College and Research Libraries


By W I L L I A M H . C A R L S O N 

Library Planning for the 
Postwar W o r l d 

Mr. Carlson, librarian, University of 

Arizona, read this paper at the meeting of 

the Junior College Libraries Section, June 

25, 1942. 

EV E R Y E N T E R P R I S E of any consequence must seek its objectives through some 
kind of a plan, no matter how imperfectly 

realized or how poorly conceived. It has 

always been so, but more and more, in the 

modern world, deliberate, carefully formu-

lated, long-range planning has been re-

ceiving increasing attention, as is witnessed 

by a succession of five-year and other well-

publicized planning efforts. It has been 

characteristic of much of this recent plan-

ning that it has had its genesis in social 

crisis and ferment. T h u s in our country 

the depression brought the National Re-

sources Planning Board as the chief plan-

ning agency of our Federal government 

and, as a nongovernment effort, organiza-

tion of the National Economic and Social 

Planning Association, recently reor-

ganized, strengthened, and renamed the 

National Planning Association. Both of 

these organizations have made commend-

able and stimulating contribution to the 

literature of planning and increasingly and 

independently men of vision and goodwill 

are giving their best thought and effort to 

molding an improved and desirable design 

for the world of the future. 

M u c h of our planning in America has 

been sporadic, haphazard, lacking in in-

tegration and a complete over-all view 

embracing all facets of our national life, 

cultural, religious, economic. It remained 

for the war, with the Axis powers spring-

ing to the execution of long-nourished and 

carefully matured plans for world con-

quest, to bring home to the democracies 

with terrible urgency the need for a com-

plete, coordinated planning of the war ef-

fort. A s these lines are written our 

outstanding leaders and best brains are in 

conference in Washington, London, Mos-

cow, Melbourne, Chungking, planning in-

creased production and complete integrated 

military effort and mobilization of every 

aspect of life for the majority of the 

World's population. One aspect of this 

race to catch up with and frustrate the 

planners of the Axis powers that is perhaps 

new, and certainly of good omen, is that 

even in this period of urgency and all-out 

war effort men are giving detailed atten-

tion to the kind of a place the postwar 

world will be. More and more they are 

thinking and saying, " I f this is the way to 

get cannon it is also the way to get the 

good things of life." 

It is to the good things of life that the 

Postwar Planning Committee of the 

American Library Association hopes to 

make some constructive contribution. T h e 

committee was created by action of the 

Executive Board of the A . L . A . on June 25, 

298 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



I94x> appointments were made in August, 

and the first meeting at which all members 

were present was held at A . L . A . Head-

quarters, October 16-17. A l l phases of 

library activity, the library schools, pub-

lic libraries, school libraries, and college 

and university libraries are represented on 

the personnel of the committee, which also 

includes a wide geographic distribution. 

A t the first committee meeting the chair-

man, D r . Joeckel, presented a preliminary 

plan, prepared by himself, for an attack 

upon the problem of library service in the 

postwar period. T h i s tentative draft, 

which in its major points was approved 

by the committee, indicated the chief sub-

divisions in the library field for which 

planning is necessary as: 1. Public li-

braries, 2. School libraries, 3. Libraries in 

higher education, 4. Library cooperation, 

particularly among research libraries. It 

was agreed unanimously by the committee 

that the public library subdivision should 

be given priority of treatment and devel-

opment. 

Preliminary Plan 

T h e projected plan for such treatment 

provided four stages of development: 

1. An inventory of existing library service 
and resources in all sections of the country 
by states, counties, and minor civil divisions, 
indicating areas completely without service 
and the general level of service in areas now 
having public libraries. 

2. Comparison of existing services with 
recognized standards in American library 
service. 

3. Detailed study of areas with and with-
out public library service, including special 
attention to economic ability, educational 
levels, sparsity or density of population, and 
existing types of library service units. 

4. Formulation of a detailed plan for na-
tional public library service based on the 

facts brought out by the analysis and study 
indicated in the first three steps. 

It was envisioned that the plan formu-

lated in step four would need to include 

the following major points: 

1. Patterns for organization of library 
service, including definite recommendations 
as to the kinds of library units suitable in 
different regions and areas. This would 
include special consideration of rural library 
service, with particular attention to those 
areas containing one third of the total popu-
lation of the country, now entirely without 
public library service, as well as those areas 
with nominal, though inadequate, service, 
estimated to contain an additional one third 
of the entire population. 

2. Essential facts regarding support and 
ability to support library service in various 
localities and sections of the country. 

3. A study of the library personnel situa-
tion nationally, including present number of 
professional and clerical staff members, with 
a forecast of personnel requirements which 
would be of special value to governmental 
agencies and those educational institutions 
which have assumed responsibility for pro-
fessional library education. 

4. Relationship of the public library to 
school libraries, especially in rural areas, and 
the place of the public library in adult edu-
cation. 

5. Study of the present physical plant of 
public libraries with an accurate estimate of 
the national needs for library housing and 
equipment. 

6. Intergovernmental and interlibrary re-
lationships, including relations of Federal 
libraries and their service to state and local 
libraries, contracts for library service be-
tween units of local government, state-local 
relations, and the role of the state library 
agency in the planning and organization of 
library service. 

Six-Month Study 

It will be recognized at once that a 

comprehensive analysis and study of this 

kind will require more time, effort, and 

SEPTEMBER, 1942 
2 77 



continuous application than any commit-

tee can give it, more too than any existing 

agency of the A . L . A . could devote to it. 

For this reason the committee projected a 

modest budget, but with salaries which 

would attract the best brains in our pro-

fession, for a full-time, careful, analytical 

six-month study of the entire public li-

brary situation. 

T h e proposed study and plan was sub-

mitted to various foundations and Federal 

agencies with heartening evidences of in-

terest. W h i l e funds for the complete and 

exhaustive study have not yet been secured, 

the Federal government has, through its 

National Resources Planning Board, pro-

vided funds for a meeting of minds to 

consider and restate the present standards 

for public library service. 

These funds made possible a meeting of 

the committee, held in Chicago, M a y 7-9, 

with twenty-three consultants on various 

phases of public library service and several 

representatives of the A . L . A . in attend-

ance. T h e various consultants had in ad-

vance been asked to give detailed attention 

to present standards in specific sections of 

the public library field and to formulate a 

restatement of them. These preliminary 

reformulations were organized and re-

worked by the committee chairman into a 

document which served as the basis for 

discussion and study by the assembled 

group. Three days of intensive effort and 

thought were devoted to this document 

by all the librarians present, with sub-

committees considering various phases of 

library service. T h e document emerged 

from this careful, cooperative study con-

siderably altered and constituting, in the 

opinion of the writer, an excellent state-

ment of the conditions which must be met 

by localities, states, and the Federal gov-

ernment for adequate and efficient public 

library service. A s they have now been 

restated by the committee the standards 

contain much that follows previous state-

ments of standards, but there are some 

new concepts and elements introduced and 

perhaps the entire statement is character-

ized by a comprehensiveness, a freshness of 

viewpoint, and an urgency and seriousness 

of purpose not present in previous stand-

ards. 

Comparison of Standards 

Actually the proposed standards, which 

were given final consideration and ap-

proval at the Milwaukee Conference, 

represent, in the main, the second step 

proposed by the committee in its first Chi-

cago meeting, with some projection, by 

inference and direct statement, of the 

fourth step, the final formulation of a 

plan. It should be emphasized, however, 

that basically the work of the committee 

and its consultants has not yet reached the 

definitive planning stage. It is still hoped 

that funds will be found to finance the 

detailed survey of existing library services 

and needs, originally projected as the first 

and essential step in preparing a complete 

library plan. If such a detailed study can 

be made, it should serve as the basis for a 

complete, thorough, and intelligent public 

library plan for the nation, squarely and 

firmly based on realities. 

College librarians will note, and should 

be expected to note, that so far the com-

mittee has given little attention to those 

library problems peculiar to colleges and 

universities. T h i s does not mean that it is 

believed that these libraries will be of less 

importance in the postwar world but only 

that their problems are not as urgent or 

do not affect as many people as do those of 

300 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



the public libraries. Ultimately, of course, 

a complete national library plan will in-

clude college and university libraries, the 

large research libraries, and special li-

braries in which lie a substantial part of 

the present and future cultural wealth 

and strength of our country. It is the 

intention of our committee to work closely 

with the National Resources Planning 

Board and to evolve, while the war races 

on, a plan for all phases of library service 

which can be neatly fitted in as a small but 

important part of the master plan which 

the board is striving to perfect for the total 

national life, 

Applicable to School and College Libraries 

T h e more comprehensive, intelligent, 

and capable of realization that our plans 

for postwar library service can be the less 

will be the strain and difficulties for li-

brarians and public alike, of the inevita-

ble, difficult, and complex postwar 

readjustments. Much that emerges from 

the projected careful study of the public 

library situation will be applicable to the 

college and school libraries. W i t h the 

public library problems well understood 

and on their way to successful solution, the 

place of school, college, university, and 

research libraries can much more readily 

be integrated into the national library 

mosaic, a mosaic that everyone will agree 

should have more unity of organization, 

more strength of outline, more harmony 

and balance, than the present situation, 

with its brilliant highlights, its confused 

and overlapping sectors, and its great 

voids. 

W e must all realize that it is one thing 

to make a plan, pretty on paper and sound 

in principle, and quite another thing to 

translate it into reality. W h e n the war is 

won there will be the inevitable psycho-

logical letdown. O l d doubts, old divi-

sions, old political cleavages, outmoded 

social and economic customs, and plain 

ordinary human selfishness and cussed-

ness, now submerged in the grave necessi-

ties of the moment, will rise to reassert 

themselves. T h i s will be a time of chal-

lenge, lacking the dramatic compulsions 

of the war effort, but which will permit 

no relaxation on the part of our library 

leadership. It is to be hoped that an 

adequate, intelligent, and realizable blue-

print of the place of libraries and librarian-

ship in the better postwar world we all 

mean to have will be ready to mitigate the 

difficulties and point the way to the im-

portant part libraries will need to take in 

that world. 

Real Testing Time 

In the opinion of the writer it will be 

the ten or fifteen years following the war 

that will be the real testing time for 

America and the United Nations, even 

more, and this is said advisedly, than the 

war years. In every major war people 

have cried out that it must not happen 

again but it always has and frequently sur-

prisingly soon, as our generation is tragi-

cally and cruelly learning. In the past, 

wars have seemed to strain or exhaust the 

moral fiber of peoples, with resulting 

periods of corruptness, laxness, and graft, 

as indicated by the post-Civil W a r and 

First W o r l d W a r periods. If we are to 

avoid a similar period of wearily drifting 

on our oars and rapidly losing gains 

achieved at fantastic human and material 

costs we will have to be, as a nation and 

as a profession, both stronger and more 

intelligent than our forebears have been. 

N o w we are saying, over and over 

SEPTEMBER, 1942 
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again, that we are struggling to preserve 

our way of life. T h e present upheaval is 

so tremendous that we can never return to 

our old way of life. However, we may 

now reasonably expect eventual military 

success which will assure us the oppor-

tunity, if we have the will and strength 

left to grasp it firmly and determinedly, 

of not having an alien way of life imposed 

on us by our enemies. In our new, post-

war way of life we must strive to retain 

the best of the old, just as in our restated 

library standards we retain the best of the 

old. 

It is possible that in the postwar world 

the function of the library will be visual-

ized in different terms than it has been. 

One thing that may change, that in fact 

always changes in periods of grave national 

crisis, and which may become permanent, 

is the abandonment of the old professional 

ideal of strict neutrality and impartiality, 

of not taking sides or pleading a cause, 

even that of our own form of government. 

T h e library of the hoped-for free world 

of tomorrow may very definitely and con-

sciously take its place, permanently and not 

just for the duration of some period of 

actual crisis and struggle for survival, on 

the side of democracy and freedom. 

Policy Not Paradoxical 

Fundamentally, such a policy for li-

braries in a free world need not be para-

doxical. T h e library can still secure and 

make available the writings of other 

philosophies and other ways of life. N o w 

that we stand at the brink of disaster, 

belatedly and desperately striving to 

snatch our freedoms back and create a 

world where all men can continue to enjoy 

them, many of us may agree that libraries 

of the future should dynamically, actively, 

and continuously strive for a world and a 

national spirit that will be inhospitable to 

those philosophies which consciously seek 

to destroy human liberties. T h e whole 

program of library service in such a world 

can then be directed toward an under-

standing and appreciation of the free way 

of life and the enlightenment of a citizenry 

which will not only live intelligently but 

will fully appreciate the worth and sig-

nificance of the freedoms it enjoys. 

If such a change does come a very con-

siderable increase in responsibility will be 

placed on librarians in comparison with 

the traditional policy and ideal of strict 

neutrality and impartiality. If in the 

words of the Librarian of Congress, li-

brarians "must become . . . the affirmative 

and advocating profession of the attorney 

for a cause," they must clearly realize the 

dangers in such a policy. From the posi-

tive, zealous pleading of a cause it is only 

a short step to the negative, zealous, and 

fanatic suppression of all that seems to be 

opposed to that cause or any cause which 

does not seem comfortable and convenient. 

W h e n and if we reach that stage we will 

have come to the very thing we are fight-

ing against, a burning of the books, wheth-

er we actually burn Mein Kampf in the 

public squares or not. 

Reading in Planning Field 

It is believed that all librarians will find 

some reading in the planning field en-

lightening and encouraging. A s a good 

introduction the volume by Galloway and 

others, Planning for America, published 

by Holt in 1941, is recommended. T h i s 

is a book which should be in every college 

library. For its stimulating visions of 

what can be in the postwar world, the little 

Personal G r o w t h Leaflet number 151, 

302 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



After War Educational Reconstruction, 

published by the National Education As-

sociation, is suggested. Copies of this little 

statement, costing only one cent each, 

might be distributed free by college and 

university libraries. Three encouraging 

and popular pamphlets by the National 

Resources Planning Board, which should 

be read, are After Defense—What?, After 

the JVar—Full Employment, and Better 

Cities. Henry M . Wriston's Prepare for 

Peace is also of value because of the com-

mon-sense and realistic way in which it 

faces the political, economic, and human 

difficulties that will rise to plague the 

United Nations once the compelling bonds 

of making war on a common enemy fall 

away. 

T h a t the reconstruction period, some 

writers to the contrary, will be difficult in 

the extreme, seems inescapable. There is 

some ground for believing, however, that 

we may be wiser and luckier than men have 

yet been. Included in this evidence is 

the detailed attention people in all walks 

of life are giving to the kind of a place 

the world will be when men again fly on 

errands of goodwill instead of hate and 

misery. If we, as librarians, have forti-

tude, courage, and wisdom we can play an 

important part in making the world, 

through enlightenment, a really better 

place. 

Anyone reading in the literature of plan-

ning will be struck by the recurring 

emphasis, on the part of educators, econo-

mists, industrialists, and journalists, for 

the need of a moral and spiritual resur-

gence in the postwar world, often voiced 

with almost Messianic fervor. T h e fre-

quency and apparent sincerity with which 

this thought is voiced indicates that it may 

be more than the customary human weak-

ness of seeking aid and comfort in a period 

of danger from a higher power. T h e 

writer believes that here lies the nub and 

the best promise for an improved world 

after Hitler and Hirohito have been put 

in their places. As an excellent example 

of this stirring call for a moral rebirth, it 

seems fitting to conclude this brief paper 

with the following statement by President 

Levering Tyson of Muhlenberg College 

in an address to his student body last fall. 

W e need a moral and spiritual crusade to 
bring back sanity once more, fundamental 
honesty in our dealings with one another, 
right and justice in our private and public 
life, humility and gentleness—and gentle-
manliness—in our behavior, truth and soft-
ness in our speech, clarity of eye and purpose, 
decency in our literature, the abandonment 
of brutish manners, simplicity of existence, 
the dignity of man made in the image of his 
Master. W e need desperately to be afraid 
of that cowardice which induces a failure 
to recognize the real issue between just plain 
right and just ordinary wrong. 

SEPTEMBER, 1942 
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