College and Research Libraries


A C L E A R I N G H O U S E F O R D U P L I C A T E 
P U B L I C D O C U M E N T S 

Report of the Agricultural Libraries Section 
Committee to Investigate the Possibilities of 
Setting Up a Clearing House for Duplicate 
Public Documents Other than State Experi-
ment Station and Extension Division Pub-
lications. 

A t the outset of its work the committee 
assigned to study the possibilities of setting 
up a clearing house for duplicate public 
documents referred to the files of existing 
literature dealing with the general problem 
of cooperative exchange. This was done in 
order to determine what plans for the dis-
posal of duplicates had already been at-
tempted or suggested, and to see which of 
these plans had met with success or failure. 
Thus learning some of the pitfalls which 
must be avoided, it was hoped that some 
practical method could be devised for dis-
tributing to the best advantage the large 
stocks of public documents which are now 
lying unused in many agricultural libraries 
throughout the country. 

At various times within recent years mem-
bers of the profession have proposed the 
establishment of some kind of clearing house 
for duplicates. The idea of maintaining a 
central agency to which all duplicates might 
be sent for storage and ultimate distribution 
has been considered impractical for various 
reasons: ( i ) The provision of adequate 
storage space would present a great prob-
lem; (2) The shipping of the material to 
and from the clearing house would be costly; 
(3) The physical handling of the duplicates, 
i.e. wrapping, unwrapping, sorting, shelving, 
etc. would involve a vast amount of labor 
and expense. 

Most of the recent suggestions center 
around a union catalog in which could be 
recorded the duplicate holdings of all co-
operating libraries and to which libraries 
might submit their lists of wants. Accord-
ing to this arrangement the clearing house 
would never actually handle the publications 
themselves, but would merely arrange for 
the transfer of material between holding 
and requesting libraries. Such a project 

for the exchange of serials was put into 
operation as an experiment by the H. W . 
Wilson Company several years ago, but had 
to be abandoned because the number of ex-
changes that were effected did not bring in 
enough commission to put the plan on a 
paying basis. 

In 1932, with the aid of a Carnegie grant, 
the National Association of State Libraries 
established a Public Documents Clearing 
House, the primary purpose of which was 
to prepare and publish checklists of state 
session laws, statutes, legislative journals, 
and other state documents. As a part of 
this venture a clearing house was set up for 
the exchange of duplicate documentary ma-
terial. The headquarters of the clearing 
house maintained a master card file of wants 
and offers and arranged for exchanges be-
tween cooperating libraries. A t one time 
sixty-nine members were participating in 
the project and many of them succeeded 
in strengthening their files by this means, 
but unfortunately the activities of the clear-
ing house had to be abandoned because of 
lack of funds. In 1937, when the future of 
the project was being weighed in the bal-
ance, the chairman of the committee ex-
pressed the belief that the clearing house 
could be carried on successfully if the co-
operators were required to pay an annual 
membership fee for its financial support. 

It seems to be generally agreed that the 
clearing house is still the ideal answer to 
the problem of exchanging duplicates, de-
spite the difficulties which have been en-
countered in previous efforts to achieve that 
ideal. The chief obstacle—and it is a 
serious one—has been the provision of suf-
ficient funds to cover the cost of operation. 
It is essential, therefore, that any newly 
proposed clearing house be based on a thor-
ough knowledge of the financial factors in-
volved. 

Conclusion of Committee 

After examining the various sporadic plans 
which have been introduced, the present 

DECEMBER., 1941 89 



committee has come to the conclusion that 
the whole problem under consideration could 
be handled more efficiently if all libraries 
represented in the membership of the Ameri-
can Library Association, instead of working 
in isolated groups, might be united in one 
large cooperative effort to establish a central 
clearing house for duplicates. Since the pos-
sibilities for exchange would be limited only 
by the amount of material available and the 
needs of the libraries involved, there would 
be a decided advantage in having as many 
libraries as possible cooperating. As a start-
ing point a committee composed of repre-
sentatives from all sections of A . L A . might 
be appointed to study the problem on a 
large scale. Before adopting any definite 
program it would seem advisable for a sci-
entific survey to be made in the effort to 
determine the number of libraries interested 
in cooperative exchange, the size of their 
duplicate collections, the kind of material 
to be handled, and the amount of capital 
required to put a clearing house on a sound 
financial footing. With definite statistics 
available and a sizeable group of libraries 
showing an active interest in backing the 
project, it might be possible to secure a grant 
to cover the cost of setting up the basic 
organization. If such a clearing house 
should become a reality, the handling of 
documents should be part of its work, for 
there appears to be no necessity for setting 
up a separate agency for the disposal of any 
special type of material when one method 
of exchange is applicable to all types. 

Maxine Hegland of the Stanford Uni-
versity Library has recently developed 
plans for a union catalog of duplicate books, 
documents, and serials, which is worthy of 
consideration. In brief, it is suggested that 
a central cooperative agency be established 
where duplicates may be recorded and to 
which members may submit their desiderata 
lists; that the union catalog be financed by 
a membership fee and from income derived 
from sales to dealers and nonmembers; that 
additional charges to members be based on 
the amount of use made of the union cata-
log by various members. Inasmuch as the 
Agricultural Libraries Section has done 
much in the past two years to bring atten-

tion to the question of duplicate exchange, it 
might now take upon itself the task of 
arousing the interest of the profession-at-
large in a large-scale project similar to the 
one outlined above. 

Not for Agricultural Libraries Only 

Although our committee is moved to ad-
vise against the establishment of a public 
documents clearing house solely for the 
benefit of agricultural libraries, we have not 
wished to ignore the immediate purpose for 
which the committee was originally ap-
pointed, namely, the formulation of some 
method by which agricultural libraries might 
exchange their duplicate public documents. 
Therefore, it was considered desirable to 
suggest some system which would involve 
little or no expense to the participating li-
braries and still serve as a satisfactory means 
of exchanging documents until such time 
as the services of a central clearing house 
can be made available. 

Recently a periodical exchange union was 
proposed by the librarian of Fisk University 
and endorsed by the Board of Directors of 
the Association of College and Reference 
Libraries. Its chief advantage lies in the 
fact that it requires no money outlay for 
the maintenance of a central bureau of ex-
change. The principal features of the plan 
may easily be applied to the type of publica-
tions in which our group is interested. 
Therefore our committee offers for your 
consideration the following suggestion for 
public document exchange, based on the 
periodical exchange union plan: 

Suggestions 

1. The cooperating libraries will agree to 
the policy of free exchange, i.e., libraries will 
give all that they have which they do not 
need, without regard to what they may re-
ceive in return. This is the principle which 
underlies the duplicate exchange policies of 
the Special Libraries Association and the 
Medical Library Association, both of which 
have been found to operate to the general 
satisfaction of their respective members. 

2. Mfember libraries will list their dupli-
cate public documents. 

90 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



3. The participating libraries will be rated 
according to their size, i.e., total number of 
accessioned volumes. The lists of duplicates 
will be circulated among the libraries in the 
order of their size, the largest library being 
given priority over the others. This prin-
ciple of allowing the largest libraries first 
choice of available material is practiced by 
the medical exchange and is reported to be 
satisfactory to all members. The disad-
vantage of the size-rating for smaller li-
braries is offset by the advantages which 
they derive from being allowed access to the 
duplicate material of the larger institutions. 
It has been suggested that a more ideal 
basis for rating libraries would be according 
to the size and adequacy of their document 
collections, but this would be difficult to do 
because of the varied methods of treating 
documents in different libraries. 

4. As each library checks a list, it will 
cancel from that list the items which it 
needs and request them from the holding 
library. The list will then be passed on to 
the library next in line. It will be under-
stood that the libraries receiving publica-
tions will pay the carriage charges. 

T o sum up the advantages of the sug-

gested plan: (1) It should bring about the 
desired result of placing documentary ma-
terial unwanted by one library on the 
shelves of other libraries, where it is needed. 
(2) It requires as little expenditure of time 
and money as possible, since it involves only 
postage and the amount of staff time re-
quired to assemble and check lists. (3) One 
of the strongest points in its favor is the 
fact that libraries will waste no time by 
making demands on exhausted stock, since 
all material included on the lists which come 
to them is presumably still available. (4) 
The plan can be put into operation fairly 
easily and will serve to indicate whether or 
not libraries are actually interested in dupli-
cate document exchange. 

If the foregoing plan is approved, it is 
suggested that the presiding officer of the 
section appoint some member, preferably a 
volunteer, to serve as chairman of a dupli-
cate public documents exchange to receive 
applications for inclusion in the project and 
to work out the details of its operation. 

D O R O T H Y M . R E U S S , Chairman 
D O N A L D W A S S O N , Co-Chairman 
JOE W . K R A U S 

JESSIE G R I F F I N 

Self-Survey Manual for the College Library 
Peyton Hurt announces that a recent severe illness has obliged him to postpone all 

work on his project to prepare a self-survey manual for college libraries, undertaken on a 

grant from the A . L . A . Committee on Fellowships and Scholarships. He extends his 

thanks to the many librarians who have contributed to his study of the subject and ex-

presses the hope that he can finish the task when he has fully recovered from his illness. 

Meanwhile he does not claim or wish to pre-empt this field and will be glad to see the 

preparation and publication by others of material relating to surveying the college library. 

DECEMBER., 1941 91