College and Research Libraries By C L I F T O N B R O C K Specialization and the Rising Tide— T w o Waves of the Future? TH E A C A D E M I C W O R L D has become in-creasingly aware in recent years of a great problem hovering over the horizon of the next two decades, a problem fast assuming the proportions of a bete noire in the form of tremendously increased school enrollments. Elementary and secondary school au- thorities are already wrestling with the beast, and judging by the frantic cries for help, the authorities are not winning. T h e alarm has spread upward through the academic ranks, and last fall repre- sentatives of the whole scholastic world met in the White House in an effort to devise workable solutions. Although the universities are still sev- eral years away from the front-line battle, their period of grace diminishes each year as the baby crop moves up the scho- lastic scale. Within a decade the increased birth rate which began its sharp rise after W o r l d W a r II will have poured over into the nation's already crowded colleges and universities. By 1970 the number of persons of college age will have almost doubled. 1 T o t a l enrollment is expected to be 4,200,000 (compared with 2,500,000 in 1954) even if the per- centage of college-age youth attending college remains at 31.2 Solutions to the enrollment problem must be found, and the ivied walls are al- ready resounding with heated debate as to which way we should turn. 1 Ronald B. Thompson, "College-Age Population Trends, 1940-1970," Education Digest, X I X (1954), 23. 2 Norman Burns, " T h e Coming Crisis in Higher Education," School Review, L X I I I (1955), 252. Mr. Brock is junior reference librarian in the School of Business Administration Library, University of Michigan. Many defensive tactics have been pushed tentatively forward, but as yet no grand strategy has evolved, except per- haps to call for greatly increased expendi- tures. Increased expenditures there must certainly be, but these call first for in- creased taxes, endowments and other forms of revenue, demands which can be carried only so far. T h e public will in- sist that some basic solutions be found within the academic world itself. It will become "mandatory for us to examine what we are doing—to reassess our educational philosophy; to adopt new methods and adapt old ones; to find new resources in teachers, facilities, and financing; and in general to raise h o b with the status quo."8 One proposal which raises h o b with the present state of affairs is that of mak- ing it more difficult for a student to go to college by raising entrance standards so high that only those for w h o m there is room would be admitted. This is saying in effect that a full head as well as a full purse will be needed by tomorrow's fresh- man. This partial solution has already run into heated objections, a very pertinent one being that it is contrary to our demo- cratic tradition of making advanced edu- cation generally available to all, then re- quiring a student to prove his inability to absorb it by failing, rather than first requiring him to prove that he is able to absorb it. This fence-building idea also runs into the very practical question of how long many parents will submit to increased 3 S. B. Gould, " T h e Challenge," in "Some College Presidents Discuss the Rising Tide," Educational Record, X X X V I (1955), 205. 486 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES taxes for higher education if their chil- dren are to be denied the opportunity of receiving it. Others have suggested that the number of two-year "community colleges" be in- creased to absorb part of the load.4 Still others propose the greater utilization of adult education programs.5 Some believe that, "despite the fact that we will meet these needs . . . the effort will result largely in giving more people more bad education."6 In general, all these proposals are ef- forts to cope with the enrollment prob- lem as it affects the undergraduate col- leges. T h e graduate schools are still fur- ther removed from the shot and shell, and fewer proposed solutions have come from this quarter than any other. However, it is the course the graduate schools pursue which will have by far the greatest effect upon our academic re- search libraries, maintained primarily to support graduate programs of instruction and other research. It is therefore impera- tive that these libraries anticipate as far ahead as possible any changes in gradu- ate instruction which would affect their policies, especially in acquisition. One possible solution on the graduate level, still very tentative but eyed with increasing interest of late, would raise much h o b with the status quo of univer- sity research libraries. This proposal may be summarized by the word "specializa- tion." Except for a few years toward the end of the nineteenth century, when the land- grant college, with its attendant vocation- al influence, was in full growth, speciali- zation has been almost a dirty word in academic circles in the United States. It is a concept in direct opposition to the Ren- aissance ideal of the universal man, an 4 Frederick deW. Bolman, Jr., "Signs of Change in Higher Education," Journal of Higher Education, X X V I (1955), 252. 5 Edward B. Olds, " H o w Adult Education Can Help in Meeting the Higher Education Needs of the F.ising College-Age Population," Educational Record, X X X V I (1955), 229-39. 6 Victor L. Butterfield, "Dangers of Expansion," in "College Presidents Discuss the Rising Tide," Educa- tional Record, X X X V I (1955), 207. ideal nurtured in the humanistic tradi- tion, receiving new impetus from the general education movement of this cen- tury, and inherent in the word "Univer- sity" itself. Talk of specialization has usually been disguised by euphemistically referring to it as "cooperation," a verbal gymnastic at which both educators and librarians have been proficient. A glance through Library Literature and the Education Index shows many more articles listed under cooperation than under specializa- tion. However, another glance through the articles themselves shows that many are actually discussions of specialization projects. T h e anathema attached to the word "specialization" has come understandably from an abhorrence of the overspecialized man, a much-maligned but very neces- sary phenomenon of the twentieth cen- tury. However, this objection can hardly ap- ply to the present discussion or be al- lowed as a valid objection to possible specialization programs. It is aimed prin- cipally at the specialization within the curriculum which produces the overspe- cialized man, while the proposal under discussion deals with specialization among curricula and the universities ad- ministering them. Stated in its simplest terms, it calls for a lessening of the com- petition among universities which forces them to try to cover as many fields of graduate instruction as possible. Despite all the objections to it, aca- demic authorities have realized for many years that some form of specialization is necessary. As early as 1913, at the confer- ence of the Association of American Uni- versities, Dean Guy Stanton Ford asked if it is "wise or necessary or possible for all Universities to be all things to all ad- vanced students."7 T " T h e Library and the Graduate School," Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the Association of Ameri- can Universities, X V (1913), 38-46, as quoted by Edwin E. Williams in "Library Cooperation and Spe- cialization," Library Quarterly, X X V (1955), 60. NOV EMBER, 1956 487 At the 1923 A A U meeting, Dean Ralph Hayward Keniston, taking notice of the increasing growth of graduate studies un- accompanied by any definite plan, sug- gested that "the Association appoint a committee whose duty it should be to se- cure from the several members of the As- sociation a statement of the fields of grad- uate instruction to which that university intended to devote its major attention."8 Many other highly placed academic voices have advocated some form of spe- cialization among graduate schools. But, as Edwin E. Williams points out in the article cited above, there has been much talk but little action. T h e spirit of the gridiron seems to have permeated the en- tire campus, and vigorous competition is carried on among universities and their libraries. School enrollments and library holdings have sometimes been rung up on an imaginary scoreboard to attract students, scholars and researchers in a manner often very similar to athletic re- cruiting. Competition may foster achievement in certain fields, but the "present tendency to be all things to all men is intellectual- ly destructive."9 T h e real loser in such academic battles has been the total re- search potential of the nation. Past failures to effect any workable spe- cialization agreements have been due chiefly to the lack of a catalyst to speed such action. As one college president has said, " O u r colleges and universities have sometimes indicated by their deeds that they are content to drift along, distribut- ing the mass of knowledge that they have accumulated and guarded over the years, rather than to climb boldly among the treacherous cliffs of contemporary prob- lems."10 Specialization was desirable in the past 8 "Co-operation among Universities in the Develop- ment of Different Departments of Study," Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the Association of Ameri- can Universities, X X V I (1924), 46-51, as quoted by Edwin E. Williams, loc. cit. 9 Rice Estes, "Implications of Current Educational Trends for Library Service," Special Libraries, X L I (1950), 164. 10 Gould, loc. cit. in order to unite the participating uni- versities in working toward the common goal of increasing the nation's research facilities. But it was desirable only, not imperative. T h e coming pressure of in- creased enrollments could well be the force which makes it imperative. A pilot program in specialization, watched with increasing interest by uni- versities and their libraries across the na- tion, was initiated by the Conference of Southern Governors of 1947 and has been carried out by the Southern Regional Ed- ucation Board. T h e southern states, realizing their rel- ative paucity of advanced educational fa- cilities, set up a cooperative program which assigned certain subjects to schools already strong in those subjects. A central educational fund, formed from assess- ments upon the participating states, was then used to help finance out-of-state graduate students wishing to attend these schools for work in their specialty. Essen- tially, it was the inability of individual state institutions to meet the demand upon them for advanced educational fa- cilities which forced the southern states into their specialization agreement. It would be a rash educator indeed to- day who would state unequivocally that the institutions of his own state will be able to meet the demands which will be made upon them in the next twenty years. Although perhaps in a better posi- tion than their southern neighbors, the universities of the rest of the nation may soon be faced with the same inability. Subject specialization agreements are one solution they may investigate closely. Such an investigation is already being made at the grass roots. One concrete re- sult has been an interstate compact for higher education signed by eleven west- ern states which emulates the example of the South to a certain extent. Much at- tention was given to specialization by li- braries and universities at the Monticello Conference of the Association of Re- 488 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES search Libraries.11 This conference laid the groundwork for a study of research li- brary problems by the Association of American Universities, a study which will focus further and highly authoritative at- tention on specialization. What implications do increased enroll- ments and the possibility of specializa- tion agreements hold for university li- braries? T h e y are many, and some are frightening. Only a few of the most ob- vious can be discussed here. For one thing, the libraries will be faced with a hydra-headed growth prob- lem. T h e problem of book collection growth has been with us for years and has been the subject of many dramatiza- tions from the academic library ranks. Fremont Rider has pictured libraries of the future containing long miles of shelves and acres of catalog trays. Keyes Metcalf has pointed out that universities may have to drop a professor a year to compensate for library growth. These writings and others have called much attention to the problem, but as yet no universally satisfactory solutions have been forthcoming, and the disturb- ing thought is that these predictions have necessarily been based on past growth. Increasing population and school enroll- ments may render them obsolete. Al- though there is not necessarily a direct connection between enrollments and the size of book collections, in the past col- lections have increased geometrically while enrollments have increased at a much slower rate, arithmetically at worst. In any event, in the near future, along with the problem of where to put the books, university libraries must find a place to put the students. Greater devel- opment of photo-reduction processes may help relieve some of the pressure on stack space, but students cannot undergo the same reduction. Seemingly, the only so- lution here will be greatly increased space for reading rooms. 11 Edwin E. Williams, ed., Problems and Prospects of the Research Library (New Brunswick, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1955). More students will also strain already overtaxed library services and will inten- sify the pull exerted in every research li- brary between services and resources, per- haps eventually driving the advocates of increased services from the field. Specialization, should it come in some form, would have an equal or even great- er effect on university libraries. T o a cer- tain extent specialized acquisition pro- grams are already in effect, in that each library is usually expected to buy heavily in those areas where the graduate instruc- tion of the university is strongest. But the specter of far-reaching subject specializa- tion agreements must haunt every uni- versity library administration trying to formulate long-range acquisition plans. Perhaps it should be emphasized here that specialization would materially af- fect only the large research libraries which exist primarily to service graduate programs of instruction and faculty re- search. T h e undergraduate curriculum must cover a recognized range of sub- jects, and the total number of books and other materials necessary to support it should remain fairly constant. One possible result of the enrollment pressure, however, may be to drive a deeper wedge between undergraduate and graduate programs, forcing one to become even more general and the other to become more and more specialized. T h e pressure could force many universi- ties which still try to maintain a balance between graduate and undergraduate in- struction to follow one road or the other, a development which would have a pro- found effect upon their libraries. Academic librarians generally have been credited with a willingness to go further along the road toward specializa- tion, or cooperation, if you will, than their administrations will allow. Region- al library and bibliographic centers, the Farmington Plan, and local agreements to specialize, among many other mani- festations, indicate this willingness. Yet librarians usually have tended to NOV EMBER, 1956 489 criticize themselves for failure to formu- late even more far-reaching and effective cooperative plans. M u c h of the blame should be laid at other doors. As George A l a n W o r k s pointed out in 1924: " A n ar- rangement of this type [of specialization] lies beyond the power of librarians. It is a p r o b l e m for trustees, administrative of- ficers, and faculty members. It means that most institutions will have to make a choice between mediocrity of work in a wide range of subjects and a relatively high type of research in a limited num- ber of fields."12 " T h e y [librarians] can argue plausibly that they have gone about as far as they can o n their o w n . " 1 3 T h i s willingness to cooperate or specialize stems f r o m a de- sire to increase the resources of the re- gion and nation by relieving libraries of the necessity of duplicating acquisitions of neighboring institutions. It was forced u p o n them by the great increase of printed and other material necessary for research. If this method of meeting a growth p r o b l e m has been operative among libraries, there is reason to believe that it may also appeal to university ad- ministrations n o w that they are faced with a growth p r o b l e m of similar propor- tions. " T h e answer to the ever-growing prob- 12 George Alan Works, College and University Li- brary Problems (Chicago: American Library Associa- tion, 1927), p.54. 13 Williams, op. cit., p.59. lem of research materials is more cooper- ation between libraries."1 4 Is the answer to the ever-growing enrollment p r o b l e m more cooperation, meaning specializa- tion, among universities? N o one can say at this time, but whether or not universi- ties d o in the end turn to some f o r m of specialization, the possibility of such an eventuality cannot be ignored. Specializa- tion c o u l d become a T r o j a n horse unless its approach is spotted f r o m a distance of several years. Universities could decide to specialize in certain subjects and de- emphasize others, then adjust their facili- ties accordingly at a much faster pace than their libraries could f o l l o w in their acquisition programs. T h e r e f o r e it will be imperative that library administra- tions recognize the earliest indications of a b u d d i n g specialization movement and the direction which it will take. In the past librarians have sometimes been among the last, not the first, to learn of changes. T h e accomplishment of this feat of prescience may call f o r such cloak and dagger operations as were employed at the University of California,1 5 but it must be done. Otherwise our large uni- versity libraries may one day find their present catch-all acquisition policies re- versed f r o m above and directed along narrower channels. 14 Estes, op. cit., p. 165. 15 M. A. Milczewski, "Cloak and Dagger in Univer- sity Library Administration," CRL, X I I I (1952), 117. Rare Book Manual A manual of principles and practices in rare book libraries and collections is in the process of compilation by the ACRL Com- mittee of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Spe- cial Collections. The committee seeks sugges- tions and advice especially from potential readers and users of such a manual. Please communicate with the editor of the manual, Mr. H. Richard Archer, Librarian, The Lake- side Press, 350 East 22nd St., Chicago 16, Illi- nois by December 15, 1956. Weeding and Discarding If any librarian is using a weeding or discarding system (including the disposal of withdrawn items), the details of which have not been published, would he please report his experience to Howard F. Mc- Gaw, Director of Libraries, University of Houston, Houston 4, Texas. The material will be examined with a view towards its possible inclusion in a monograph on weed- ing to be completed in the winter of 1956/ 57. 490 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES