College and Research Libraries


MICHAEL MORAN 

The Concept of Adequacy 

in University Libraries 

The theoretical foundations of the concept of adequacy are examined and 
shown to be faulty . The term "adequate" cannot meaningfully be applied to 
a university library collection because the library's contribution to educa-
tion in the institution is not measurable, yet it is the only basis for determin-
ing adequacy . Use of the concept may continue to have some practical ben-
efits but should be clearly distinguished from any theoretical justification . 

One should not seek for more certainty than the 
subject matter allows. 

-Aristotle 

Is IT POSSIBLE to point to a library collec-
tion and say with justification that it is 
either adequate or inadequate? The correct 
answer to this question should form a fun -
damental axiom of librarianship. Much of 
the literature assumes the answer to be yes; 
however, a logical and linguistic analysis 
will show that the answer should actually be 
no, and we shall endeavor to show that at-
tempts to make the measurement are also 
fundamentally flawed. 

Webster's Third International Dictionary 
defines "adequate" as follows: "equal to, 
proportionate to, or fully sufficient for a 
specified or implied requirement; often , 
narrowly or barely sufficient." Thus it is a 
quantitative term. Adequacy can be meas-
ured. It is also a relative' term since it is al-
ways measured against some job to be done 
or some requirement. So, in asking whether 
a particular library is adequate, we have 
only to determine what job the library has 
to do, then . measure its collection against 
that job to see if it has the resources to do 
it. It appears that nothing could be easier 
until one tries to do it. 

Michael Moran is director of the library, Uni-
versity of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran , 
Saudi Arabia. 

THE jOB OF THE 
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 

Since the university library is by defini-
tion part of a university, its job must be the 
same as the university's. The job of the uni-
versity is the higher education of its clien-
tele. The output, the product, of a univer-
sity is the client who has left the university 
better educated than before. How much 
better is a function of the standards of each 
university and of the particular type of 
~lient. 

Can this output or product be measured? 
Certainly the number of graduates can be 
measured, and it must be agreed that it is 
possible to measure the number of new 
facts, ideas, and attitudes absorbed by a 
client. When a student is given a passing 
grade, it means that he or she has absorbed 
at least the minimum of information re-
quired. The sources of this additional 
knowledge in the minds of clients are varied 
and include classroom teaching, laboratory 
facilities, work with other students or mem-
bers of the university, independent re-
search, and, not the least, library · facilities . 

How much did each of these sources con-
tribute to the educational product, and in 
what proport.ion? For example, was the li-
brary responsible for 5 percent of the 
additional knowledge absorbed by the stu-
dents? At present it would be totally im-
practical to make this determination, but 
one thing is certain : all the sources of the 

/85 



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86 I College & Research Libraries • March 1978 

additional knowledge, including the li-
brary's , were adequate. If they were not, 
the student could not have graduated, re-
search could not have been carried on, con-
tract clients could not have acquired the in-
formation they requested. So, by definition, 
whatever education actually takes place at a 
university the library is adequate to con-
tribute to it; otherwise, it cannot have taken 
place. To state the argulflent another way 
we could say that the status quo is by de-
finition adequate. 

The lihrm-y should he arguing in its an-
nual request for funds not that it is in-
adequate to support present educational ac-
tivity, hut that it wishes to support a de-
sired level of future activity. More pre-
cisely, the library is seeking funds to in-
crease the quality of education. It is 
suggesting that students should learn more 
than they are currently learning, that doc-
toral c<mdidates should go deeper into their 
subjects, that researchers should have more 
data to incorporate into their work. Since 
quality in education is a key concept, it is 
well to know exactly how it relates to a li-
brary collection . 

QUALITY IN EDUCATION 

If a university offers a course in quadratic 
equations, for example, and that course con-
tributes to a degree program, then the exist-
ing library collection must he assumed to he 
adequate , even though there may not he 
any hooks specifically on quadratics . The 
implicit university policy in this admittedly 
extreme case is that, even though there are 
no library hooks, it feels that the students 
have learned enough to warrant a degree . 

If the ·library has at least some hooks or 
information on quadratics, it may want to 
acquire others that, though they have the 
same subject matter, treat the material dif-
ferently or offer a different approach. Here 
the library is beginning to contribute to 
quality, for it is offering clients a chance to 
proceed up the scale of quality by studying 
the material from a different point of view 
on their own in addition to what they have 
obtained from their professors. 

If new contributions previously unavail-
able at the university are acquired, the li-
brary definitely contributes to the educa-
tional capability of the university, since the 

new knowledge extends the limits of the 
field, changes the theory, increases the ap-
plications, etc. 

ADEQUACY, POTENTIALITY, 
AND ACTUALITY 

It is true that the library's actual con-
tribution to education is undefined <md im-
measurable if defined . Now, taking the ex-
treme situation, assume that no one ever 
uses the library. Would it then he true that 

. the library is making no contribution what-
soever? An actual contribution, no; hut a 
potential contribution, yes. One purpose of 
a library is to serve as a repository of 
knowledge, <md by maintaining or acquiring 
a hook, the library has , by that very fact, 
served this purpose of its being. This is not 
to say, however, that the library's job is 
finished when it has acquired a hook. The 
more active the library is in promoting use 
of its materials, the better the resulting 
education. 

Only the library' s actual contribution is 
the subject matter of adequacy since only 
when it does make an actual contribution to 
a client's education is it performing actions 
subject to measurement against its educa-
tional purpose . 

Thus far we have attempted to show hy 
linguistic and logical analysis that the term 
"adequate" cannot be meaningfully applied 
to a library collection because of the impos-
sibility of measuring the library's educa-
tional performance. Nevertheless , we are 
confronted with many attempts to specify 
library adequacy. It may be profitable to 
analyze the more important efforts in order 
to see whether the theoretical analysis is 
faulty or whether the attempts are funda-
mentally flawed by trying to do the impos-
sible. The first involvement with adequacy 
was in connection with formula budgeting. 

FORMULA BUDGETING 

Expenditure per Student 
and Fixed Percentage 

Early attempts concerned with the con-
cept of adequacy dealt, not with the total 
size of the collection, but with its annual 
growth rate. They appeared to have as-
sumed that the status quo was adequate but 
that certain specified growth rates were 



~-

"' 

necessary to maintain adequacy. One way of 
calculating the desired growth rate was the 
enrollment method. A certain dollar expen-
diture per student was defined, and the 
total was considered to be a minimum de-
sired growth rate . For some years in the 
1930s the North Central Association of Col-
leges and Secondary Schools maintained a 
standard of $5.00 per student. Later the 
standard became: "Expenditures should be 
sufficient to cover needed replacements of 
and additions to the present holdings. "1 

Does the word "needed" in this context 
really mean "wanted" (to improve quality) 
or "adequate" (we cannot do our job with-
out them)? It is conveniently imprecise and 
is thu~, for practical purposes, meaningless. 

Related to this method was the standard 
of a fixed percentage of the university 
budget for the library budget. In 1930 the 
United States Office of Education stated 
that institutions allocating less than 4 per-
cent of their funds for library purposes 
"should carefully examine ... the ade-
quacy of the hook collection. "2 

Both approaches were adopted in 1928 by 
the American Library Association, which 
recommended a fixed expenditure per stu-
dent that should not he less than 4 percent 
of the university budget. 3 

These two approaches are simple exam-
ples of formula budgets. A formula budget 
may he defined as a line item budget 
"based upon quantitative models evaluating 
major operating programs and functions and 
setting numeric guidelines for fund alloc<t-
tions relative to pre-established standards of 
adequacy and accepted levels of attain-
ment."4 

These two formulas make no statements 
about the number of volumes. They assume 
that, if the money is allocated, the "needed" 
number of volumes will he acquired. But 
what is the basis for these formulas? ALA's 
basis was derived simply by a study of 100 
colleges and universities. 5 The formulas 
carry the assumption that the status quo at 
the time of the study is normative. What 
most libraries are getting is what they ought 
to he getting. This method is well identified 
by David Kaser as a general method of op-
eration in librarhmship in a recent article. 
Kaser states that "it should be possible to 
move from careful description of what exists 

Adequacy in University Libraries I 81 

to prescription of what should be. "6 

Comparison System 

As we are attempting to show, such a 
movement is impossible as far as the con-
cept of adequacy is concerned. Since the 
above systems rely upon what libraries are 
doing for guidelines as to what they ought 
to do; they are similar to another system 
described by McAnally in a 1963 article. 7 

That is the "comparison" system. A library 
compares itself with other institutions and 
requests a budget that will give it a desired 
rank among them. McAnally's paper is fun-
damentally a description of these various 
formula budgeting systems rather than a 
philosophical justification of any one of 
them. Yet, throughout his paper one theme 
recurs : none of the then-existing formulas 
are based, as they should be, upon library 
needs . But McAnally does not tell us what 
the needs are for any or all libraries. He 
asks the rhetorical question, "What is the 
proper size for a college or a university li-
brary, and no subjective judgments, 
please?" The profession can be grateful to 
McAnally for at least asking the question. 

Now since McAnally's paper is about 
budgets, which deal with the future acquisi-
tions, we should take the question to mean, 
What is the ultirrUite proper size of the col-
lection? How much money does the library 
need to grow to its ultimate proper size? 
Implicit in the question is the assumption 
that once the proper size has been reached 
the library will grow no more, an assump-
tion McAnally would doubtless have dis-
allowed if given the chance. 

Clapp-]ordan 

In 1965, two years after McAnally's arti-
cle, Clapp and Jordan posed a slightly dif-
ferent question. Instead of asking what was 
the proper ultimate collection size, they 
asked what was the proper minimum size. 
More precisely, when is a library collection 
adequate? This takes the issue out of the 
area of budget size and directly into the 
matter of the collection size. Their thesis is 
that "it is possible to provide a meaningful 
quantitative measure of adequacy in library 
collections." They start by countering Guy 
Lyle's statement that "the adequacy of the 
college library's collection cannot he meas-



88 I College & Research Libraries~ March 1978 

ured in quantitative terms. "8 But their for-
mula, in spite of its lip service to quantity, 
is essentially a statement of quality. 

Four of the seven criteria used in their 
formula (undergraduate library, undergrad-
uate, graduate, and doctoral fields) are 
based upon the general idea that all books 
contained in basic bibliographies should be 
a part of any academic library. The basic 
collection of 50,750 volumes for the under-
graduate library is a kind of generalization 
or composite taken from catalogs of noted 
undergraduate libraries. The implication is 
that the undergraduate library of 50,750 
volumes will be composed (by chance? by 
design?) of these recommended books. 

That a certain quantity of books does not 
assure a certain quality of books seems to be 
an obvious point, and the question arises as 
to why Clapp and Jordan ignore it. The an-
swer is that they were really developing a 
formula that would convince budget officers 
of the need for money. "It was important 
that these estimates should carry conviction 
to the planning, budgeting, and appropriat-
ing bodies concerned" and "the results of 
this attempt . . . were found useful for the 
purpose for which they were designed." 
They further state: "When standardizing au-
thorities omit or refuse to set standards in 
quantitative terms, the budgeting and ap-
propriating authorities, who cannot avoid a 
quantitative basis for their decisions, are 
compelled to adopt measures which, though 
perhaps having the virtue of simplicity, may 
be essentially irrelevant. " 9 

The Clapp-Jordan formula has the virtue 
of being ultimately based on bibliographical 
sources, but it is not a fundamental theoret-
ical contribution to the field. Its real charac-
ter emerges as a practical approach to deal-
ing with budgeting and budget officers by 
providing librarians with a pseudoscientific 
formula for a budget use. 

ADEQUACY AND 
PROGRAMMING-PLANNING-BUDGETING 

SYSTEMS 

The Clapp-Jordan formula, because of its 
scholarly trappings, has gained a measure of 
acceptance, so much so that some of its 
principles have been incorporated into 
program-planning-budgeting (PPB) systems 
in the states of Washington, Florida, New 
York, and Texas. 10 The background and 

general description of PPB systems are suf-
ficiently covered in the literature and will 
only be briefly outlined here. 11 

A PPB system includes: 
(1) a statement of purpose, including an 

outline of objectives; 
(2) a description of the broad strategy to 

accomplish the objectives; 
(3) a detailed cost of the various options; 

and 
(4) evaluation of the program. 
PPB systems can be used by libraries' 

budgeting agencies to require that libraries 
define what they need to do their job. For-
mulas are established for adequacy, and the 
volumes needed are based on them; but all 
needs expressed by academic libraries are 
arbitrary since the library cannot say that it 
absolutely needs any one book. The library 
is simply saying that out of the total popula-
tion of available scholarly materials it has 
elected to ask for a certain portion. The 
legitimacy of calling this procedure arbitrary 
will become apparent immediately if one 
tries to formulate objectives related to book 
collecting. For example: 

1. "The library will collect 50,000 vol-
umes for the fiscal year." Even in zero-
based budgeting, such figures are usually 
based upon what was acquired last year plus 
some additional volumes for growth and 
normally because that was all the money 
available. If the library had had more 
money, it would have presumably acquired 
more books. Yet under PPB systems such 
extra collecting should not take place be-
cause the library did not need any more 
volumes than the 50,000. On the other 
hand, if the 50,000 were not acquired, the 
library would not cease to do its job. 

2. "The library will build a collection of a 
half million volumes over a five-year pe-
riod." Is that all the library will ever need 
to do its job? Certainly not. It is not going 
to stop acquiring books after it has a half 
million of them. 

These examples show that the program 
statements of a PPB system may be stated in 
terms of absolute needs in order to satisfy 
budgeting agencies, but in reality and in re-
lation to the library's role as an educational 
agency of the university these needs are ar-
bitrary. The only honest and valid argument 
that the library can make to the budgeting 
authority is that it wishes to . have additional 

( 

! ~ 

J 



money in some arbitrary amount in order to 
increase the quality of education it offers 
the university's clientele. 

The library can legitimately argue that its 
educational potential will immediately de-
cline if the funds are not forthcoming. In 
addition, its actual contribution will proba-
bly decline, although this will happen over 
a longer period of time. But this decline is 
not measurable; thus library budget requests 
do not lend themselves to a PPB system. 

ADEQUACY AND STANDARDS 

The budgeting agency may be able to 
demand that each library define adequacy 
for itself. That same demand, if made by an 
agency outside the university system, be-
comes a standard. Standards may be set by 
accrediting agencies or by library organiza-
tions, such as the American Library Associa-
tion. One of the latest attempts was formu-
lated by the Association of College and Re-
search Libraries. 12 The introduction to this 
document states that the standards "de-
scribe a realistic set of conditions which, if 
fulfilled , will provide an adequate library 
program in a college." So, at last we have it! 

McAnally asked what is the proper size 
for a library. Clapp-Jordan provided a for-
mula that at least worked in a practical way. 
And now ACRL is able to crystallize the 
search into a universal formula. Simply read 
the standard, and it will be revealed when a 
library is adequate. But when we read the 
standard on the collection, it turns out to be 
nothing more than Clapp-Jordan warmed 
over. 13 

A "basic collection" of the standard con-
sists of 85,000 volumes. Could they be 
85,000 copies of Jack and Jill? The standard 
itself would allow it. But the commentary 
on the standard tries to cover the situation: 

The goal of college library collection development 
should be quality rather than quantity. A collec-
tion may be srud to have quality for its purpose 
only to the degree that it possesses a portion of 
the bibliography of each discipline taught, appro-
priate in quantity both to the level at which each 
is taught and to the number of students and fac-
ulty members who use it. Quality and quantity 
are separable only in theory: it is possible to have 
quantity without quality; it is not possible to have 
quality without quantity defined in relation to the 
purposes of the institution . No easily applicable 

Adequacy in University Libraries I 89 

criteria have peen developed, however, for 
measuring quality in library collections. 14 

Read this section, keeping in mind that 
the quality the library is after is the quality 
of education in the client. In this light the 
section is a confused mixture of the meaning 
of the words "quality" and "quantity." 

Are Quality and Quantity Separable? 

" 'Quality' and ' quantity' are separable 
only in theory." Not true. 

This collection of ten books before me has 
a quantity of ten; no more, no less, and no-
thing at all need be said about their quality. 

If all ten are good quality books on quad-
ratics, then we can say that the whole col-
lection is of excellent quality. If we acquire 
additional books on quadratic equations, for 
example, which have different approaches 
or new material, will the quality be in-
creased? Yes, but if the additions duplicate 
the scope of the existing collection, the quality 
will not be increased, only the quantity. 

Quality without Quantity? 

"It is not possible to have quality without 
quantity." · We feel that it must be true in 
some way because many people have the 
impression that the good libraries are the 
big libraries. Perhaps we can amplify the 
statement and thus come to grips with this 
fundamental question. 

The quality of education in a student in-
creases as he or she moves up the scale 
from rote memory to knowledge of first 
principles. But not all this knowledge can 
be contained in one book. 

Students of criminal law may know cur-
rent statute law in their state and may learn 
it from possibly only one set of books. To 
get into English common law, Roman crim-
inal law, comparative law, and the philoso-
phy of law itself, however, more books will 
be required. So the greater the quality of 
education, the greater the quantity of ap-
propriate books required. But what is the 
intention of the university with regard to 
this quality? Does it intend that its students 
get into the history of Roman criminal law 
or comparative criminal law? Perhaps it only 
wants to require of them that they know 
current statute law and common law. In 
other words, it is the policy of the 
decision-making bodies within the univer-



90 I College & Research Libraries • March 1978 

sity that defines the quality of education in 
a field. This policy is often not easy to find. 

Among the key indicators are formal or 
informal statements by the administration 
on university subject emphases, the amount 
of money allocated to the academic depart-
ments, the rank and credentials of the fac-
ulty, the number and frequency of course 
offerings, student enrollments, and the vi-
sion the faculty has of its place in the 
scholarly world. The riCher the university 
is, the more the available money to be 
spent on each area of a discipline, and the 
better the quality of education that can be 
offered as a result of the money available to 
the library. If a university wants to be excel-
lent in all fields and can afford it, its library 
will be accordingly better. But indeed, very 
few universities cover the universe of disci-
plines with the same intention of excellence 
for all. Each university is a unique institu-
tion with limited goals, limited funds, etc. 

The setting of standards by outside agen-
cies, like those in the " Standards for College 
Libraries," represents an attempt to define 
a uniformity of purpose and goal on institu-
tions. Such attempts may be ignored by an 
institution with every justification. If the 
university wishes to join one of the regional 
accrediting associations with the view of 
keeping a check upon the quality of its of-
fered education , it may of ·course do so. But 
any abstract formula that presumes to tell a 
university library how many books it ought 
to have is foredoomed to failure as a mea-
sure of the library's educational role in the 
university, though not necessarily failure as 
a financing tool. 

Meaning of the ACRL Statement 

So can we now determine what the 
ACRL statement, that "it is not possible to 
have quality without quantity," really means 
and whether it is true or not? 

1. Philosophically, the statement is not 
true in the abstract. Goodness, for example, 
is a quality, yet it cannot be quantified in 
any way. 

2. It is true in the sense that to have any 
quality books we must have a certain quan-
tity of books. 

3. Taking any subject in the abstract, 
e. g., apart from any real university situa-
tion, a quality collection must be a large 

one. Assuming easy access and proper bib-
liographic control, we could say that the 
best collection of books on a subject is a 
complete collection of all books ever pub-
lished on it. 

4. Taken in an actual university situation, 
with clients being given a limited quality of 
education (e.g. , emphasis on practical rather 
than theoretical knowledge), a relatively 
small quantity of books could constitute an 
excellent education for that educational 
purpose. Now since all libraries are in real 
situations and since we can presume that 
the ACRL standards are to be applied to 
real libraries, then we must say that it is not 
true that we cannot have quality without 
quantity. ·More precisely , we should say 
that quality does not depend upon any spe-
cific number of books. 

The ACRL standards attempt to treat li-
brary collections in the abstract, as if there 
were, indeed, a ···standard" common to all, 
But the library's job is to build collections 
that will educate clients in accordance with 
the university's intentions , not to build col-
lections for their own sake. The distinction 
.is subtle, but vital, and leads us, reluctantly 
but with a certain feeling of relief, to deny 
the validity of standards set by extra-
university agencies. 

ADEQUACY AND GROWTH RATES 

In the past seven years questions of ade-
quacy have concerned themselves more 
with the adequacy of growth rates, rather 
than with the current or ultimate size of the 
collection. This is probably because Clapp-
Jordan has cleared the field of discussion on 
collection size by actually assigning numbers 
that could not be proved. It will be seen 
that the same confusion besets these studies 
that besets those on collection size. 

Specifically Identified Needs 

In 1970 Jasper Schad proposed that, 
when attempting to set up a budget contain-
ing allocations by subject, "identified or 
projected needs are the only valid criteria 
on which to base budget criteria. " 15 He 
suggested that the library specify every 
.scholarly publication wanted for its own 
purposes. His system briefly is as follows: 

1. Decide at what depth a subject should 



l 

collect (the depth is divided into four 
levels). 

2. Determine the relative importance of 
the available literature, including mono-
graphs, serials, periodicab. 

3. Determine the "adequa<;y of existing 
holdings." 

4. Select specific titles and assign costs to 
them, including in-print and out-of-print 
books. The budget is then split into a cur-
rent imprints section plus a supplementary 
section for everything else. 

Having set up what appears to be a per-
fectly logical system, Schad states that 
"while it is easy in theory to define such an 
approach, it is hard to do in practice." He 
does not analyze why it is hard, although he 
hints at the reason by admitting that "com-
plete objectivity in evaluating books and 
book needs is illusory." We must agree with 
this self-criticism. And what is illusory about 
the objectivity is the idea that the adequacy 
of existing holdings can be determined and 
that the library can state that it absolutely 
needs this or that book or it cannot do its 
job of educating clients. Schad's system at 
least has the virtue of internal consistency 
in that proper collection building requires 
that new acquisitions be related to existing 
holdings. 

Needs Established by Reviews 

Also in 1970 Massman and Patterson pro-
posed that new books receiving favorable 
book reviews form the basis of minim urn· 
budget standards. 17 The total of these re-
views forms the budget for ·current acquisi-
tions. The assumption here is that if the 
publication is a good one and the subject is 
taught by the institution then it is to be 
presumed that the institution needs the 
publication. Therefore, to remain adequate 
the institution needs the book. 

Here again we see the all-encompassing 
idealized university, where all academic de-
partments have the same educational inten-
tion, the same levels of quality, the same 
quality of faculty, the same quality of stu-
dents. Massman and Patterson are doing 
what the standards attempt to do: tell each 
university what it needs on the basis of an 
idealized picture. It should be noted that 
Massman has retreated from the idea that a 
meaningful budget for current acquisitions 

Adequacy in University Libraries I 91 

can be developed on the basis of reviews 
and has fled into the world of fantasy by 
proposing that ALA select our books for 
us. IS 

The Indefiniteness of Needs 

In 1972 Redmond, Sinclair, and Brown 
Pll~lished a very interesting study on uni-
vetsity libraries and university research. 19 

One of their axioms · is that demand for li-
brary materials is potentially limitless. This 
idea seems to mean that any book ever pub-
lished might be of some use to someone 
coming in to use the library. This is the old 
idea that a library could collect everything 
with some profit. Even the theoretical ac-
ceptance of this axiom is in contrast to the 
more recent idea that there is such a thing 
as adequacy and that adequacy does not re-
quire all the books published. 

Adequacy advocates could argue that if it 
can be shown that a certain number of 
books is adequate and if that number is less 
than all the books ever published or to be 
published then demand is not potentially 
limitless. The Redmond-Sinclair-Brown 
axiom is really the correct one, however, 
because it does not attempt to say that some 
books are "needed" and some are not. For 
any book, someone could establish a need, 
yet the lack of no one book will cause the 
library to cease carrying out its educational 
goal within the university. 

The authors show that an attempt must 
be made to limit the demand, not by setting 
up arbitrary standards, but by matching the 
resources of the library with the actual re-
search interests of the faculty. The impor-
tance of this idea is that it is treating the ac-
tual situation in a university, rather than 
addressing itself to a model. If the recom-
mendations of this article were to be put 
into practice, one would still find the library 
administration arguing with faculty mem-
bers over what is needed to support their 
research. The result would be an actual 
money allocation, which would be a state-
ment, not of what is needed, but of what is 
possible under the circumstances. Growth 
rates for Redmond, Sinclair, and Brown are 
strictly limited, as far as research is con-
cerned, by the actual situation in the li-
brary, the money available, and the desires 
of the faculty. 



92 I College & Research Libraries • March 1978 

Current Acquisitions 

The most recent development of the idea 
of adequacy of growth rates has been that of 
Voigt. Reviewing attempts to determine the 
ultimate size for a collection, he made this 
statement: "Over an extensive time period, 
size has always been a meaningless term, 
for as long as scholarship continues and re-
sults in printed material or other physical 
substitutes for print, such material will be 
added to research libraries. "20 

Coming from one of Voigt's stature in the 
profession this is a very significant state-
ment. It is true that his intention in writing 
this paper was to emphasize the primary 
importance of growth rates rather than to 
offer a critique of ultimate collection size. 

But Voigt continued with this further 
statement: "When a reasonable start has 
been made in building an adequate research 
collection, first consideration must be given 
to maintaining a satisfactory acquisition 
rate. " 21 This statement further propagates 
the confusion over the issue of adequacy. It 
could be given one of two interpretations: 

1. The collection is given. We do not 
have to say whether it is adequate or not. 
Let us just say that the library has been in 
existence for a period of time and the col-
lection has been built by competent people 
and so forth, so that we can assume ade-
quacy. The use of the words "reasonable 
start" gives a sense of security. The main 
thing is to keep collection building going. 

2. The existing collection is not adequate 
since only a start has been made in develop-
ing it. But we are not going- to worry about 
that since over a period of time the most 
important thing is what is added to the col-
lection, not what it warlefore. 

These interpretations attempt to serve as 
a theoretical justification for splitting off the 
current acquisitions budget from the retro-
spective acquisitions. The idea is to get all 
the current material so that lacunae will not 
develop from this point on. This will be one 
budget. Then we can also go back and pick 
up lacunae from former years, using spe-
cially allocated funds to do so. But this 
brings us right back to the original question: 
When will that back collection be adequate? 

By leaving the question of retrospective 
purchases out of consideration, Voigt ig-

nored the issues involved in calculating 
adequacy of the total collection and ad-
dressed himself only to the adequacy of ac-
quisitions of current imprints. However, he 
failed to justify splitting off a budget for cur-
rent imprint acquisitions from the one for 
retrospective acquisitions. 

Voigt actually simply transfered the locus 
of the problem of adequacy from the collec-
tion as a whole to the current imprints col-
lection acquired within any particular fiscal 
year. His question is, What acquisition rate 
is adequate for academic and research re-
quirements? To answer the question, he 
developed a model based on seven factors. 
The first of these is a "base" rate of 40,000 
volumes. Now, as with all these models, the 
immediate question is, Why 40,000? Ac-
cording to Voigt, this figure was not estab-
lished simply by adding the basic needs for 
all subjects together since many of them 
overlap, but rather is based on "cumulative 
experience." The presumption is, although 
Voigt does not use the word, that this will 
form an "adequate" base acquisitions rate. 
Would 30,000 volumes not be enough? 
Would 50,000 be too many? In Basic Prin-
ciple No. 2, Voigt gave the real reason for 
these figures. "The level ... supplies those 
materials without which quality master's and 
advanced graduate programs could not 
exist."22 In other words, we return again to 
the question of quality in education. 

But it is not Voigt or anyone else who can 
tell the university what the quality of its 
education is to be. The decision is made by 
the decision-making bodies within the uni-
versity. This is the fundamental flaw of all 
library standards and models: they attempt 
to impose a uniform quality upon the educa-
tional output of all universities where in re-
ality no such uniformity exists or can exist. 

We have examined the various attempts 
at specifying adequacy but have found no-
thing in them that causes us to alter the 
theoretical conclusion outlined at the begin-
ning of this paper: that adequacy is not a 
concept that can be meaningfully applied to 
a university library collection. 

ALTERNATIVES 

Statements of adequacy may be useful on 
a practical level, even though not valid the-
oretically. A university library with a collec-

J 



tion well below a standard may use it to ob-
tain additional allocations. Those with col-
lections well over the levels defined as 
adequate may properly keep quiet about it 
when talking to their budget officers. 

If, in spite of our denial of the validity of 
the concept of adequacy, budget officers 
continue to demand volume counts, it is 
certainly permissible to give them. Such 
figures are very consoling to budget officers 
as they feel that they have some basis for 
giving the library all that money, even 
though they have not felt compelled to ex-
amine the rationale behind the figures. 

If we cannot justify budget requests on 
the basis of adequacy, what are we to do? I 
believe it is the responsibility of the collec-
tion development librarians to make a ma-
ture professional effort to determine the 
actual quality of education offered at their 
institutions and to tailor the collection 
development to suit that quality. If the li-
brary is not given the resources it would 

Adequacy in University Libraries I 93 

like, it should be taken as the educational 
decision of the university. 

The comparison method is probably still 
the best method of approaching budget 
officers. We have every right to make the 
case to budget officers that we would like to 
achieve higher quality in our own university 
libraries by moving closer to the collection 
size of the libraries of known excellent qual-
ity. This is probably the most honest state-
ment we can make. 

It builds up our sense of professionalism 
to quote formulas and to have standards that 
are measurable, but the true professionals 
are those who know the basic principles of 
their disciplines and who are willing to work 
within them, and who do not seek more 
certainty than is allowed. If we are not able 
to convey this idea to the public that sup-
ports us, we are simply thereby admitting 
that we do not know how to do our job of 
educating. 

REFERENCES 

1. Harvie Branscomb, Teaching with Books 
(Hamden, Conn: Shoe String Press, 1974, 
Repr. of the 1940 ed.), p .210. 

2. Quoted in Branscomb, Teaching with Books, 
p.21l. 

3. Quoted in Branscomb, Teaching with Books, 
p.2ll. 

4. Kenneth S. Allen, "Current and Emerging 
Budgeting Techniques in Academic Libraries, 
Including a Critique of the Model Budget 
Program of the State of Washington" (Unpub-
lished typescript, 1972), p.4. 

5. Branscomb, Teaching with Books, p.21l. 
6 . David Kaser, "A Century of Academic Li-

brarianship, as Reflected in Its Literature," 
College & Research Libraries 37:117 (March 
1976.) Italics in original. 

7. Arthur M. McAnally, "Budgets by Formula," 
Library Quarterly 33:159-71 (April1963). 

8. Guy R. Lyle, The Administration of the Col-
lege Library (3d ed.; New York : Wilson, 
1961), p.330. 

9 . Verner W. Clapp and Robert T. Jordan, 
"Quantitative Criteria for Adequacy of 
Academic Library Collections," College & 
Research Libraries 33:373 (Sept. 1965). 

10. Allen, "Current and Emerging Budgeting 
Techniques," p.4. 

11. A good general description as applied to li-
braries is Harold R. Jenkins, "The ABCs . of 

PPB," Library journal 96:3089-93 (Oct. 
1971). 

12. "Standards for College Libraries," College & 
Research Libraries News 9 :278-301 (Oct. 
1975). 

13. Standard 2.1.1. "Standards for College Li-
braries," p.278. 

14. Ibid., p .290. 
15. Jasper G. Schad, "Allocating Book Funds: 

Control of Planning," College & Research Li-
braries 31:155--59 (May 1970). 

16. Ibid., p.159. 
17. Virgil F. Massman and Kelley Patterson, "A 

Minimum Budget for Current Acquisitions," 
College & Research Libraries 31:83-88 
(March 1970). 

18. Virgil F. Massman and David R. Olson, 
"Book Selection: A National Plan for Small 
Academic Libraries," College & Research Li-
braries, 32:271-79 Guly 1971). 

19. Donald A. Redmond, Michael P. Sinclair, 
and Elinore Brown, "University Libraries 
and University Research," College & Re-
search Libraries 33:447-53 (Nov. 1972). 

20. Melvin J. Voigt, "Acquisition Rates in Uni-
versity Libraries," College & Research Li-
braries 36:264 Guly 1975). 

21. Ibid., p.264. 
22. Ibid., p.266.