College and Research Libraries


Brown, ed. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, En-
gland: Oriel Press Limited, 1971. 97p. 
30s. net. 
This small volume is the edited record 

of a collection of informal papers given by 
the two internationally famous academic 
library consultants, Dr. Keyes D. Metcalf, 
Librarian of Harvard College, Emeritus, 
and Dr. Ralph E. Ellsworth, Director of Li-
braries, University of Colorado, at a short 
course on Academic Library Planning held 
at The York Institute of Advanced Archi-
tectural Studies in 1966. As the foreword 
indicates ''brevity has dictated the elimina-
tion of certain contributions and most of the 
discussion." This is unfortunate, in the opin-
ion of the reviewer, because often the most 
meaningful results of a gathering such a~ 
this are the questions asked and the ideas 
which surface in the unstructured discus-
sions by the participants. 

From its title, if indeed titles nowadays 
should be somewhat descriptive of a book's 
content, one would suppose that the major 
thrust of the work would be in the direction 
of the actual design of academic libraries. 
To a considerable extent this is not the 
case. Rather, the contribution made to the 
literature and thus to a part of the planning 
process is the verbalizing of the philosophy 
of the underpinning of American academic 
and research library development and plan-
ning since the 1940s, and the special rela-
tionships that should exist between archi-
tects and librarians. Any librarians who 
have ever been consultants can see their 
own experiences mirrored and will appreci-
ate how often these experiences become 
"sticky wickets." Such candor in discussing 
the pitfalls of library planning on today' s 
campuses is indeed refreshing. 

The work is entirely verbal; there are no 
illustrations which would seem a must in 
a book on library planning. There is a rath-
er curious omission of a discussion of that re-
cent American phenomenon, the undergrad-
uate library. There is no statement on light-
ing, and one final deficiency is the absence 
of an index. 

Together, Drs. Metcalf and Ellsworth 
have been involved in some phase of the 
planning of over 600 major libraries. This 
makes anything they have to say regarding 
library planning significant and important. 
However, there is just no way that this 

Recent Publications I 145 

book should be purchased ahead of Met-
calf's Planning Academic and Research Li-
brary Buildings, 1965, and Ellsworth's 
Planning the College and University Li-
brary, 1968. These two titles remain the es-
sential tools for librarians, architects, and 
consultants.-Kenneth S. Allen, University 
of Washington Libraries, Seattle. 

Allen, Kenneth W. Use of Community 
CoUege Libraries. Hamden, Conn.: The 
Shoe String Press, Inc., 1971. 
Use of Community College Libraries, by 

Kenneth Allen, is a survey report that will 
interest many persons who feel strongly 
about upgrading the quality of higher edu-
cation. If taken seriously, Allen's study 
could help in accomplishing this task. As 
a result, all those who believe that learn-
ing can be facilitated by incorporating a li-
brary dimension into the educational system 
should take it seriously indeed. 

The reason why Use of Community Col-
lege Libraries could contribute to such a 
goal is because this work supplies one more 
clue as to how students and faculty mem-
bers perceive the teaching function of to-
day's academic library. Unfortunately, Ken-
neth Allen's investigation shows that the 
perception is still considerably out of focus, 
and in doing so it becomes only the latest 
in a long line of surveys indicating that "the 
heart of the college" is anything but the 
center of the academic enterprise. 

The impact of this study will come more 
from the data collected, and the conclusions 
which follow, than from the manner in 
which they are presented. This is because 
the entire work is organized in the form of 
a doctoral dissertation, even to the extent 
that the author subdivides the first chapter 
with such captions as "Statement of the 
Problem," and "Limitations of the Study." 

Allen's survey deals with information that 
was obtained from faculty members and 
students at three community colleges. To 
gather these data, the author designed a 
number of questionnaires which could be 
used in conjunction with circulation records 
that were available from the same three Illi-
nois schools. Mter assembling this consider-
able amount of information, Kenneth Allen 
analyzed the material to determine whether 
certain attitudes and given circumstances, 
such as the number of hours a student was 



146 I College & Research ~ibraries • March 1972 

enrolled, or his principal area of study, had 
a bearing on the way he used the two-year 
college library. 

Readers who are statistically minded will 
probably object that all tables are relegated 
to an appendix. This means that no tabulat-
ed materials are in proximity to the text 
and no illustrations relieve the seriousness 
of the style. While some persons may prefer 
the compactness of this arrangement, others 
are certain to find it a bit troublesome, es-
pecially when they realize that the writing 
is largely reportorial in nature. The reader 
is especially aware of this hindrance as he 
examines chapters IV and V, for in these 
two sections virtually every paragraph 
makes reference to a table that appears in 
another section of the book. 

The college teacher and administrator 
who is unaware of use surveys which have 
been made in academic libraries over the 
past forty years should pay considerable at-
tention to chapter VII. In this part, Ken-
neth Allen not only summarizes and dis-
cusses his findings, but he also takes up the 
question of why faculty members show a 
number of inconsistent attitudes toward the 
library's place in learning. Chapter VII 
points out, for example, that while 80 per-
cent of the teachers in this survey felt that 
students could not succeed in college with-
out using the library, only 30 percent of the 
students actually read or borrowed any ma-
terials that were part of the library collec-
tion itself. 

Findings of this kind should be brought 
to the attention of teachers , librarians, and 
administrators who work at all levels of the 
learning process. As the author points out, 
effective utilization of libraries is no acci-
dent even though teachers seem to feel stu-
dents can relate any set of holdings to the 
structure of a discipline. The fact is that 
few students have such skill, and because 
of this librarians and faculty members need 
to form a team which can facilitate indi-
vidual development through a wide range 
of self-selected tools. 

The importance of Kenneth Allen's study, 
then, may lie less in the fact that his data 
corroborate earlier findings than in his con-
clusion that the way to make a library truly 
important in everyday learning is to devel-
op a teaching-based library staff and a li-

brary-oriented faculty .-H award Clayton, 
School of Library Science, University of 
Oklahoma. 

Library-College USA: Essays on a Pro-
totype for an American Higher Educa-
tion. Louis Shores. Tallahassee: South 
Pass Press, 1970. 
At a time when the tarnished reputation 

of higher education is the subject of intense 
scrutiny, it is interesting to note that many 
of the innovative ideas proposed by Frank 
Newman's Report on Highe·r Education and 
the Carnegie Commission on Higher Edu-
cation were suggested by Dean Shores as 
early as 1934. 

The collection of essays in Library-
College USA presents evidence of Shores's 
futuristic thinking for the past thirty-seven 
years, and his ideas in education are still 
avant-garde. His philosophy of librarianship 
should still extend attractive goals to ser-
vice-minded librarians. 

The educational concepts which Shores 
has explained in many different contexts 
through the years are here represented in 
both their topical and chronological devel-
opment. The notion of the Library-College 
is described in one excerpt as having at 
least six basic elements: Learning Mode, 
Library, Faculty, Curriculum, Facility, and 
Organization. 

The difference in Learning Mode empha-
sizes the shift from group teaching to in-
dividual learning. Here, the alert and aca-
demically qualified librarian can lend his 
expertise in the utilization of resources to 
the professor's subject knowledge. Without 
the right resources at the right time, self-
paced instruction cannot be realized. Such 
an educational strategy calls for librarians 
who seek to utilize their informational re-
sources for the education of students. They 
cannot wait to be asked, but, rather, must 
actively enter into the educational process 
in all of its stages. Such a librarian does not 
have to worry about faculty status. 

Dean Shores also stresses again that the 
library should house all the different forms 
of instructional materials available today. 
This additional complexity offers another 
area in which librarians can offer their ser-
vices to students and faculty. 

The educational ideas presented here are 
both innovative and invigorating. However,