaps one of the mem-
bers of the original survey committee, will be 
invited back to Columbia to study the progress 
which has been made in dealing with these 
problems and to prepare a report showing the 
experience of the libraries in the ensuing five-
year period in attempting to put into effect 
the recommendations contained in the survey 
reports. 

A l l who are interested in or concerned with 
the administrative problems of large univer-
sity libraries will read these reports with 
attention and possibly use with profit.—Ste-
phen A. McCarthy, Cornell University Li-
brary. 

Classification for International Law 

"Classification for International L a w . " Based 
on Elsie Basset's Outline of T o p i c Head-
ings for Books on International L a w and 
Relations in Classified Form and expanded 
by Kurt Schwerin. Charlottesville, Va., 
University of Virginia L a w Library, C 1 9 4 7 . 
It may not seem quite fair to appraise from 

the point of view of its general usefulness a 
tool which was developed primarily for the 
use of one particular library, and whose chief 
merit must be measured by the degree to 
which it fulfills the needs of that library. As 
the foreword suggests, however, it is hoped 
that the present classification scheme will 
find wider application; the following com-
ments are therefore offered on the basis of 
this statement. 

T h e classification follows Miss Basset's 
Outline of T o p i c Headings for Books on 
International L a w and Relations in Classified 
Form, published as Appendix 2 of her Cata-
loging Manual for Law Libraries ( N e w 
Y o r k , Wilson, 1942). D r . Schwerin's con-
tribution consists of the expansion of the no-
tation and, in several instances, the interpola-
tion and rearrangement of topics. 

T h e scheme is divided into three sections: 

Treatises on International L a w , Treatises on 
International Relations, and Reports and 
Documents. A list of examples of call num-
bers taken from the catalog of the University 
of Virginia L a w Library, a list of country 
symbols, and an outline of classification for 
private international law (conflict of laws) 
are appended. T h e section, Treatises on In-
ternational Law, is subdivided into an intro-
ductory general part which is not limited to 
treatises but includes various forms of publi-
cations, e.g. case books, encyclopedias, bibliog-
raphies, etc., and into parts on the state, 
maritime law, diplomacy, treaties, inter-
national disputes, and war. T h e section, In-
ternational Relations, has no formal sub-
divisions and includes a multitude of topics. 
It begins with general subjects of world poli-
tics, including the history of alliances and wars 
from the American Revolution down to the 
present reconstruction period. T h e history of 
the foreign relations of the United States and 
of other countries, with which the outline is 
continued, is followed by topics of peace, peace 
congresses, questions of disarmament and 
international congresses, the League of N a -
tions, and the United Nations. Special topics 

370 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH. LIBRARIES