College and Research Libraries


Review Article 
CooperationN 

IT M A Y W E L L be that in any future history of American librarianship the 
decade of the 1930's will receive a very 

considerable amount of attention. Should 

this cautious prognostication prove correct, 

the underscoring and emphasis given to 

those ten years will probably be the result 

of the certainty—which can today be guess 

only—that they mark the beginning of the 

culmination of one of the most important 

of all library developments. T h e "de-

velopment" is cooperation and its "cul-

mination"—at least to the present—is 

represented by library consolidations. 

Concerning cooperation we have had 

much talk, dating back to the very be-

ginnings of the national Association. And 

with that talk there has come a good deal 

of solid accomplishment which has made 

libraries more efficient, enlarged their re-

sources and services, and saved them 

money. Interlibrary loan, cooperative 

cataloging and indexing, including union 

lists and union catalogs, cooperative agree-

ments with respect to fields of specializa-

tion, and cooperative purchasing, binding, 

and storage are but partial witness to the 

progress we have made in not much more 

than half a century. Useful and socially 

significant though these activities are, how-

ever, they can never fully meet the basic 

and crucial problem of assuring adequate 

research resources for every major area in 

the country. T h e problem can be solved 

— f o r most regions at least—only by a 

maximum of cooperation, that is, by in-

stitutional pooling of financial, book, and 

other resources; in short, by some form 

of consolidation or merger. And the first 

example of this type of ultimate, formal, 

contractual cooperation among college and 

university libraries took place in 1931. 

T h e r e were twelve such consolidations 

from 1931 to 1940. 

These two facts, with their interest for 

the past and their implications for the 

future, are among the many offered by 

Mildred Hawksworth Lowell in the first 

full-length study of college and university 

library consolidations.1 

M r s . Lowell begins her survey by sug-

gesting the factors, of which she notes six, 

which have apparently been responsible for 

the recent "new cooperative spirit"—e.g., 

"the increasing magnitude of the world of 

print" and "the destruction of scholarly 

libraries in China and Europe." She out-

lines briefly, with examples, the more usual 

forms of library cooperation, including 

"specialization agreements." Although this 

first chapter is simply by way of intro-

duction to the author's main subject, one 

reader would like very much to have found 

a fairly comprehensive listing at least for 

this particular topic. Such a listing would 

have to include the agreement between the 

libraries of the universities of Minnesota 

and Michigan and the John Crerar and 

Newberry libraries with respect to the 

collection of the publications of European 

local academies. H o w many agreements 

of this general nature are there, how effec-

tively have they worked out, and what 

have been the results? 

1 Lowell, Mildred Hawksworth. College and Uni-
versity Library Consolidations. Eugene, Oregon 
State System of Higher Education, 1942. i36p. 

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COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



Examples of Consolidation 

In the second chapter, comprising over 

one-third of her work, M r s . Lowell con-

siders and evaluates in detail the origin 

and development of eleven of the twelve 

existing examples of consolidation—a 

word, incidentally, which as there used 

does not in the least necessarily imply loss 

of individual identity or autonomy on the 

part of any consolidator. These eleven are 

divided into three types: ( i ) Formal 

agreements between wholly independent 

libraries {e.g., the University of North 

Carolina and Duke University libraries) ; 

( 2 ) Contractual arrangements between 

two or more libraries {e.g., Fisk Univer-

sity Library and Meharry Medical Col-

lege Library) ; and ( 3 ) T h e actual 

merging of two or more libraries {e.g., 

Atlanta University L i b r a r y ) . 

T h e last chapter of the volume is de-

voted to the only instance—Oregon—of 

the reorganization of state institutions of 

higher education into one system, with 

unification of their libraries. In some 

ways this chapter is the most interesting 

and significant of all, not simply because 

of the author's personal acquaintance with 

the topic and the full detail with which 

she writes, but more especially because the 

experiment in Oregon is unique and of 

great scope. W h a t has been accomplished 

there should effectively and forever silence 

those critics who maintain that distance 

between and the vested interests and dif-

ferent natures of institutions prevent satis-

factory consolidations. T h e Easterner, 

particularly, needs to be reminded that the 

six coordinated Oregon institutions are 

located in a state whose area is greater 

than all of N e w England and not much 

less than that of all the Middle Atlantic 

states. These institutions have efficiently 

worked out central administration, book-

keeping, order, binding, periodical, and 

other procedures, with resultant savings of 

thousands of dollars annually and, more 

important, greatly increased efficiency and 

resources. 

Southern Institutions 

Another volume has recently appeared 

which also describes, but from a different 

point of view, some examples of library 

consolidation—and which also, unfortu-

nately, contains no index.2 As stated in the 

title, the papers edited by M r . Kuhlman 

are limited to Southern institutions and 

even within this limitation the picture 

drawn is only a partial one, several ex-

amples in the area being ignored. None-

theless, the collection supplements M r s . 

Lowell's survey in a useful fashion in that 

a number of the papers {e.g., those on the 

development of university centers in 

Georgia, N e w Orleans, North Carolina, 

and Nashville and two on " T h e Joint 

Library" specifically), presented by non-

librarians, suggest the viewpoints of other 

administrative officers and consider the 

over-all institutional implications of higher 

education consolidation. ( A t Vanderbilt 

and George Peabody, for instance, the 

faculties agreed to the elimination of 280 

quarter hours of work which appeared to 

represent "unnecessary duplication;" ob-

viously, each institution was able to handle 

better what remained.) It is interesting 

to note, however, that the question of 

library resources, cooperation, and so on 

is given a prominent—even a dominant— 

position in these discussions, too. 

In addition to the chapters just noted 

2 K u h l m a n , A . F., ed. The Development of Uni-
versity Centers in the South. . . . N a s h v i l l e , Pea-
body P r e s s and V a n d e r b i l t U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1942. 
I28p. 

SEPTEMBER, 1942 
2 77 



the volume contains papers on " T h e Li-

brary's Contribution to Scholarship" ( W . 

W . Bishop), " T h e Program of the Joint 

University Libraries" ( K u h l m a n ) , " T h e 

Significance of the Joint University Li-

braries" ( L . R. W i l s o n ) , "Teaching with 

Books" (Harvie Branscomb), and four, 

under the general heading "Further Im-

plications. . . ." by Commander James G . 

Stahlman, C . H . Brown, Robert M . Les-

ter, and Albert Russell Munn. 

Motives Underlying Cooperative Ventures 

Several conclusions are drawn in the 

two volumes—explicitly in M r s . Lowell's, 

implicitly in the other. T h e motives 

underlying these cooperative ventures seem 

definite and fairly universal; they are also, 

perhaps, quite obvious, being concerned 

with the provision of better service at less 

cost, the building of more adequate re-

sources for a given area, the fuller serving 

of research needs, and the improvement of 

educational effectiveness. T h e evidence is 

that these goals have, for the most part, 

been achieved or are being achieved to a 

remarkable degree. M r s . Lowell shows, 

for example, that with respect to book 

stock, number of current periodicals, and 

financial support, the consolidations com-

pare very favorably with the institutions 

included in the American Library Asso-

ciation annual statistical tabulations. 

Throughout the Kuhlman volume we are 

reminded, however, that the library aspect 

is sometimes only one, though often the 

chief, element in these consolidations 

which, through the elimination of dupli-

cation, the concentration of facilities, and 

the coordination of faculties, are vastly 

enriching teaching and research in a man-

ner having almost unlimited educational 

implications. 

It is very clear that most of these de-

velopments could not have taken place, or 

could not have done so to the extent that 

they have, had it not been for generous 

foundation aid, notably from the Carnegie 

Corporation, the General Education 

Board, and the Rosenwald Fund. Only 

two of the twelve have received no foun-

dation aid and neither of these is in the 

South. Does this fact and the fact that 

nine of the twelve are located in the South 

bear any relation to the special interest in 

that region on the part of the founda-

tions? Undoubtedly so ; undoubtedly, too, 

the southern region has been in greater 

need than any other part of the country 

of assistance and stimulus along the lines 

of research and library resources. Y e t 

realization of the incalculable benefits 

which will certainly accrue to the whole 

southern area cannot help but make one 

wonder about—and hope for—other parts 

of the country. Illinois with its hundred 

institutions of higher education, Iowa with 

its sixty-four, Massachusetts with its sixty-

nine, N e w Y o r k with its hundred and 

four, Pennsylvania with its hundred and 

one, Wisconsin with its thirty-six—just to 

pick a few states at random—or the great 

metropolitan areas, such as Philadelphia, 

with its hundred fifty odd libraries, what 

about all these ? For the most part all 

the libraries in these areas go their own 

sweet ways, on the one hand buying, cata-

loging, and shelving between them, ten 

or twenty or thirty copies of specialized 

reference sets and expensive journals, on 

the other combining to ignore—even in 

such a wealthy and resource-rich area as 

Philadelphia—literally dozens of fields of 

knowledge. W h i c h of the two evils is the 

worse it is hard to say, but we know that 

real cooperation and coordination can very 

414 
COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



largely eliminate both. W e know, because 
it has been done. But it takes courage, 
determination, realization of need, and 
vast patience to overcome the problems 
and obstacles which lie on the road to 
success. Chief among them would seem 
to be the inability of administrators to see 
the advantages of cooperation and their 
unwillingness to enter into agreements, the 
fear of librarians that they will lose prestige 

or authority, and the difficulty of making 
legal and financial arrangements. 

T h e two volumes which have served as 
pegs upon which to hang these notes should 
be required reading for everyone inter-
ested in higher education. Their contents 
are, if the writer is any prophet, signposts 
of the f u t u r e . — J . Periam Danton, librar-
ian, Sullivan Memorial Library, Temple 
University, Philadelphia. 

Classification and the Scholar 
(Continued from page 337) 

available in the emptied 870's and 88o's, 

possibly enough to take care of all phases 

of classical study. By such a scheme 

classification, unaided, might bring to-

gether books according to their use. Simi-

lar revisions might be worked out in 

various other classes, both in D . C . and in 

L . C . O f course such a system of revision 

might soon cost more than to devise and 

install an entire new scheme of classifica-

tion. 

Certainly, reshelving without a revised 

classification can never succeed. "Objec-

tions to the order of the D . C . tables," 

Dorcas Fellows argued, "can be largely 

and easily overcome by adjustments in 

shelving, e.g., English philology (420) 

may be shelved next to English literature 

(820), travel in Italy (914.5) next to 

Italian history ( 9 4 5 ) , etc."6 T h e same 

"solution" could, of course, be worked 

out in L . C . But if classification does not 

indicate where a book may be found and 

if the stacks are to be a maze of jumbled 

letters and figures penetrable only to the 

initiated—why classify? 

8 F e l l o w s , Dorcas. " L i b r a r y of C o n g r e s s Classifi-
cation vs. D e c i m a l C l a s s i f i c a t i o n . " Library Journal 
50:292, A p r . 1, 1925. 

SEPTEMBER, 1942 
2 77