College and Research Libraries By RUTHERFORD D. ROGERS Administrative Problems of Reference and Research Libraries! Mr. Rogers is librarian~ The Grosvenor Library~ Buffalo. W HEN 1 WAS invited to speak - at this meeting, it was suggested that my topic be "Administrative Problems of Ref- erence Service." I replied with the alter- nate suggestion that the topic be "Adminis- trative Problems of Reference and Research Libraries." Except for a certain breadth of approach, these two subjects are not as divergent as they might at first appear because analysis of the big problems of reference service indicates that they are directly related to the big problems of ref- erence and research libraries. Without d·is- paraging the importance of routines, I take the position that we have already entered . such a critical period in research library administration that either we shall meet the fundamental issues facing us, or routines will not matter. I wish to express my appreciation to the dozen or more directors of research libraries who responded to my request for a current appraisal of their problems. Largely through their help, I am prepared to define our problems and to suggest some solutions and new perspectives. Greatest Problems What do we consider our greatest prob- lems? First, there is lack of space, together with inefficient arrangement of collections dictated by buildings which we t Pa{ler presented at the meeting of the Reft;rence Librartans Section, A.C.R.L., Jan. 2'1, 1949, Chtcago. JULY~ 1949~ PART I have outgrown or which have been ex- panded, not with reference to ·~ efficiency but to the emergency need for room. Second, we realize that the card catalog is costing us more and more and that, as sub- ject approach to materials, it is becoming less and less satisfactory. Third, we ~on­ tinue to recognize that reference librarians are not being properly or adequately edu- cated and our criticism is spreading to other members of the staff, particularly to cata- logers. Fourth, we realize that there are startling gaps in our collective acquisition of foreign and domestic publications, despite historical assumptions to the contrary, and that we probably should be doing some- thing about the tremendous publishing out- put in the world today. Finally, we are constantly aware of financial obstacles to the attainment of our objectives. During the last 20 to 30 years we have dealt with many of these same old problems and have tried, pretty much in vacuo~ a number of solutions. What we must now realize is that most of our problems and their solutions are inextricably interwoven and that we must approach them as a group, not individually. Whether we subscribe to the Farming- ton idea or concede that there is some truth in Fremont Rider's concept of re- search library growth, we know our job is going to become increasingly difficult. Let us admit at the outset that we do not know the degree of difficulty because we have no accurate statistics in regard to the past, present or probable future volume of • 249 published works of all kinds. 2 We know that from a national standpoint we are woefully weak in many subjects, for ex- ample, near eastern and Asiatic materials. Our holdings of world book production to date are estimated to be as low as 33 per cent and as high as 66 per cent. The Library of Congress, which is traditionally the most complete in Americana, is 88 per cent incomplete in some aspects of it. 3 By surh haphazardly statistical or completely unstatistical methods, it has become appar- ent that the job which lies ahead is going to be infinitely more difficult than imagined. Let us now consider in some detail the means with which we have been experi- menting to solve our problems. Almost every solu.tion has involved some degree of cooperation. Cooperation is such a good American tradition that any plan which involves it has ' been, prima facie, a st~p in the right direction and anything done in its name has not been challenged. It is now becoming increasingly clear that we need to temper our enthusiasm for coGperation with some fundamental changes in method- ology, and it is with this in mind that I approach past and present solutions. First, we have the Farmington Plan based on the thesis that research libraries should join in collecting at least one copy of every printed book and pamphlet (and later public document, serial and news- paper) published anywhere in the world; that su~h material should be promptly cata- loged, preferably centrally, and listed in the Union Catalog at the Library of Congress; and that participating libraries should share the expense and should specialize in cer- tain subject fields for which they will assume complete responsibility. 4 It is too soon to saY: how practicable this plan will 2 Evans, Luther H. "History and the Problem of Bibliography." College and Research Libraries 7 :195· 205, July 1946. 3 Evans, Luther H. "National Library Resources." Library Journal 72:7-13, Jan. I, 1947. 4 Metcalf, Keyes D. and Williams, Edwin E. "l>ro- be, how much it will ultimately cost or what the volume of material will be. It might prove too expensive-too huge to handle. That has yet to be proved. But it is subject to criticism on at least two grounds. First, does it make sense to ac- quire everything without regard to the inherent worth of the material? Pargellis calls this the "grab-all method" and insists that we must be selective in our acquisition. 5 On the other hand Metcalf says that we cannot perceive the future values of a given piece of printed matter, and so the only sensible approach is mass acquisition. 6 Furthermore, he insists that .if a library attempts to be selective in a great many fields it cannot be outstanding in any. 7 Even stronger criticism is directed at the Farmington Plan on the grounds that li- brary specialization on a national scale is a practical impossibility. Consider the overlapping- in scientific fields such as bio- chemistry, physical chemistry, and astro- physics. Or, to take another example, sup- pose three libraries choose to specialize in segments of the field of history, e.g., British history, twentieth century history and Ger- man history. W ·hich one should receive a history of World War I or II ?8 I repre- sent one of two libraries which are currently trying specialization on a much broader scale and I know how serious this criticism is. Furthermore, where university and not public libraries are concerned, this speciali- zation has strong implications for the cur- riculum. Farmington Plan supporters will reply that each .institution is free to con- tinue to buy in any field, but with as many posal for a Division of Responsibility among American Libraries in the Acquisition and Recordin g of Library Materials." College and Research Libraries 5: I05-09, March 1944. 5 Pargellis, Stanley. "Building a Research Library." College and Research Libraries 5:uo-14, March 1944. 6 Metcalf and Williams, op. cit. 7 Metcalf, Keyes D. "Division of Fields of Collect- ing." College and Research Libraries 6:417-19, Sep- tember 1945. 8 Taube, Mortimer. "The Realities of Library Spe- cialization." Library Quarterly 12:246-56, April 1942 and Rider, Fremont. The Scholar and the Future of the Research Library . ... New York, Hadham Press, 1944. p. 7I. 250 • COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES as 6ooo journals in some scientific fields, is there not a danger that all but the best financed libraries will eventually specialize in one field to the detriment or exclusion of all others ?9 Although acquisitions under the Farm- ington Plan are world-wide in coverage, the Plan is national from the standpoint of division of responsibility and use of ma- terials. In order that Farmington materi- als, which are distributed throughout the United States, may be nationally available, it follows that we must have a central loca- tion record. This is being provided by list- ing each item in the Union Catalog at the Library' of Congress, which brings us to a consideration of the union catalog as the second significant means with which we have experimented and are experimenting to solve our problems. I am sure that you are familiar with individual examples of union catalogs such as those in the Pacific Northwest, Denver, ~leveland and Phila- delphia, and that I need not describe indi- vidual regional catalogs in detail. Almost without exception regional union catalogs are author catalogs designed for one of two purposes. First, the static purpose is to determine whether a given book is available within the region covered by the catalog. Under this heading our main objective is to locate material desired for interlibrary loan. Second, the union catalog may reveal that two or more li- braries in geographical proximity are dupli- cating publications unnecessarily and neglecting to acquire equally significant publications in the same field. Let us call this the dynamic purpose of a union catalog because if action results from this knowl- edge, member libraries change in character, even though slightly. Downs says that it is fair to state "that o Carlson, William H. "The Research Worker and the Library." College and Research Libraries 7:291- JOO, October 1946. JULY~ 1949~ PART I most union catalog sponsors have not been particularly concerned with fitting their catalogs into any kind of national plan, and, consequently, some duplication of ef- fort, questionable regional division, and other lack of integration are evident." 10 At the time Union Catalogs in the United States was published, it was recognized that there was a strong feeling that union cata- logs were wasteful and not j ustified. 11 This criticism may be said to be valid for several reasons. Existing regional union catalogs were created for the most part with W.P.A. funds, but even in prewar dollars they were expensive and, in terms of library income, are still reasonably expensive to maintain. Not enough attention has been given to this latter aspect of the problem, although the Pacific Northwest Library As- sociation has developed what appears to be a successful formula for financing that region's union catalog through contribu- tions of p~rticipating libraries.12 We have a substantial body of opi~ion to support the theory that a single national union catalog, properly completed~ would make ex'isting re- gional union catalogs unjustifiable in view of the services they can render over and above the Union Catalog, at the Library of Con- gress. It is hard to justify a regional union catalog as a location tool alone, except in spe- cial complicated situations such as Philadel- phia, especially in view of modern means of communication and the establishment of air mail parcel post. Local union catalogs will be even harder to justify for location purposes if the national union catalog is expanded to show many locations for each entry. Can we then defend the regional union catalog as presently established on the dynamic basis lO Downs, Robert B. "American Library Cooperation in Review." College and Research Libraries 6:408, September 1945. 11 Berthold, Arthur B. "Manual of Union. Catalog Administration," in Downs, Robert B . ed. Unwn Cata- logs in the United States. Chicago, A.L.A., 1942, p. 272. 12 Esterquest, Ralph T. "Financing a Bibliographic Center." Library Journal 71 :II2I-2J, Dec. 1, 1945. 251 alone, that we may thereby more intelli- gently distribute acquisitions? It seems to me that if the Farmington Plan in some form is a success, part of this argument is elimi- nated by virtue of agreed fields of specializa- tion, and it appears further that unnecessary duplication can be eliminated by some less expensive means than the union catalog. Union catalogs for the most part provide no subject approach to materials. Few of us will deny that we must have an im- proved subject approach to present re- sources. It follows with even greater emphasis that we must have an improved subject approach to vastly increased re·- sources, but I have already stated that the adequacy and cost of cataloging are a grave concern to almost every research library. Therefore, should we not consider a sub- stitute for the subject catalog before we proceed much further with our plans to in- crease our acquisitions? Many a research library director is alarmed that more ~nd more highly trained people work behind the scenes as catalogers while insufficiently trained or untrained people work with the public.13 It is much easier to see a room full of uncataloged books than it is to evaluate the harm done to your service by lowering the quality of people who wait on the public. This is a nonmonetary cost of cataloging. As an example of dollars and cents cost, Harvard has had a dozen or more catalogs since r 764 because one generation of catalogers has done over the work of its predec~ssor.14 No one has yet found a solution to the inde- pendent cataloging which we all do on the 30 to 40 per cent of the books for which we cannot buy L.C. Cards. More serious than cost is the inadequacy of the card catalog as a subject tool. The head of a large research library writes me 13 Osborn, Andrew D. "The Crisis in Catalbging." Library Quarterly II :393·4II, Ocotber I94I. 14 Ibid . that the " ... card catalog is already too unwieldy for untrained readers to use, and by untrained readers I mean not only col- lege students but graduate students and our general public as well. .. An advanced reader often finds our subject headings out- moded. This situation grows worse each year. We, find other libraries, are still using headings drawn up ro to 20 years ago." We are indebted to Raymond Swank for a penetrating analysis of the two common ways of preparing a subject approach to library materials. 15 First is the . traditional book-to-subject method where we put a ' book under a few established entries which remain relatively unchanged from year to year. The second is the subject-to-book method, or subject bibliography method, under which one picks a subject and tries to get all the related material thereon in- cluding related material from various fields. Under this latter metpod, subjects are cur- rent and dynamic, changing with require- ments. The weakness of the first method j is that no cataloger can foresee all the im- plications of any one book. Swank de- scribes the card catalog as the "shotgun method" of making materials available, which method is based on the fallacious assumption that readers' problems are stereotyped and that a general purpose, universal subject tool will satisfy all needs. The scholar is not interested in one type of material, s~ch as books, or merely the material in one library. He is interested in all types of materials germane to his subject irrespective of location. The sub- ject catalog has had its day and the answer to our problem is subject bibliography cre- ated on a national or international scale. We have not begun to explore the prob- lems of adequate subject bibliography. 1 5 Swank, Raymond C . "Cooperative Subject Bibli- o~raphy." College and R esearch Libraries 6:4I9-22, September I945· 252 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES • There is no doubt that satisfactory ma- chinery may take years to create. Now is none too soon to undertake concerted action along these lines. If we concede the inadequacy of the sub- ject catalog, and I think research librarians must concede it, we are still faced with the need for and cost of author catalogs for our collections. Much has been done to improve and simplify cataloging. The stumbling block to cooperative cataloging is the refusal of the central publishing agency to accept, unedited, the copy submitted by cooperating libraries. 16 L.C. cards are still slow in ap- pearing, cover at the maximum only 6o to 70 per cent of our books and still require processing in the local library. The people who have written me in regard to this sub- ject are still not convinced that cataloging centralized in the Library of Congress is the answer to our problems. To what ex- tent this attitud~ may be motivated by re- gionalism, I am not prepared to say, but re- gional organizations are contemplating the possibility of their own centralized cata- loging. One of our other unsolved problems is how to store the rising influx of acquisi- tions. We are justified in trying to solve the problem on the assumption that we shall continue to deal with the book in its traditional form plus reasonable amounts of microphotographic material. The micro- card has been discussed so throughly that I wish to add just one thought with respect to it. The system proposes to eliminate the cataloging problem by wrapping book and cataloging into one package. In view of the deficiencies of the card catalog, does anyone believe that the limited subject ap- proach proposed for microcards will be anything but less satisfactory than the pres- ent subject catalog? The most constructive step to the solu- tion of our space problem is the cooperative 19 Metcalf, "Division of Fields ... ," op cit. deposit library, not merely because it costs an estimated ro cents to store a book for one year in a deposit library vs. approxi- mately $r .oo in our conventional buqdings, but because this idea has implications for regional and national planning.17 We have heard a great deal in regard to the experi- ence of the New England Deposit Library which is located near the participating li- braries. We look forward with interest to the possible founding of a deposit library on a more ambitious scale in the Middle West because it would represent wider geographical coverage and give us added evidence with respect to the feasibility of this type of undertaking. Pending the accumulation of this evi- dence, however, we shou~d consider the implications that the cooperative deposit li- brary may have for our other problems. First, we must prove that it is practicable to locate a deposit library a few hundred miles from some of the cooperating libraries. If this be true, we have established an extremely important point. Second, only if we amalgamate deposit library books from all cooperating libraries and eliminate most duplication will we realize the full potenti- alities of the deposit idea. Such elimination of duplication is the only intelligent manner I can see to reduce our bookstocks, for it is generally conceded that weeding on any other basis is an impossibility. If we pro- ceed on any basis other than merging of deposit library collections and elimination of duplicate copies, each library might as well build its own warehouse and forget the problem of geographical location. Conclusions If we are going to meet the deficiency of the subject approach to materials, we must turn to pure subject bibliography on a national scale. The job is too large for any one region. It requires national plan- 17 Doherty Francis X. "The New England Deposit Library." Library Qt,arterly x8:252-53, October 194~\. 253 ning and national financial support. If we are going to acquire huge amounts of ma- teria~s, we are obligated to make them useful to the scholar wherever he may be. How can the individual library interpret this mass of mfl.terials except by subject bibliographies rather than through a single subject or classified catalog in Washing- ton, D.C.? Farmington planning at one point recognized that it would be difficult to specialize and that both for this reason and for economy in handling material it would be preferable to put one copy of everything in a super-library, i.e. the Library of Congress. An alternative to the single super-library idea was considered in order to reduce the dangers of the atomic ·age and the disadvantages created by the great dis- tances which sep~rate so many areas from Washington. This alternative was to es- tablish three super-libraries, each of which would house duplicate copies of Farmington materials. 18 It is easy to understand why it was not possible to proceed at once on such an ideal basis, but that is the ultimate key to the satisfactory solution of many of our problems. In addition to serving as regional super-libraries, these institutions could become the deposit warehouses for libraries in their respective regions. By this means we could create strong collections of older materials in the two super-libraries · outside the Library of Congress, and even its collections could thus be made more complete as checking of the Philadelphia Union Catalog has demonstrated. Backed by these regional collections, each research library could tailor its acquisitions and serv- ices to its special needs. It seems unreal- istic to expect a university or even a public research library to do otherwise. Just one warning. When President Roosevelt proposed the production of 50,000 18 Ellsworth, Ralph E. and Kilpatrick Norman L. "Midwest Reaches for the Stars." Coizege and Re- search Libraries 9: I 36-44, April ~948. aircraft per year at the beginning of World War II, many people, including industrial- ists, said it was impossible. No one thought to ask who would service and fly the air- planes, and the Air Forces were hampered by trained personnel shortages throughout much of World War II. Impossible through it may now seem, some national approach to our problems can and must come as surely as our manufacturers turned out 50,000 airplanes a year. Cooperation and plans are not enough. We must meet the need for much better trained reference librarians, catalogers and bibliographers. Let us stop paying lip service to the idea that we are educators unless we get the educator's training and point of view. Carman/9 Mcintosh, Conant, 2° Colwell, 21 Hutchins22 and people in our own profes- fession, such as Beals23 and Gitler, 24 have emphasized the need of a general education. Shall we continue to compromise by moving any part of library training into the under- graduate school, thereby diluting its cur- riculqm? The cry of research libraries from one end of the country to the other is for subject specialists. We need p_eople with a sound general education, plus subject specialization and proper library training. Reference librarians and catalogers as pres- ently trained-and I say this with some knowledge of the changed curricula of our library schools-are not being equipped to meet today's needs and will surely not be equipped to deal with tomorrow's problems. We must produce cataloger-bibliographers with a scholar's appreciation of research, 1~ Speech delivered at the Conference of Eastern College Librarians, Nov. 27, I948, Columbia University. 20 Harvard University. Committee on the Objectives of a General Education in a Free Society. General Educatwn in a Free Society . ... Cambridge, Mass., The University, I945- (See introduction) 21 Colwell, Ernest C. "The Role of the Professional School in the University.'' Library Journal 73 !I340- 44. Oct. I, I 948. 22 Hutchins, Robert M. The Higher Learning in America. New Haven, Yale University Press, I936. 23 Beal~ Ralph A. "Education for Librarianship." Library ~.tuarterly I7:296 ff., October I947· 24 Gitler, Robert L. "Today's Librarians Need Broad Education." Library Journal 73:359 -63, Mar. I, I948. 254 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES and reference librarians who know how to use the entire range of resources of great libraries, not merely 200 or 300 ready ref- erence books. To command people of this quality, we must pay higher salaries. Those of us in the field owe it to our library schools to get the salaries which will justify the type of people we demand and need. We must undertake integrated planning with respect to all our problems and criti- cally examine both our methodology and our isolated experiments at solving our problems. What we need is a full scale planning organization composed of carefully selected research library directors with divergent points of view, not merely parti- sans who favor regionalism on the one· hand or a completely national approach on the other. In addition, the planning organi- zation should include expert catalogers, out- standing research librarians and subject bibliographers, the last group preferably from outside the profession. We should look to this organization to bring us an over-all plan which we will support both as it affects our libraries and as it has broader implications. We are going to need more than token federal financial assistance if we are to start a new era in librarian- ship. Our services and collections have proved indispensable to national defense and to education. Federal aid to libraries is every bit as important as federal aid to education. In fact, the one is incongruous without the other, and it is up to us to prove our case by concerted action and the assistance of those who need our services. Before this can be done, we need an in- telligent plan with the wholehearted back- ing of our own profession. Joir{t Committee on Library Education of C.N.L.A. The second meeting of the Joint Committee on Library Education of the Council of N a- tional Library Associations was held in New York on May 27. Among topics discussed were the following: the urgent need of a public list of library schools accredited by the A.L.A. Board of Education for Librarianship, the question of establishing standard examinations which could be substituted for professional training, the possibility of a thorough study of the backgrounds of training needed for special librarianship, and the development of informa- tional services by the joint committee. Maurice F. Tauber represents the Associa- tion of College and . Reference Libraries on this committee. 1949"50 A.C.R L. Officers The following persons, elected by mail ballot, took office July I , I 949· A complete list of A.CR.L. officers, including section of- fic~rs, will appear in the October issue. PRESIDENT: Wyllis E. Wright, librarian, Williams College, Williamstown, Mass. VICE PRESIDENT AND PRESIDENT-ELECT: Charles M. Adams, librarian, Woman's Col- lege Library, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. TREASURER: Thomas S. Shaw, assistant in charge, Public Reference, Main Reading Room, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 255