College and Research Libraries


ELDRED R. SMITH 

Library Services 

to the Graduate Community: 

THE PRIMARY CHARACTERISTIC that dis-
tinguishes universities from other types 
of higher education institutions is the 
emphasis and priority that they place 
upon graduate education and research. 
University libraries must, consequently, 
place a similar priority and emphasis 
upon meeting the needs of the graduate 
students and research-oriented faculty 
who compose the university graduate 
community. Traditionally, university li-
braries have focused their efforts, in this 
area, upon developing the large and 
complex collections which we have long 
recognized as essential to support quali-
ty graduate and research programs. 

In recent years it has become increas-
ingly obvious that this is insufficient. As 
research and scholarly publication con-
tinue to proliferate, the problems of 
successfully and quickly accessing the 
information that they need have be-
come substantial for faculty and, par-
ticularly, for graduate students. 

Consequently, university librarians 
are recognizing that they must play a 
much stronger role in assisting this criti-
cal clientele-and particularly graduate 
students-to gain effective access to the 

Eldred R. Smith is director af university 
libraries, State University of New York at 
Buffalo. As chairperson of the ACRL Uni-
versity Libraries Section, he presided at the 
program on library services to the graduate 
community at the ALA Conference in San 
Francisco, July 1, 1975, and this introduc-
tion to the three following articles is based 
on his remarks given at that program. 

246/ 

Introduction 

information that they need and to de-
velop an awareness of the complex bib-
liographical structure of the literature 
of their field. 

Substantial efforts have been or are in 
the process of being made in this direc-
tion in a number of university libraries. 
The articles by Connie R. Dunlap, 
Anne Grodzins Lipow, and Thomas J. 
Michalak will address this topic in rela-
tion to three such efforts which, despite 
their differences, have two critical fea-
tures in common. First, they each in-
volve a substantial investment by their 
libraries, particularly of quality profes-
sional time and effort. Second, th~y have 
each met with very positive response. 

The articles are not intended, neces-
sarily, as models for other institutions 
to follow. Rather, they should indicate 
ways that have been found or are being 
found to meet a basic issue that con-
fronts us all. Finally, they should help 
to demonstrate that, even in the difficult 
fiscal period that lies ahead, the issue is 
not "can we afford to provide these ser-
vices" but rather "can we afford not to." 
I, for one, am convinced that we can 
and must continue to develop and ex-
pand quality service programs for our 
graduate clientele. Hopefully, we can 
concurrently continue our present ef-
forts toward improving the cost-effec-
tiveness of basic operations and the in-
ternal reallocation of staff resources so 
that we can invest an increasing amount 
of our high-cost professional resources 
and efforts in such service programs.