College and Research Libraries ANTHONY RALSTON The Library Lobby The importance, function, and utility of a university library is con- sidered from the (jaundiced?) viewpoint of a computer scientist. The library -is examined as partly a university-wide resource and partly as a research facility analogous to laboratory equipment in order to draw some conclusions about whether resources allocated to university libraries are appropriate. The position and breadth of use of the li- brary relative to computing facilities is also considered as is the cost and value of library usage in relation to computer usage. '''~""' _l HE COLLEGE LIBRARY should be the most important intellectual resource of the academic community" ("Standards for College Libraries," CRL, July 1959, p.27 4). In 1959, when this was written, the library was almost the only general intellectual resource at a college or uni- versity. Computers were barely begin- ning to be important at universities and the battery of instructional communica- tions gear so familiar today was not a major factor on most campuses. Today, the library is still the most important re- source of the academic community. I emphasize this point at the outset to try to avoid misunderstanding later. But the question is: Is the college or university library as preeminent as the library lob- by-the librarians, accreditors, and their allies-would have us believe? If it is still the most important academic resource, how long will this be true? Is the portion of the university budget de- voted to libraries in relation to the other academic resources reasonable? Most basic of all: What is the utility-if one can dare to talk in such terms-of most of the holdings of a university library? Mr. Ralston is chairman of the Depart- m ent of Computer Science of the State Uni- versity of New York at Buffalo. My general thesis is that relatively, if not absolutely, the value of much of university libraries is overrated and that, particularly in times of dwindling re- sources, the university library must no longer be considered sacrosanct, that its claims on the university budget need to be questioned as much or more than competing claims. THE LIBRARY LOBBY The power of the library lobby mani- fests itself both actively and passively. On the active side I had a glimpse of the power recently when I spent two days at a new, small college as a con- sultant on computer education and com- puter usage problems. It was depressing but not too surprising to find that the computing budget was negligible, par- ticularly when contrasted to a library budget twenty to thirty times greater. Although there was a lack of perception of the present and growing importance of computers in all phases of the aca- demic process, this was not the main rea- son for the relative sizes of the comput- ing and library budgets. Rather, the col- lege is hell bent for accreditation and thus is forced to give high priority to building the 50,000-volume collection necessary for accreditation. I 427 428 I College & Research Libraries • November 1971 Another positive indication of the power of the library lobby may be found in the budget of the State Uni- versity of New York and likely other public institutions also, where the ap- propriation for the libraries at the vari- ous campuses is a line item separate from the rest of the budget for the State University. Although such special treatment could cut both ways, in prac- tice, there is no question that this treat- ment works for the benefit of the li- braries by cushioning them from budget competition with the rest of the univer- sity. Recently (March 1971) in the Com- munications of the Association for Computing Machinery there was an ar- ticle reporting on a meeting last fall in Houston of the ACM Special Interest Group on University Computing Cen- ters to discuss the problem · of resource allocation and charging for use in uni- versity computing centers, a topic of no small interest to academic computing people in times of level or declining university budgets and declining federal support. A main point of debate at this meeting was whether a college or uni- versity computing center should be run on the bookstore model ( charge users for all services, either directly or through departmental budgets) or the library model (let the computing cen- ter be a free resource for all without external funding up to the capacity of the facility). The arguments on the two sides are not relevant here. What is rele- vant is that one never seems to hear ar- guments about operating a library on the bookstore model! Charge every stu- dent or faculty member for every ser- vice including borrowing a book? Or, let each department have a budget for li- brary usage against which each transac- tion would be charged? Perish the thought! The value of the library in the educational process cannot be measured by such techniques as charging for ser- vices. Or can it? THE THREE FACES OF uNIVERSITY LIBRARIES One of the barriers to appropriate perception of university libraries is its description as a general intellectual re- source for the entire university commu- nity. Such a description is in fact much more applicable to a university comput- ing center in which all users make use of approximately the same set of re- sources- the computer and its associated peripheral hardware . But only a minor portion of a university library-that part which serves general undergraduate education- contains resources used by a wide variety of people. Most of the remainder of the library consists of: ( 1 ) Departmental fiefs, sometimes but rarely used by anyone except facul- ty, graduate students, and undergradu- ate students in one or, at most, a very small number of departments; and ( 2) individual research fiefs where the book holdings and perhaps periodi- cal back issues and subscriptions also are provided-often at great expense-for the research needs of one faculty mem- ber or a small group of faculty mem- bers. If the above language sounds pejora- tive, that is not because I am opposed to research holdings in libraries; I'm not of course. Rather, my point is that the narrow utility of such holdings is sel- dom admitted. On many campuses, indeed, the uni- versity library holdings are fragmented into smaller libraries, often departmen- tal libraries. On others, such departmen- tal libraries have been fought for but the proponents of central facilities have won. In my context the important point is the existence of the controversy which at least implies the nearly local nature of much of the holdings of a university library. It is, by the way, in- teresting to note that those who favor departmental libraries usually still wish the local library to be not only admin- istered by the university staff but also supported by it. Departments are usual- ly interested in library budgets only to the extent that funds are available in the university library budget for specific support of their needs. The contrast with computing is inter- esting. Departments may have their own computers but they almost always both administer and support them them- selves. This contrast between libraries and computers was probably reasonable when generous federal funding was available for the latter but not the for- mer. But this is no longer the case and a closer congruence between administra- tion and support for departmental li- braries and computers seems to be in or- der. Library collections-books and peri- odicals-which support fairly narrow research activities account for a signifi- cant portion of library expenditure in- cluding some of the most costly on a per book or journal basis. It needs to be rec- ognized that such collections are quite analogous to the laboratory equipment so important to the research of scientists and engineers. Again, it is true that, in the halcyon days of massive federal funding for laboratory equipment, no valid argument could be made for con- sidering library collections oriented to- ward specific research areas analogously with laboratory equipment. But times have changed and now more thought should be given to treating some library acquisitions .and expenditures in a man- ner similar to laboratory equipment. My conclusion then is that the sup- port of university libraries should be looked at in three parts: ( 1) That which truly supports a university-wide academic resource; ( 2) that which mainly supports departmental needs rather than wider needs; and ( 3) that which mainly supports individual re- search. It is clearly not simple to assign each The Library Lobby I 429 item in a university to one of these three categories. Indeed, it is clearly not in the interests of those for whom parts of a library serve as little more than personal research collections to make this distinction. The result is often in- dividual or departmental demands, par- ticularly at growing universities, for in- creases in collections in certain areas which just bear no relation to the gen- eral academic function of the depart- ment. I heard recently of a humanities department chairman who claimed that a minimum of $750,000 was needed to bring .an already substantial collection up to snuff. It was not clear whether h e thought his faculty or students really needed to read any substantial part of this material or whether the tactile plea- sure which would be gleaned from han- dling the books was the real point. In any case, such requests are only possible because we have lost control of the place of libraries at universities. Only when we get this under control will the insatiable demands of university li- braries for funds be put in a perspec- tive where they will no longer result in deprivation of other parts of the uni- versity. Now it is surely impractical to physi- cally divide the library budget into three parts as implied by the categories above. But it is not impractical to esti- mate the approximate parts of the li- brary budget attributable to each area and to make budgetary decisions based on this. In particular the total universi- ty resources available for departmental support and research support should in- clude the funds now used to support the latter two categories above. Depart- ments should be able-perhaps should be forced.:._to choose how much of the total support available to them should be spent on libraries. From another point of view, some of the funds ex- pended for other than university-wide library support might be diverted to support such university-wide resources- 430 I College & Research Libraries • November 1971 and not just in libraries-or vice versa. THE UTILITY OF A UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Let us admit that it is surely very dif- ficult to measure the value to a univer- sity of a book or a collection of books. Indeed, it is widely felt that attempts to attach such values to any facet of the academic process is antithetical to it; ed- ucation may be a product but who has the temerity to place a value on it or its components? Yet one of the reasons for the current financial problems of uni- versities is their failure to establish pri- orities. And such priorities can only be set by attempting, at least in a relative sense, to measure the value, the utility of allocating resources among conflict- ing competitors. The single most important point to make about the utility of the books in a university library is that this varies greatly among the collection. Coupled with this is the fact that very few, if any, libraries consider the utility of a particular book or periodical when or- dering it. There are, for example, those libraries which have standing orders in- to major publishers for everything they publish and which subscribe to almost every periodical in print. Now it is true that often one cannot fairly judge the value of a particular book or periodical. The sum of a library's holdings in an area may be greater than its parts be- cause, for example, it may provide an environment conducive to research where a smaller holding will not. Still this does not gainsay the fact that large portions of most library collections are not only unused but, more important, are such that there is low probability that they will ever be used. Moreover, the costs of using a uni- versity library are seldom calculated and are, in fact, much greater than most people realize. For example, a recent survey of major university libraries ( CRL, Jan. 1970, p.28-35) indicated that the ratio of total library expendi- ture to the volume of general and re- serve circulation indicates a cost of about $4.00 per book circulated. Now, of course, this isn't really a fair num- ber. Libraries are not just circulators of books. Many people work in the library itself. Still, however one looks at it, the cost of providing service to its users is high. Corresponding figures for comput- ing centers are hard to come by but, as an example, the University of Colorado charges a minimum cost of $.60 (which includes $.20 representing the rent charged by the university to the center) for each job run. This minimum cost is in fact the actual cost for most jobs, particularly those run by students. Now ·who has ever thought of com- paring the educational or research value of borrowing a book or periodical from a library and running a program on a computer? Maybe the values are incom- mensurate. But unless there is an at- tempt to make such value judgments, it is difficult to see how any rational deci- sions can be made on the allocation of resources to libraries and computing. THE BREADTH OF uSAGE OF A UNIVERSITY LIBRARY There should be no university disci- pline which does not make some use of a university library. But the amount of usage and library requirements are wide- ly disparate. Whereas an historian may need to study broadly and deeply in a collection of books and documents, many scientists require libraries only quite occasionally and then for very specific, directed study to a single book or periodical. Therefore, whereas for teaching purposes the reserve collection may be very important to scientists, their research needs may be much more limited. In terms of its value to their work, the library may be quite second- ary to many scientists ( and others ) . Of much more importance may be their own laboratory equipment and comput- ing facilities. By contrast, the use of university computing facilities is not yet nearly so widespread for teaching or research as the use of the library. Outside the phys- ical sciences, engineering, and the social sciences many departments make no use at all of computing facilities. It is easy to predict that the rapid spread of the use of computing throughout the aca- demic process will continue until it will be a rare student and rare researcher who does not have contact with comput- ing. But a more important point is that the number of departments to which the computer is vital for teaching and research is not significantly different from those to which a major library is vital. Thus, if a library is still the most important academic resource on a col- lege campus, it no longer stands by it- self, far more important than the com- puting resources. From the point of view of immedia- cy, computing facilities on campus are even more important to those who need them than is a comprehensive library to those who require it. Lack of adequate computing facilities or fast service can be a severe, sometimes fatal impediment to effective research activity. Use of off- campus facilities is often not a reason- able alternative for both cost and logis- tic reasons. The lack of a specific book or periodical at a particular instant sel- dom causes similar difficulties. Admit- tedly, the efficiency of interlibrary loan procedures leaves much to be desired, but it is relatively unusual for the lack of specific items in the university li- brary to make a research activity un- feasible. Also, when this is so, the need- ed item or items are likely to be of the very rare and/or expensive kind which puts them in the class aQalogous to lab- oratory equipment rather than in the class of a university-wide resource. Thus, those parts of university li- The Library Lobby I 431 braries which truly serve as university- wide resources are on the one hand quite comparable in breadth of usage to a computing center and, on the other hand, by no means the whole of the li- brary. LIBRARIES AND THE NEW TECHNOLOGY I have studiously avoided thus far any arguments based on the effect of computer and communications technolo- gy on libraries. I believe it would be necessary to reconsider the relative posi- tion of libraries and computing facili- ties even if there were no indication of a significant impact by this technology on the structure of a library and how it transacts its business. And let us ad- mit that the impact of this technology looks much less profound or at least much further in the future than many computing people felt just a few years ago. But, for example, rapid long-dis- tance facsimile reproduction, such as by long-distance xerography, is not too far away from becoming economic. When it is, the argument for extensive dupli- cation of back periodical holdings or even current specialized periodicals will decrease considerably. All that need be said here is that none of the foregoing arguments require any of the new tech- nology to be valid, but all will be strengthened as the new computer and communications · technology be- comes available and economic. This article is a plea for a reconsid- eration if not a reevaluation of the rel- ative place of a library in a university. It is a plea to make this reconsideration in an atmosphere free of the shibbo- leths of the past or the vested interests of the present. Although it is clear that I believe the result of such a study would be to downgrade this still most important resource, I believe even more strongly that universities must reassess their commitments in all areas if they are to survive the current parlous times in as good shape as possible.