College and Research Libraries WILLIAM MILLER AND D. STEPHEN ROCKWOOD Collection Development from a College Perspective University-centered theories of collection development are inappropriate for the college library; yet they still constitute much of the theoretical basis for college collection development. While some librarians have begun to think of the college library as a unique entity, too many others continue to treat the college collection as a miniature version of a university library. This article contends that the college library is primarily an illustrative collection of ma- terials designed to support undergraduate teaching, and it suggests advisa- ble directions for college collection development in the light of this concep- tion of the college library. cOLLECTION DEVELOPMENT today is cer- tainly a most inexact science. As Michael Moran demonstrated in his recent article "The Concept of Adequacy in University Libraries, " 1 there is really no way, at pres- ent, for any of us to determine whether a collection is or is not adequate. Formulas exist, but these are arbitrary constructions rather than validated criteria. This inexact- ness need not concern university collection development officers very much, for they have the comfort of aiming for total cover- age in many, or perhaps even in every field; they might even have the funds to acquire near total coverage. For small college col- lection development officers, however, the situation is quite different. They have neither the funds , nor the space, nor the staff to attempt total coverage. U nfortu- nately, also, they have little in the way of theory as a guide in their quest for en- lightened selectivity. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Where can college library collection de- velopment officers look for guidance? The locus classicus would presumably be Guy R. Lyle ' s Administration of the College Li- William Miller is reference librarian and assis- tant professor of English , and D. Stephen Rockwood is documents librarian and assistant professor of history , both at Albion College, Albion, Michigan. 318 I brary . 2 Lyle provides common sense advice about considering the nature of the cur- riculum, the composition of the faculty, the amount of funds available , the initial size of the collection, and geographical location, among other factors. For instance, a college surrounded by institutions with significant collections can engage in cooperative acqui- sitions and could afford not to acquire cer- tain items (expensive sets of legal materials or science abstracts, for example). Isolated college libraries, on the other hand, might wish to acquire such items, not only for students and faculty, but also as a service to the surrounding community. Lyle's recommendations are good advice and have yet to be superseded. However, there is no special guidance here for the col- lege collection development · officer. These factors are precisely those that university development officers would also have to consider, were they trying to spend their resources according to a formula. Indeed, one might even say that the factors which Lyle suggests for consideration are mis- leading for college collection development officers, because they are generally applica- ble principles and are not especially rele- vant to their special needs. This problem was illustrated well by the pioneering citation analysis that Gross and Gross, two small college chemists, did in 1927 for their department. 3 They were in- i ' terested in reducing its periodicals budget and hit upon analyzing footnotes in journal articles to eliminate subscriptions to journals that were little used. What Gross and Gross ignored, however, was that they were analyzing the use patterns of researchers and publishing scholars, not of the college undergraduates. They had unwittingly done a study which was perhaps relevant for the college faculty members, or for university- use patterns, but irrelevant for their pri- mary college audience. 4 Their study was archetypically off-base. It is only recently that librarians have con- ceived of the college library as an institution at all distinct from the university library. Newton McKeon's 1954 article "The Na- ture of the College-Library Book Collec- tion"5 illustrates this lack of awareness well. McKeon, more interested in faculty than in student needs, stated that the col- lege library had the responsibility to supply the faculty with "working materials for scholarship in their fields." 6 These "working materials" included journals, proceedings, official documents, reprints of manuscripts, and original source materials of all kinds, most of which would in practice undoubt- edly have proved irrelevant to student needs. McKeon contended, however, that such a collection would serve students as well as faculty, because a "rewarding educa- tional experience"7 required the very best available resources. Clearly, McKeon's intention was to create a university library in miniature at every college. How colleges could afford to do this was left unsaid, and whether or not such at- tempts at universality are . desirable was left unquestioned. As for the execution of his development plans, it was all art and intui- tion, a "spirit of team play" between librar- ians and faculty members, chance conversa- tions, i~formed suggestions, and inquiries about unfulfilled needs. Nevertheless, this is probably still the state of the art at many institutions. By 1963, Stuart Stiffler, in "A Philosophy of Book Selection for Smaller Academic Li- braries,"8 had realized some of the inherent differences between college and university libraries and was stressing the need for col- lege libraries to select materials, not only for their intrinsic merit, but also for their Collection Development I 319 ability to complement the existing collection and the college's educational philosophy and program. Stiffler correctly noted that a book collection "consists of ideas, or themes, events, and interpretations"9 that combine to form a distinctive entity. Stiffler did not eschew subjective criteria for collection completely, but he subordinated them to criteria based upon a conception of the existing collection, perceived as an ideation- ally and structurally coherent whole. Obvi- ously, Stiffier' s article was quite abstract, and he never grappled specifically with how we might define a collection in order to build upon it. Yet, his inherent recognition of college collection building as different from university collection building remains valuable. RECENT THEORY Recent college library collection de- velopment theory is best represented by . Evan Farber's work. Many people now realize intuitively that college libraries can- not be small versions of university libraries, because they cannot afford to be, finan- cially. But to rest there is to define college libraries in the negative; Farber takes a more positive approach. He has worked actively to create an alternative to the "university-library syndrome" that affects so many college librarians. According to Farber, college libraries dif- fer from university libraries "not only in quantitative terms but in their educational roles. "10 The college librarian must build a collection that directly fulfills student needs, which means, most importantly, "a collec- tion of cultural and recreational materials that can expand students' horizons. " 11 Farber's ideal college collection must be a cultural center and do more than serve basic curricular needs. It must also have a "good reference collection that will serve as a key to the immediate library and to re- sources elsewhere. "12 The reference collection is the link that puts users in touch with the universe of re- sources their library does not, because it cannot, and perhaps should not, have. The reference collection, along with a strong program of bibliographic instruction, is also the key to making full use of the collection the library does have, and justifying the 320 I College & Research Libraries • july 1979 library's material and processing expendi- tures. As a supporter of the no-growth library , Farber believes that the present financial difficulties of colleges are not necessarily bad, because as librarians have to curtail expenditures, they will have to pay more at- tention " to what a college library should be doing. " 13 IMPUCATIONS OF THE LITERATURE As we analyze the trend in collection phi- losophy from McKeon to Farber, one point stands out: the trend is toward emphasizing the differences between college and univer- sity libraries . One can no longer pretend that collection development for the college library is simply a lilliputian version of uni- versity collection development; more atten- tion is now being paid to the goals of the small college and to the library's role in the fulfillment of those goals. Instead of bridling at the restrictions forced upon the college librarian by finan- cial exigency, Farber and his followers now glory in the singular nature of the small academic library . They want us to em- phasize our differences and to turn our limi- tations into creative assets. Thus the attitud- inal change in twenty-five years has been great. Corresponding to the change in thinking concerning the purpose of the small college library, there has also been a change in the view of the selector's position : McKeon ad- vocated selection by intuition. Stiffier called for "hard analysis of the individual title in its relation to .some conceptualization of the book collection . " 14 This was an advance , abstract concept though it is. Farber would endorse Stiffier' s analysis of the individual title but would do it even more critically. By committing himself to a no-growth library , he has increased the need for discipline in selection. The librar- ian in a fixed-sized library must continually evaluate the collection and, for every book added, must weed a book out. This places greater responsibility on the seleCtor, both as acquirer and as weeder, because it mag- nifies the impact of mistaken decisions. In this post-university-library syndrome era, we wish we could offer college collec- tion development officers validated, scien- tific guidelines with which they could confidently make the hard decisions they face daily. However, we cannot offer such guidelines; as Michael Moran's article suggests, we _doubt that such guidelines can ever be formulated. Therefore, all college collection development officers will continue to use Choice , use standard lists, involve faculty in collection decisions, give special attention to the existing strengths of their library , consider the holdings of other area institutions and the willingness of such in- stitutions to extend their resources to others , make interlibrary loan arrange- ments, and try to anticipate the changing nature of the college curriculum. We hold these practices to be self-evident. Yet, we think that something more emerges out of a consideration of college collection develop- ment theory in recent decades. STUDENT-CENTERED LIBRARIES First , we must now recognize very frankly that our primary client is the stu- dent and not the faculty member and collect with that fact in mind . This is radical doc- trine, which many faculty members would undoubtedly find unpalatable , but it is the inevitable conclusion we draw from Farber's work. As undergraduate teaching institu- tions, colleges cannot afford to devote much of their resources to highly specialized re- search materials , even when these would facilitate faculty dissertations and publica- tion. The reference collection can and should be the link, for faculty , between their needs and the universe of resources available at research institutions, resources that their own college library very properly does not have . Their research, important as it may be, is secondary to the primary mission of the college, and the faculty member's needs are secondary, for the library , to those of the students. The reality of our college curricula today is that at most institutions , a basic work (s,..ch as, for instance, the Twayne series on standard authors) is more valuable to an undergraduate than a more sophisticated work that concentrates on minute details of an author's writing. We do not mean here to demean scholar- ship, and we would not like to be accused of pandering to student taste or taking stu- dents' perceptions as the ultimate measure of what is valuable. However, as working li- brarians, we cannot ignore the obvious dis- parities between what faculty too often re- ~ quest and what students actually find useful. The college library needs to have a writ- ten collection development policy that spe- cifically names its primary clients and at- tempts to delineate as far as is practical the kinds of books that are and that are not ap- propriate for its primary collection goal. t With this policy in hand, the librarians can contend with the faculty member who wants to spend the English department's remain- ing thousand dollars on first editions of Ar- nold Bennett, or the biologist who has a list of specialized journals considered essential for his or her research. [_ College faculty members at first view this attempt to rationalize acquisitions as a usur- pation of prerogative, or an abridgment of academic freedom, but they can usually be made to understand and admit the dif- ference between college education as a process and university training as a spe- cialized inculcation of particular facts and in- formation. Once they accept this distinction, they are likely to become partners in the endeavor to collect a useful working collec- tion, on a fixed budget, for undergraduates. PERIODICALS COLLECfiONS A second principle becomes evident as a corollary to the proposition that the college library exists primarily for the benefit of the student. It is that the periodicals collection should not be apportioned by department. The result of departmental apportionment is a haphazard collection of journals designed for no particular purpose. If periodical col- lections in colleges are to be as useful as the book collection, they should, for the most part, reflect the titles covered in the major indexing tools that the library receives and that students are most likely to use. There should probably be a core collec- tion of indexing tools that are most appro- priate for undergraduate work and that are essentially surrogates for the periodicals col- lection. Such a core collection concept, presently being employed at Alma College, has been defined by the Alma College li- brary staff to include Readers' Guide, Collection Development I 321 Humanities Index, Social Sciences Index, Essay and General Literature Index, and the new General Science Index. Copies of these indexes are prominently shelved as a group and are given special treatment in bibliographic instruction. Of course, the library will also have in- dexes and abstracts that refer users to re- sources to which they would not have im- mediate access. Thus the core indexes are essentially analogous to the card catalog and signal clearly to the user that "this is what you can have, immediately, in our library." The other indexes and abstracts would be analogous to specialized bibliographies, about both of which library instructors could say, in effect, "these · tools are for the more scholarly, sustained, or adventuresome projects. Be forewarned: we do not have all, and perhaps not even many, of the items included here, so you may have to use interlibrary loan, or go elsewhere, to obtain your materials." University librarians need not worry very much about the rationale for their peri- odicals collections and can confidently ex- pect a collection of thirty to fifty thousand periodical titles to satisfy any average stu- dent user from any department. College librarians, however, may be ex- pending half of the materials budget on oniy seven hundred, one thousand, or at most two thousand periodical titles. If they accept the proposition that all periodicals, and the indexes and abstracts, are created equal, they are accepting a formula for perpetual student frustration and dissatisfaction. It is folly for college libraries to attempt to satisfy research needs on a hit-or-miss basis; it would be much more sensible to conceive of periodical acquisition primarily in terms of a core of indexes, which stu- dents could easily be instructed to use and which would lead the student, with con- fidence, to the articles themselves. Of course, the library should also have indexes and abstracts which refer the users to resources that they do not have im- mediate access t