College and Research Libraries A Social History of Madness -or, Who's Buying This Round? Anticipating and A voiding Gaps in Collection Development Paul Metz and Bela Foltin, Jr. Both the internal organization of collection development and the nature of science and scholar- ship lead to inevitable gaps in collection development. The discussion identifies both nondisci- plinary and interdisciplinary areas especially vulnerable to such oversight and suggests reme- dies to prevent the undue perpetuation of gaps. t is generally conceded that even the best collection devel- opment programs will have gaps, so that works of potential value in a number of areas will simply not be acquired. The effort to discover and remedy such gaps consumes much of the time of most collection development staff. Very often individual titles of value are missed simply because they fall into multi- ple subjects whose respective selectors are not communicating, and consequently play an unwitting game of Alphonse and Gaston. Roy Porter's A Social History of Madness, which furnishes our title, invites this sort of mutual deference among the three or more selectors to whom this title could be of interest. An occasional missed title is an unfortu- nate inevitability, an event that will hap- pen, even though the frequency with which valuable books are overlooked can be controlled. A gap-the recurring failure to acquire valuable materials in a given area-is more serious. The long-term fail- ure to collect in a subject area is a serious problem, but one which can be avoided. It is the purpose of this discussion to help collection development librarians avoid the perpetuation of gaps. We hope to do this by analyzing the structural and intellectual causes of collection develop- ment gaps, and by listing a number of ar- eas whose literatures are especially vul- nerable to being ignored or overlooked by selectors . CAUSES OF COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT GAPS Organizational Causes It goes without saying that the days of the University Bibliographer responsible for selection in all areas are long gone. One may question whether it was ever possible for a single individual to collect in all areas, but clearly the growth and in- creased specialization of all disciplines make this a dead issue today. The necessity to allocate collection de- velopment responsibilities to a number of individuals has led to a great diversity of organizational structures. The reporting Paul Metz is Principal Bibliographer and Bela Foltin, Jr. is Assistant Director for Public Services and Collection Development at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061. 33 34 College & Research Libraries lines, divisions of responsibility, and other structural features of these various approaches have been thoughtfully re- viewed elsewhere, most recently by James Cogswell. 1 The most important distinction for our purposes is that between approaches which make university department or program the key basis for the division of labor among selectors and those which match selection assignments to subject or discipline. A third approach-by language group and publication area of the world- is less frequently used. All of these philo- sophical approaches are compatible with any of the various structural models. The assignment of selection responsibil- ities by academic department may be com- pared to the use of a man-to-man defense in football. Selectors attempt to "chase" their departments all around the field of knowledge. As in football, individuals with these assignments are easily de- ceived about the directions of those they are assigned to cover. Selectors may also risk colliding fairly frequently in their ef- forts to cross and recross the field. The assignment of selection responsibil- ities by subject or discipline is analogous to a zone defense. Selectors cover an area, and in effect build collections for the use of whoever may enter that area. As in foot- ball, there are invariably gaps between the various zones of responsibility. The sub- ject approach has a number of compensat- ing strengths not shared by the depart- mental approach. One is that (as in football) individual selectors can help in- experienced or underfunded colleagues by subtly redefining the zones of responsi- bility. A second is that the disciplinary ap- proach is more likely to secure for the col- lection at least a representative sampling of materials in areas that will be of future research interest but are not currently be- ing pursued. Collection development assignments in most university libraries represent a hy- brid of these approaches. A selector will be assigned to sociology, for example, with the understanding that he or she is primarily responsible for the academic discipline bearing that name, but second- arily responsible to acquire materials, or to January 1990 make sure that other selectors acquire ma- terials, supporting any current research and instructional interests of the depart- ment which transcend the normal bound- aries of sociology as a discipline. If a fac- ulty sociologist conducts extensive research on coalition formation within the nineteenth-century British Parliament, the selector for sociology should at least make sure that the selectors in history and political science are aware of this interest and will buy supporting materials. ''Because the very basis of allocation is by subject or department, whole areas of knowledge which fall out- side the scope of traditional disci- plines are ignored." Either approach to assigning responsi- bilities, or any combination of the two, is likely to generate gaps for several reasons. First, because the very basis of allocation is by subject or department, whole areas of \now ledge which fall outside the scope of traditional disciplines are ignored. There are many nondisciplinary areas in which practical, entertaining, or instructive ma- terials are published. While most aca- demic libraries accept a theoretical respon- sibility to serve a public library function to some degree, and all aspire to support var- ious nondepartmental agencies on cam- pus, these nondisciplinary areas are easily overlooked by schemes whose ''first cut'' is by definition disciplinary. An additional problem with subject or disciplinary approaches is that of defining the fields so that emerging or interdiscipli- nary areas are covered. To clarify assign- ments and thereby minimize the interdis- ciplinary areas which will not be in scope for a selector, libraries often define re- sponsibilities in part by call number area. The use of call numbers introduces yet a third dimension, one which often clarifies but sometimes confuses departmental and disciplinary definitions. That most books treating current affairs in various world areas bear Library of Congress call numbers that ostensibly correspond with historical materials is but the most obvious example of this problem. Intellectual Causes In general, gaps will flourish the most in and around academic disciplines with weakly defined paradigms. A discipline like geography, which araws broadly on the social and natural sciences, will present far greater difficulties to a selector than will mathematics, most of whose re- search draws in a highly focused way on previous work within the discipline. Of course, even the "tightness" of the math- ematics literature does not guarantee that it will be easy for the selector in mathemat- ics to anticipate the particular needs of statisticians, physicists, or other external users of materials in mathematics. It is a trusirn that academic disciplines are changing rapidly and that a dispropor- tionate share of change takes place at the intersections of traditional disciplines. Charles Osburn has cogently summarized a number of recent changes in scholarship and research, such as the increased quan- tification of the social sciences, a trend in literary criticism towards close analysis of the text and away from historical analysis, and the growing dependence of scientific progress on technological developments. Osburn has shown how these changes create new challenges in collection devel- oprnent.2 New developments in academic or sci- entific fields often entail the redefinition of those fields, as Thomas Kuhn has shown. 3 In time, a new field emerges or the defini- tion of an existing field expands to ern- brace the new technique or theoretical un- derstanding. In the interim, however, the area is conspicuously interdisciplinary and is easily overlooked by discipline- based selection programs. Current exam- ples of books which challenge existing paradigms and therefore are marginal to scientific disciplines as presently defined are James Gleick' s Chaos: Making a New Science, which challenges the mathemati- cal and philosophical underpinnnings of strict scientific causality; and James Love- lock's The Ages of Gaia, which would dra- matically shift the intellectual constructs of a number of life sciences. These books Social History of Madness 35 are more nearly supradisciplinary than in- terdisciplinary at this point, although their perspectives may in time be ern- braced by new or existing disciplines. Interdisciplinary areas sometimes arise from the borrowing of research tech- niques. Recent developments in scanning electron microscopy and in magnetic reso- nance imaging have been applied in a number of areas, including medicine, but remain sufficiently arcane that their litera- tures draw heavily on their fields of origin. Interdisciplinary areas also arise when the traditional bases of division among fields are disregarded or refuted by those who champion new areas of study. Area studies, black studies, and women's stud- ies are inherently interdisciplinary be- cause they reject the distinctions of philos- ophy and methods which have been historically defined the various academic disciplines, and instead define their areas in terms of subject matter. The same could be said of science studies, which draws on philosophy, sociology, history, and other disciplines to study the topical domain which defines it as a field. While changes emanating from various intellectual disciplines may readily change disciplinary boundaries and create new interdisciplinary areas, larger intellectual forces present in the academy or in the general zeitgeist may redefine the bound- ary between what is considered to be dis- ciplinary and what is not. For example, women's studies proponents and others have sought to redefine the literary canon to include hitherto neglected writers or even published diarists whose sex, race, or nationality have been underrepre- sented in traditional studies. When sue- ''The postmodern spirit also assumes an integration of political, social, ar- tistic, and literary life so fundamen- tal as to challenge both disciplinary boundaries and the very theoretical and methodological approaches the traditional disciplines have taken to their subject matters.'' 36 College & Research Libraries cessful, these efforts move their person- ages into the domain of legitimate literary studies and out of the realm of the popular (or unpopular, as the case may be). 4 Even more fundamental changes in in- tellectual life may have similar results. For example, the postmodern movement has championed an irreverent and eclectic aesthetic spirit which challenges the very existence of a permanent canon. The post- modern spirit also assumes an integration of political, social, artistic, and literary life so fundamental as to challenge both disci- plinary boundaries and the very theoreti- cal and methodological approaches the traditional disciplines have taken to their subject matters. SOME EASILY OVERLOOKED AREAS In the following sections we have at- tempted to list a number of nondisci- plinary and interdisciplinary literatures which seem to be especially vulnerable to oversight by selectors. Some of these are areas of ephemeral current interest, but most pose more permanent challenges. Insofar as possible, we have categorized these literatures according to the causes which make them so easily overlooked. Such an exercise in classification may serve to extend and refine the previous discussion of the reasons which account for the existence of collection develop- ment gaps. We also hope that the exam- ples can serve as a very partial checklist for selectors' discussions about their respec- tive areas of coverage. Nondisciplinary Areas 1. Materials seroing the public library func- tion. Materials, including self-help materi- als, in problem areas such as alcoholism, drug or tobacco dependency, and the handicapped serve the legitimate and of- ten important needs of individuals throughout the campus community, as well as external borrowers. Travel guides such as the Fodor's and Michelin's series are useful to university staff and students anticipating professional or personal trav- el, while materials on English as a second language are much needed by foreign stu- dents and their families. Also valuable to a large constituency are materials on finan- January 1990 cial planning, tax preparation and avoid- ance, estates and probate, small business and the process of incorporation, home gardening, food preservation, sewing, carpentry, and other crafts or hobbies. 2. Materials seroing nondepartmental cam- pus agencies. A variety of administrative and quasi-administrative agencies on campus will typically have use of library materials, even though their literatures may fall outside disciplinary boundaries. Examples include the areas of fund- raising and development; health and safety; career planning and placement; student activities; and equal opportunity and affirmative action. 3. Lay approaches to subjects within discipli- nary boundaries. Whether a book falls within an academic discipline depends as much on the author's approach as on the subject matter. There is therefore a large body of literature which treats topics of in- terest to academic disciplines but is not disciplinary because ยท of its theoretical ap- proach or because of the kinds of data it considers to be valid. A variety of naturalists have achieved literary distinction and provided highly stimulating insights into natural phenom- enon without necessarily contributing to scientific progress. Lewis Thomas, Annie Dillard, and Stephen Jay Gould in his more popular writing exemplify this tradi- tion. Popular books on how science is done, such as Ed Regis's Who Got Ein- stein's Office: Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study also fall into this category, as do nonacademic surveys such as T.R. McDonough's The Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence: Listening for Life in the Cosmos, or David MacCaulay' s splendid The Way Things Work. Intelligent lay analyses of various soci- eties provide a social science equivalent to the naturalist's essay. Frances Fitzgerald's Cities on a Hill is an example of popular so- ciology approaching literary status. Paul Theroux's Riding the Iron Rooster is only the most recent example of the literate travel book, a highly developed genre fall- ing in this category. The highly intelligent lay essay is a cul- turally important contribution, examples of which often attract academic attention in later years. In considering such materi- als, selectors should ask themselves whether their policies would support the acquisition of T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pil- lars of Wisdom or George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, if these unquestioned master- pieces describing war and the politics of war were written today. 4. Cultural expressions not considered "Lit- erature. "Works in this grouping approach literary status but differ from the pre- vious, related category because of the dif- fuseness of their subject matter. Thought- ful biographies such as James Reston's Growing Up or Annie Dillard's An Ameri- can Childhood may be valuable additions to a collection. The reflective and socially re- vealing commentary of such humorists as P.J. O'Rourke, Dave Barry, Roy Blount, Jr., Calvin Trillin, and Woody Allen may be equally worthwhile contributions. Interdisciplinary Areas The acquisition of materials in interdis- ciplinary areas is even more critical to suc- cessful collection development than is the selection of a representative portion of the best nondisciplinary literatures. Here, af- ter all, are materials whose topics and methodologies make them more or less ac- ademic in scope, even though they do not neatly match the interests of individual departments. The following examples il- lustrate the kinds of areas in which valu- able interdisciplinary materials may easily be missed. 1. Materials with ambiguous classification numbers. As we have already indicated, books describing current political or social conditions in various parts of the world are generally classified in LC classes D through F. This practice does not neces- sarily reflect misclassification for the pur- poses of cataloging and retrieval, espe- cially when the materials in question do not neatly reflect the perspectives of one or another individual social science. How- ever, one result of such ambiguous classi- fication practices may be to make selectors hesitate to acquire materials of potential value to area specialists in a variety of so- cial science disciplines. There are a number of other literatures whose typical call numbers may partially Social History of Madness 37 ''There are a number of other litera- tures whose typical call numbers may partially misrepresent their subjects and may therefore tend to discourage selection or blur the division of re- sponsibilities.'' misrepresent their subjects and may therefore tend to discourage selection or . blur the division of responsibilities. Many books in clinical psychology and psycho- therapy classify in the R schedule. Al- though this classification accurately re- flects the therapeutic orientation of these materials, it may tend to obscure the close relationship of such materials to main- stream psychology (BF). Indeed, data from Virginia Tech showed that faculty and graduate students in psychology re- lied fairly heavily on materials in class R. 6 Books on gerontology classify in a num- ber of areas, reflecting the disciplinary ap- proaches of their authors but obscuring their common interests. Books on man- agement as a science transcending partic- ular applications in business administra- tion are similarly scattered. Some are classified in sociology or psychology, al- though they may be of limited interest to selectors responsible for these disciplines. The emergence of Decision Science, with its close relationship to both cognitive psy- chology and artificial intelligence, has fur- ther diffused the scope of management materials. 2. Applied Areas. Areas of applied re- search tend to draw on the more funda- mental understandings of a variety of dis- ciplines, as the Manhattan Project drew on physics, engineering, and other areas. Normal collection development activities will not entirely overlook the literatures required for such work, but they may very well acquire substantially less material than is required for specific applied areas of interest on a given campus. A listing of specialized research centers at one's uni- versity, which often treat problems as spe- cific as adhesion science, satellite com- munications, or synthetic fabrics, can be used to identify interdisciplinary areas of 38 College & Research Libraries unusual interest to the campus commu- nity. Issues of keen contemporary interest to the public as well as to professional re- searchers also show a marked tendency to occur at the boundaries and intersections of academic disciplines, rather than strictly within their boundaries. The fol- lowing examples of current "hot topics" may be useful for illustrating this ten- dency. Because the examples listed are current issues, it is likely that an illustra- tive listing made five years from now would be entirely different. Example 1: Materials on the economics of health care, including the HMO movement and the insurance crisis, span the boundaries of eco- nomics, medicine, and public policy. Example 2: Recent materials on the crisis of third world debt treat an economic problem whose implications and possible solutions will be fundamentally political. Example 3: Materials dealing with the regula- tion of business, whether in the context of con- sumer protection, antitrust, or the reduction of industrial pollution, are of potential interest to researchers in law, public policy, environmen- tal studies, business, and other disciplines. Example 4: Materials on AIDS raise a number of vexing economic, ethical, medical, and social questions, often bringing these domains to- gether in new ways. Example 5: Materials of strong interest to pa- trons in military science tend to scatter through- out a number of disciplines. It is not always clear to selectors whether topics such as arms reduction or the state of NATO belong to mili- tary or political science, or whether materials on SDI and other military technologies pertain more to military science or to engineering. Example 6: Materials on Liberation Theology and Catholic radicalism assert a new relation- ship between religion and political life. 3. Miscellaneous areas inviting gaps. Sev- eral areas are especially seductive in rais- ing selectors' beliefs that "Alphonse is buying that'' for reasons that do not per- tain to classification issues or the intersec- tions of academic disciplines. Children's nonfiction is one such area: it would be perfectly plausible for the selector in chil- dren's literature to purchase only litera- ture in the narrow sense (PZ), while selec- January 1990 tors in other areas failed to acquire juvenile-level materials in history, biogra- phy, or science because they assumed that these areas were being covered. A similar and much more damaging instance could arise in the case of English translations of foreign literature. It would be all too easy for the works of both contemporary au- thors such as Garcia Marquez and canon- ized authors such as Proust to be ignored when published in translation because of the mutual deference of selectors in En- glish and foreign languages. PREVENTING COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT GAPS Even though the persistence of collec- tion development gaps is caused in part by such fundamental forces as the structure of collection development responsibilities or the winds of cultural change, many gaps can be prevented by collection devel- opment managers who are alert to the risks and practice relatively ordinary forms of vigilance. Naturally the academic library will wish to spend only a limited portion of its materials budget on materi- als of a nonacademic nature, however stimulating these may be. The necessity to limit such expenditures makes the princi- ples of selection and the care with which they are applied even more critical. Nondisciplinary areas of interest to the campus community can be identified. These are often ideal candidates for as- signments to staff outside collection de- velopment who are seeking job enrich- ment. Generally these individuals will spend their limited collection develop- ment funds with enthusiasm and care. Collection development officers should include in their assignments academic dis- ciplines not represented on their own campuses, as is often the case with such professional areas as medicine, journal- ism, and law. The choice of appropriate selection tools is a key determinate of success in avoiding collection development gaps, as it is cen- tral to so many other aspects of success in selection efforts. In spending the rela- tively limited portion of its budget that will be accorded to explicitly nonacademic materials, the library's selectors will want to use tools that review books and do not merely provide imprint information. Our experience suggests that The New York Times Book Review-the source of most of the examples cited above-is an excellent vehicle for alerting selectors to recent pub- lications that have high quality but do not use the theoretical perspectives of forms of data associated with traditional aca- demic disciplines. ~ ~u is critical that the library foster an ethic that permits justified selection decisions outside of narrow discipli- nary boundaries.'' Collection development officers can also prevent the appearance of unnecessary gaps by encouraging communication among library selectors. All too often the issue of covering all areas of knowledge is discussed systematically only when ap- proval plan profiles are revised. Physically centralized locations for the review of new materials can help to facilitate communi- Social History of Madness 39 cation among selectors. The routing of re- view journals and other selection tools will generally stimulate discussion, espe- cially as selectors begin to see that their colleagues do not select in areas they had taken for granted. In general, not taking anything for granted that has not been explicitly dis- cussed is an excellent byword for the avoidance of gaps. One of the most impor- tant contributions a collection develop- ment manager can make is to lay out clear ground rules governing the selection of materials for which multiple selectors could be responsible. It is particularly im- portant to determine which selector will normally be responsible when researchers from one department are known to be working in another discipline. Even be- yond this, it is critical that the library foster an ethic that permits justified selection de- cisions outside of narrow disciplinary boundaries. It is far better that time be wasted beginning to process an order that turns out to be redundant than that selec- tors miss materials because they are terri- torial or have assumed that someone else is buying the next round. REFERENCES 1. James A. Cogswell, "The Organization of Collection Management Functions in Academic Research Libraries," Journal of Academic Librarianship 13:268-76 (Nov. 1987). 2. Charles B. Osburn, Academic Research and Library Resources (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1979). 3. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 2d ed ., enlarged. International Encyclopedia of Unified Science v .2, no.2 (Chicago: Univ . of Chicago, 1970). 4. Betsy Draine, "Academic Feminists Must Make Sure Their Commitments Are Not Self-Serving," The Chronicle of Higher Education Aug. 10, 1988, p.40 . 5. Todd Gitlin, "Hip-Deep in Postmodernism," New York Times Book Review Nov. 6, 1988, p.1, 35-36. 6. Paul Metz, The Landscape of Literatures: Use of Subject Collections in a University Library (Chicago: American Library Assn., 1983), p.43, 127.