College and Research Libraries


To the Editor: 

Now that was a nice little jeremiad at the 
start of the last CRL. You must mean it 
when you say that there are too many li-
brarians about (after all, the English were 
saying as much at least five years ago). 
Just the same, whittling the number down, 
while this would cure the population prob-
lem, isn't likely to help libraries much in 
coping with the nonstop demands being 
placed upon them nowadays for more and 
better service. Obviously we face an im-
passe. Your indicating the size and obstina-
cy of the impasse doesn't do any harm, I 
suppose, but certainly makes for depressing 
reading. And your parting shot-that the 
glutted job-market will bring down our 
already deflated salaries-well, there's 

. enough dreariness in that to have anyone 
wringing his hands. But away with hand-
wringing. What we need now is some good, 
solid tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth. 
The old sackcloth-and-ashes bit, you know. 

Peter Gellatly 
Serials Librarian 
University of Washington Libraries 
Seattle, Washington 

To the Editor: 

Hopefully, we can follow the course you 
recommend in a recent editorial ( CRL, 
Sept. 1972) and can reduce the flood of li-
brary school graduates. Perhaps, though, 
we need to be concerned with the general 
problem of employment in this country, not 
just in library science. It may be that in the 
long run only a national approach with le-
gal force will be effective. One does not 
have to believe in a command economy to 
envy the East Germans just a bit. David 
Childs, in his East Germany (New York: 
Praeger, 1969), quoted a statement dating 
from 1965 which indicated only students 
who were interested in fields where a de-

Letters 

mand existed could expect admittance to 
institutions of higher education (p. 187). 
The object was to ensure that the numbers 
of graduates and jobs balanced. Interesting-
ly, library science was mentioned as one of 
the areas where prospects were bleak. 

Benjamin R. Beede 
Assistant Law Librarian 
School of Law Library-Camden 
Rutgers University 
Camden, New ] ersey 

To the Editor: 

David Kaser's very fine "Whither Inter-
library Loan?" ( CRL, Sept. 1972) will 
hopefully stimulate the profession to find 
ways to prevent the collapse of our loosely 
hinged, mostly cooperative, nationwide in-
terlibrary loan structure. 

I hope that the " ... growing desire to 
free up rather than restrict the How of ma-
terials of Scholarship ... " will be strong 
enough to counter managerial inclinations 
to shut down the interlibrary system based 
on an increasingly acute awareness of the 
" ... full magnitude of the cost of inter-
library lending .... " 

By the way, it's not only the world of 
scholarship which is potentially affected 
here. Our entire national information deliv-
ery system will be affected to the extent 
that we fail or succeed in finding ways to 
maintain and improve the interlibrary lend-
ing system. 

To the Editor: 

Frank Van Zanten 
Director 
Tucson Public Library 
Tucson, Arizona 

As always, on the first reading of an Ells-
worth Mason opus, I enjoyed "A Short 
Happy View of Our Emulation of Faculty." 

/69 



70 I College & Research Libraries • January 1973 

Then, as nearly always seems to be the case 
with Mr. Mason's writings on topics which 
do not deal with library buildings, I went 
back to review the article and found it mis-
leading, rhetorical, and, in essence, almost 
useless to help us in our current dilemma. 
The dilemma I am referring to, of course, 
is whether or not to fight to get or keep 
faculty status and rank, in the present state 
of the library profession and in the present 
state of the academic teaching profession. 

I believe that Mr. Mason's facts are con-
sistently wrong in this editorial, and his 
conclusions, therefore, must necessarily be 
wrong. In the first place, it is absolutely 
not true that "in any university of quality, 
this means no promotion above the rank 
of instructor without a Ph.D. degree." I 
challenge Mr. Mason to give me examples 
of even a very few institutions where this 
is true. Secondly, it cannot be a fact that 
the present crop of college teachers are 
"opportunists," who have very low stan-
dards of classroom performance and grading, 
and at the same time be true that we must 
compete with "high-powered academicians. 
... " What Mr. Mason seems to want us to 
do, as academic librarians, is to meet some 
kind of undocumented standards which 
exist only in his mind and govern the 
typical teaching faculty member. I have 
been involved with academic libraries over 
a period of nearly thirty years, and, al-
though my actual experience is mostly at 
this medium-sized university, I think that 
I have been around sufficiently to be a fair 
judge of what has gone on and is going on 
in both our profession and the academic 
profession. 

I believe that the new ]oint Statement 
is a good one, and, like all such statements, 
may well be capable of some modification 

as experience warrants. But it is an ex-
tremely good starting point, and should 
help the academic librarians and the col-
lege teachers to get together on at least 
a modus vivendi basis, for the foreseeable 
future. 

One last point about Mr. Mason's edi-
torial: it seems to me that to say that "the 
only faculty benefit denied librarians is a 
longer vacation" is about like saying the 
only things lacking in the Venus de Milo 
are two arms. I, for one, find it extremely 
distressing to have to spend approximately 
one-sixth of my working life at the same old 
grind, while my confreres, who are no more 
capable of handling their particular jobs 
than I am of handling mine, are gadding 
about for two months each summer and 
for periods between semesters, while I 
must keep my nose to the grindstone. I do 
not see that it is at all a fair salary trade 
that librarians be paid as miserably as most 
of us are in relationship to standards for 
teaching faculty, as a sort of recompense 
for not having to follow the "publish-or-
perish" and the tenure-or-sink syndromes, 
as he suggests. As a matter of fact, the 
latter part is not true at Idaho State Uni-
versity, and, I believe, not true in most in-
stitutions of higher learning in this country 
which do give faculty status and rank. 
Tenure rules .9n apply to both professional 
librarians and teaching faculty, generally. 

Sometime, Ellsworth, I would like to 
have you deliver a statement without being 
so damned oracular and positive about itf 
Or do I feel that way because I have some 
of that tendency myself? 

Eli M. Oboler 
University Librarian 
Idaho State University 
Pocatello, Idaho