College and Research Libraries By L O U I S K A P L A N Reference Services in University And Special Libraries Since 1900 BE T W E E N 1900 A N D 1950 the number of graduate students enrolled in American universities increased forty times, and the number of persons earn- ing the Ph.D. degree increased twenty times. By 1950 every major university ex- pected most of its regular staff to possess the Ph.D. degree, and in high schools in larger cities teachers with graduate train- ing were a commonplace. Also at work were other factors which would influence reference service in uni- versity libraries. T h e number of subjects in which graduate degrees were granted grew larger, and within existing subject fields scholars became more and more specialized. With wider and deeper re- search, and an increasing number of scholars, came the demand for greater research libraries, which in turn led to larger and still larger concentrations of books. Even as early as 1900 anybody could see that university research had come to stay, in fact by that year research had be- come a near monopoly of university schol- ars. Yet at first, university reference li- braries were mostly concerned with serv- ice to undergraduates. Indeed, in a re- vealing article written in 1915, W. W. Bishop argued that librarians could not be experts in enough subjects to be of much help to scholars and graduate stu- dents, and as a practical matter he rec- ommended concentration upon skill in library methods. Normally, universities move slowly. For 1 Paper presented at meeting of R S D , A L A Confer- ence at Kansas City, July, 1957. Dr. Kaplan is Director, University of Wisconsin Libraries. one thing, there is never enough money to do all things well. Where there is a scarcity of money, some services languish unless there is a determined and wide- spread demand for them. Few university library administrators in the first two decades of the twentieth century were subjected to the demand for extensive personal services to scholars. Getting money to purchase books, to catalog them, and to circulate them were chal- lenges aplenty for university librarians. As for reference service, most administra- tors were willing to agree by 1920 that undergraduates needed help, especially help of a kind that would teach stu- dents to help themselves. Few librarians could deny that grad- uate students in general were in need of instruction in library methods. Some li- brarians claimed that graduate students would learn from their teachers. Other librarians hoped (without looking into the matter seriously) that graduate stu- dents would be served well enough in general reference departments by librar- ians lacking special subject background. Yet by 1930, despite Mr. Bishop's influ- ence, the desirability of subject special- ization was definitely in the air. What was responsible for the change? For one thing, in special libraries, which after the first world war grew rap- idly in number, university librarians could see the example of experts served by librarians with good subject back- ground. On the university campus itself departmental and professional libraries also offered a few examples of the efficacy of specialization. Beyond these examples, pride of professional service was a factor. MAY 1958 217 If the reference librarian knew enough only to serve the most ignorant, could the profession grow in stature? While it was true that many librarians could not meet the new challenge, there was no need to accept this situation as everlast- ing. Given the proper circumstances, per- sons with more advanced subject train- ing would enter the profession. Among these circumstances was an economic de- pression which would drive would-be- teachers from the graduate schools into a profession which was receptive to sub- ject specialists. A good example of the growing atti- tude towards subject specialization could be found in Wyer's text book on refer- ence work. Wyer wrote as follows: It is true that a d m i r a b l e a n d ingenious professional techniques meticulously ap- plied, have p r o d u c e d most effective library mechanics which are sometimes too much relied u p o n as f u l l subsitutes for an ed- ucated personal service. In p l a i n truth, 90 per cent of what goes by the n a m e of ref- erence work . . . is elementary, of the ready m a d e i n f o r m a t i o n b u r e a u type; a g o o d deal of it is trivial. . . . It is geared too low.2 What Wyer hoped for was the develop- ment of a scholar-librarian combination, a librarian who could give instruction to research students in the bibliography of their subjects and in the use of libraries, and who could engage fruitfully in book selection. T h e scholar-librarian, according to Wy- er, "because of his library training and experience will be a broader man than any that he serves. H e will be able to suggest untouched sources, an unex- plored path, a promising field, and li- brary materials, tools, and aids which will save time or make sure that the search is a thorough one." Still another example of the thinking of the thirties was the support given by the Carnegie Corporation to an experi- 2 J a m e s I . W y e r , Reference Work (Chicago: Amer- ican L i b r a r y Association, 1930), p. 131. ment which resulted in the appointment of research librarians at Cornell and at the University of Pennsylvania. T h e re- search librarian experiment did not stress subject specialization beyond the point already familiar to university librarians. At Cornell, for example, the research li- brarian was expected to help scholars in all the social sciences as well as in his- tory. What the experiment did stress was a newly intensified service to university faculty, that is, the research librarian was to give the same kind of personal serv- ice already being supplie4 in special li- braries and heretofore provided in uni- versities only by research assistants. T h e extent of this personal service can be measured by these statistics: at Cornell in the first fifteen months only nine proj- ects were completed by the research li- brarian. Perhaps this fact alone was enough to discourage librarians from de- veloping this type of service. In criticizing the Carnegie supported experiment, Herman Henkle deplored the transformation of librarian into merely another research assistant. What Henkle proposed instead was a library department to plan long range book se- lection, bring together bibliographies, and to conduct a continuous survey of the research needs of the faculty. Biblio- graphical assistants rather than research assistants were what Henkle had in mind. In a survey of reference work written in 1941, L o u i s Shores wrote that the most significant trend "is in the direction of subject specialization." Shores found an increasing tendency to organize ref- erence service by research fields. By that date, university librarians were already familiar with the divisional type of ref- erence service at Colorado, a type which came to dominate library organization. B u t divisional service, while it implies broad subject knowledge, did not result in the extensive kind of research assist- ance given in the Carnegie supported ex- periment. T h i s led one observer to be- 218 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES rate the feeble efforts of university ref- erence librarians. Most administrators of university libraries would have disagreed. They would have preferred, with Hen- kle, to preserve the difference between research assistants and reference librar- ians. Actually, university scholars today re- ceive far more assistance than was pos- sible in 1900. As the result of better ac- ademic preparation, reference librarians know more about research collections (as distinguished simply from reference collections) and they engage in book se- lection to a much greater degree than for- merly. At a conference on reference work held at the University of Chicago in 1943, John Spargo, a professor of English, said: "Falstaff, you will remember, said of himself that he was not only a source of laughter but the cause of laughter in others. In similar vein, I would have li- brary folk be first of all scholars them- selves before they try to beget scholar- ship in others." Mr. Spargo overlooked the sad fact that when librarians are first of all schol- ars they lose interest in personal service to readers, if certain scholars who hold library positions can be taken as fair examples. What we need are persons who are first of all librarians, and this, in our tradition, means above everything else a desire to do what is best for the reader. T h i s requires that the librarian who seeks to serve graduate students and scholars must have knowledge of more than reference books. He must know his entire collection and have a reasonable acquaintance with important collections elsewhere. If the librarian has the ability to do scholarly work, the process of en- gaging in it will make him a better li- brarian, just as scholarly work makes the researcher a better teacher. In the world of scholarship there is no substitute for scholarly endeavor, but in the world of librarianship scholarship must not be- come an end in itself. When the historian of reference work turns from universities to special librar- ies he finds himself in a world in which money is more plentiful, where applied research is predominant, and where the heavy hand of tradition is much less re- strictive. T h e historian must differentiate be- tween professional and departmental li- braries in universities, and those com- monly referred to as special libraries. T h e former in the years 1900-1950 gave reference service comparable to reference service in general university libraries. In some instances, better reference service was given in professional and depart- mental libraries than could be obtained in general university libraries. But the kind of service given was quite different from the reference service given in li- braries connected, for example, with in- dustrial organizations. First of all, the historian needs to ex- plain the development of these special libraries. These were largely a twentieth- century phenomenon. Libraries in com- merce and industry date almost entirely from the period after 1900, and the same can be said of legislative and municipal libraries. T h e development and spread of legis- lative and municipal libraries is well known, and there seems to be little rea- son to doubt that their growth is ex- plained by the spirit of social reform and the desire for expert guidance in govern- ment. Typical of this spirit was the man who popularized legislative libraries, namely, Charles McCarthy of Wisconsin. In his book of 1912 on the Wisconsin idea, Mc- Carthy wrote: "Laws can be so construct- ed as to lead to progress and at the same time preserve to the fullest all human betterment." He believed that the advice of scholars should be sought to the end MAY 1958 219 that business and h u m a n welfare might increase side by side. Charles McCarthy regarded himself as a man with both feet on the ground. H e praised Wisconsin for its tradition of orderliness and use of scientific knowl- edge in the hands of experts. H e wanted progress, but he wanted it to be thorough and not to come in a hurry. Even more spectacular than the legis- lative reference and municipal libraries were the libraries serving commercial and industrial firms; between 1920 and 1940 the number of industrial research laboratories increased about eight times, bringing with them one new library after another. One writer has estimated that in 1940 the number of full-time research workers in industrial research laborato- ries was at least four times the number of research workers in universities, few of whom were engaged in full-time re- search. T h e growth of industrial research lab- oratories and of government supported research projects was accompanied by a modification of the methodology of re- search. T h i s brought in turn a transfer- ence from universities to commercial, governmental, and endowed agencies of the major responsibility for the conduct of research. In these agencies research was commonly characterized as follows: It was applied rather than theoretical; and it was performed by teams rather than by persons working on their own. T h o s e who have read The Organization Man by William H . Whyte will fully ap- preciate this characterization, which is probably exaggerated and to which there are no d o u b t many exceptions. Applied research, we all realize, is re- search applied to the business of making profits. When profit is the motive, the scholar presumably is not permitted to search the literature, to abstract it, or to document it. T h i s becomes the re- sponsibility of another member of the team, namely, the librarian. T h o s e who approach generalizations warily will suspend judgment of this de- scription of the researcher in industrial and governmental establishments. Are all of them team workers? Are all of them willing to forego the search of their literature? Are all of them served by librarians who are capable of this type of service? Similarly, the historian must also look with suspicion upon the actual extent of subject specialization among university reference workers. If graduate training in an academic subject is taken as the measure of specialization, a considerable number of persons in the library pro- fession did receive such training. B u t only a few of these were employed in formal reference positions. Statistics are not available, but a brief inspection of Who's Who in Library Service leads to the impression that more subject special- ists are in technical services than in refer- ence departments. Furthermore, even among those in ref- erence, few were limited to service in the subject of their graduate training. For ex- ample, a person with a graduate degree in political science normally gives refer- ence assistance in all of the social studies. T r u e , the person with graduate training in political science is as a result a better reference worker in the other social sciences, but if subject specialization is a virtue, is greater subject specialization a greater virtue? So far, university li- brarians have not accepted this greater degree of specialization as a goal. 220 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES