College and Research Libraries
By RUTHERFORD D. ROGERS
Administrative Problems of
Reference and Research Libraries!
Mr. Rogers is librarian~ The Grosvenor
Library~ Buffalo.
W HEN 1 WAS invited to speak - at this meeting, it was suggested that my
topic be "Administrative Problems of Ref-
erence Service." I replied with the alter-
nate suggestion that the topic be "Adminis-
trative Problems of Reference and Research
Libraries." Except for a certain breadth
of approach, these two subjects are not as
divergent as they might at first appear
because analysis of the big problems of
reference service indicates that they are
directly related to the big problems of ref-
erence and research libraries. Without d·is-
paraging the importance of routines, I take
the position that we have already entered
. such a critical period in research library
administration that either we shall meet the
fundamental issues facing us, or routines
will not matter.
I wish to express my appreciation to the
dozen or more directors of research libraries
who responded to my request for a current
appraisal of their problems. Largely
through their help, I am prepared to define
our problems and to suggest some solutions
and new perspectives.
Greatest Problems
What do we consider our greatest prob-
lems? First, there is lack of space,
together with inefficient arrangement of
collections dictated by buildings which we
t Pa{ler presented at the meeting of the Reft;rence
Librartans Section, A.C.R.L., Jan. 2'1, 1949, Chtcago.
JULY~ 1949~ PART I
have outgrown or which have been ex-
panded, not with reference to ·~ efficiency
but to the emergency need for room.
Second, we realize that the card catalog is
costing us more and more and that, as sub-
ject approach to materials, it is becoming
less and less satisfactory. Third, we ~on
tinue to recognize that reference librarians
are not being properly or adequately edu-
cated and our criticism is spreading to other
members of the staff, particularly to cata-
logers. Fourth, we realize that there are
startling gaps in our collective acquisition
of foreign and domestic publications, despite
historical assumptions to the contrary, and
that we probably should be doing some-
thing about the tremendous publishing out-
put in the world today. Finally, we are
constantly aware of financial obstacles to
the attainment of our objectives.
During the last 20 to 30 years we have
dealt with many of these same old problems
and have tried, pretty much in vacuo~ a
number of solutions. What we must now
realize is that most of our problems and
their solutions are inextricably interwoven
and that we must approach them as a group,
not individually.
Whether we subscribe to the Farming-
ton idea or concede that there is some
truth in Fremont Rider's concept of re-
search library growth, we know our job
is going to become increasingly difficult.
Let us admit at the outset that we do not
know the degree of difficulty because we
have no accurate statistics in regard to the
past, present or probable future volume of
• 249
published works of all kinds. 2 We know
that from a national standpoint we are
woefully weak in many subjects, for ex-
ample, near eastern and Asiatic materials.
Our holdings of world book production
to date are estimated to be as low as 33 per
cent and as high as 66 per cent. The
Library of Congress, which is traditionally
the most complete in Americana, is 88 per
cent incomplete in some aspects of it. 3 By
surh haphazardly statistical or completely
unstatistical methods, it has become appar-
ent that the job which lies ahead is going
to be infinitely more difficult than imagined.
Let us now consider in some detail the
means with which we have been experi-
menting to solve our problems. Almost
every solu.tion has involved some degree
of cooperation. Cooperation is such a good
American tradition that any plan which
involves it has ' been, prima facie, a st~p in
the right direction and anything done in its
name has not been challenged. It is now
becoming increasingly clear that we need
to temper our enthusiasm for coGperation
with some fundamental changes in method-
ology, and it is with this in mind that I
approach past and present solutions.
First, we have the Farmington Plan
based on the thesis that research libraries
should join in collecting at least one copy
of every printed book and pamphlet (and
later public document, serial and news-
paper) published anywhere in the world;
that su~h material should be promptly cata-
loged, preferably centrally, and listed in the
Union Catalog at the Library of Congress;
and that participating libraries should share
the expense and should specialize in cer-
tain subject fields for which they will
assume complete responsibility. 4 It is too
soon to saY: how practicable this plan will
2 Evans, Luther H. "History and the Problem of
Bibliography." College and Research Libraries 7 :195·
205, July 1946.
3 Evans, Luther H. "National Library Resources."
Library Journal 72:7-13, Jan. I, 1947.
4 Metcalf, Keyes D. and Williams, Edwin E. "l>ro-
be, how much it will ultimately cost or
what the volume of material will be. It
might prove too expensive-too huge to
handle. That has yet to be proved. But it
is subject to criticism on at least two
grounds. First, does it make sense to ac-
quire everything without regard to the
inherent worth of the material? Pargellis
calls this the "grab-all method" and insists
that we must be selective in our acquisition. 5
On the other hand Metcalf says that we
cannot perceive the future values of a given
piece of printed matter, and so the only
sensible approach is mass acquisition. 6
Furthermore, he insists that .if a library
attempts to be selective in a great many
fields it cannot be outstanding in any. 7
Even stronger criticism is directed at the
Farmington Plan on the grounds that li-
brary specialization on a national scale is
a practical impossibility. Consider the
overlapping- in scientific fields such as bio-
chemistry, physical chemistry, and astro-
physics. Or, to take another example, sup-
pose three libraries choose to specialize in
segments of the field of history, e.g., British
history, twentieth century history and Ger-
man history. W ·hich one should receive a
history of World War I or II ?8 I repre-
sent one of two libraries which are currently
trying specialization on a much broader
scale and I know how serious this criticism
is. Furthermore, where university and not
public libraries are concerned, this speciali-
zation has strong implications for the cur-
riculum. Farmington Plan supporters will
reply that each .institution is free to con-
tinue to buy in any field, but with as many
posal for a Division of Responsibility among American
Libraries in the Acquisition and Recordin g of Library
Materials." College and Research Libraries 5: I05-09,
March 1944.
5 Pargellis, Stanley. "Building a Research Library."
College and Research Libraries 5:uo-14, March 1944.
6 Metcalf and Williams, op. cit.
7 Metcalf, Keyes D. "Division of Fields of Collect-
ing." College and Research Libraries 6:417-19, Sep-
tember 1945.
8 Taube, Mortimer. "The Realities of Library Spe-
cialization." Library Quarterly 12:246-56, April 1942
and Rider, Fremont. The Scholar and the Future of
the Research Library . ... New York, Hadham Press,
1944. p. 7I.
250 • COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES
as 6ooo journals in some scientific fields,
is there not a danger that all but the best
financed libraries will eventually specialize
in one field to the detriment or exclusion
of all others ?9
Although acquisitions under the Farm-
ington Plan are world-wide in coverage, the
Plan is national from the standpoint of
division of responsibility and use of ma-
terials. In order that Farmington materi-
als, which are distributed throughout the
United States, may be nationally available,
it follows that we must have a central loca-
tion record. This is being provided by list-
ing each item in the Union Catalog at the
Library' of Congress, which brings us to a
consideration of the union catalog as the
second significant means with which we
have experimented and are experimenting
to solve our problems. I am sure that you
are familiar with individual examples of
union catalogs such as those in the Pacific
Northwest, Denver, ~leveland and Phila-
delphia, and that I need not describe indi-
vidual regional catalogs in detail.
Almost without exception regional union
catalogs are author catalogs designed for
one of two purposes. First, the static
purpose is to determine whether a given
book is available within the region covered
by the catalog. Under this heading our
main objective is to locate material desired
for interlibrary loan. Second, the union
catalog may reveal that two or more li-
braries in geographical proximity are dupli-
cating publications unnecessarily and
neglecting to acquire equally significant
publications in the same field. Let us call
this the dynamic purpose of a union catalog
because if action results from this knowl-
edge, member libraries change in character,
even though slightly.
Downs says that it is fair to state "that
o Carlson, William H. "The Research Worker and
the Library." College and Research Libraries 7:291-
JOO, October 1946.
JULY~ 1949~ PART I
most union catalog sponsors have not been
particularly concerned with fitting their
catalogs into any kind of national plan,
and, consequently, some duplication of ef-
fort, questionable regional division, and
other lack of integration are evident." 10
At the time Union Catalogs in the United
States was published, it was recognized that
there was a strong feeling that union cata-
logs were wasteful and not j ustified. 11
This criticism may be said to be valid for
several reasons. Existing regional union
catalogs were created for the most part with
W.P.A. funds, but even in prewar dollars
they were expensive and, in terms of library
income, are still reasonably expensive to
maintain. Not enough attention has been
given to this latter aspect of the problem,
although the Pacific Northwest Library As-
sociation has developed what appears to be
a successful formula for financing that
region's union catalog through contribu-
tions of p~rticipating libraries.12 We have
a substantial body of opi~ion to support the
theory that a single national union catalog,
properly completed~ would make ex'isting re-
gional union catalogs unjustifiable in view of
the services they can render over and above
the Union Catalog, at the Library of Con-
gress. It is hard to justify a regional union
catalog as a location tool alone, except in spe-
cial complicated situations such as Philadel-
phia, especially in view of modern means of
communication and the establishment of air
mail parcel post. Local union catalogs will
be even harder to justify for location purposes
if the national union catalog is expanded to
show many locations for each entry. Can
we then defend the regional union catalog as
presently established on the dynamic basis
lO Downs, Robert B. "American Library Cooperation
in Review." College and Research Libraries 6:408,
September 1945.
11 Berthold, Arthur B. "Manual of Union. Catalog
Administration," in Downs, Robert B . ed. Unwn Cata-
logs in the United States. Chicago, A.L.A., 1942,
p. 272.
12 Esterquest, Ralph T. "Financing a Bibliographic
Center." Library Journal 71 :II2I-2J, Dec. 1, 1945.
251
alone, that we may thereby more intelli-
gently distribute acquisitions? It seems to
me that if the Farmington Plan in some form
is a success, part of this argument is elimi-
nated by virtue of agreed fields of specializa-
tion, and it appears further that unnecessary
duplication can be eliminated by some less
expensive means than the union catalog.
Union catalogs for the most part provide
no subject approach to materials. Few of
us will deny that we must have an im-
proved subject approach to present re-
sources. It follows with even greater
emphasis that we must have an improved
subject approach to vastly increased re·-
sources, but I have already stated that the
adequacy and cost of cataloging are a grave
concern to almost every research library.
Therefore, should we not consider a sub-
stitute for the subject catalog before we
proceed much further with our plans to in-
crease our acquisitions?
Many a research library director is
alarmed that more ~nd more highly trained
people work behind the scenes as catalogers
while insufficiently trained or untrained
people work with the public.13 It is much
easier to see a room full of uncataloged
books than it is to evaluate the harm done
to your service by lowering the quality of
people who wait on the public. This is
a nonmonetary cost of cataloging. As an
example of dollars and cents cost, Harvard
has had a dozen or more catalogs since
r 764 because one generation of catalogers
has done over the work of its predec~ssor.14
No one has yet found a solution to the inde-
pendent cataloging which we all do on the
30 to 40 per cent of the books for which
we cannot buy L.C. Cards.
More serious than cost is the inadequacy
of the card catalog as a subject tool. The
head of a large research library writes me
13 Osborn, Andrew D. "The Crisis in Catalbging."
Library Quarterly II :393·4II, Ocotber I94I.
14 Ibid .
that the " ... card catalog is already too
unwieldy for untrained readers to use, and
by untrained readers I mean not only col-
lege students but graduate students and our
general public as well. .. An advanced
reader often finds our subject headings out-
moded. This situation grows worse each
year. We, find other libraries, are still
using headings drawn up ro to 20 years
ago."
We are indebted to Raymond Swank for
a penetrating analysis of the two common
ways of preparing a subject approach to
library materials. 15 First is the . traditional
book-to-subject method where we put a '
book under a few established entries which
remain relatively unchanged from year to
year. The second is the subject-to-book
method, or subject bibliography method,
under which one picks a subject and tries
to get all the related material thereon in-
cluding related material from various fields.
Under this latter metpod, subjects are cur-
rent and dynamic, changing with require-
ments. The weakness of the first method
j
is that no cataloger can foresee all the im-
plications of any one book. Swank de-
scribes the card catalog as the "shotgun
method" of making materials available,
which method is based on the fallacious
assumption that readers' problems are
stereotyped and that a general purpose,
universal subject tool will satisfy all needs.
The scholar is not interested in one type
of material, s~ch as books, or merely the
material in one library. He is interested
in all types of materials germane to his
subject irrespective of location. The sub-
ject catalog has had its day and the answer
to our problem is subject bibliography cre-
ated on a national or international scale.
We have not begun to explore the prob-
lems of adequate subject bibliography.
1 5 Swank, Raymond C . "Cooperative Subject Bibli-
o~raphy." College and R esearch Libraries 6:4I9-22,
September I945·
252 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES
•
There is no doubt that satisfactory ma-
chinery may take years to create. Now is
none too soon to undertake concerted action
along these lines.
If we concede the inadequacy of the sub-
ject catalog, and I think research librarians
must concede it, we are still faced with the
need for and cost of author catalogs for our
collections. Much has been done to improve
and simplify cataloging. The stumbling
block to cooperative cataloging is the refusal
of the central publishing agency to accept,
unedited, the copy submitted by cooperating
libraries. 16 L.C. cards are still slow in ap-
pearing, cover at the maximum only 6o to
70 per cent of our books and still require
processing in the local library. The people
who have written me in regard to this sub-
ject are still not convinced that cataloging
centralized in the Library of Congress is
the answer to our problems. To what ex-
tent this attitud~ may be motivated by re-
gionalism, I am not prepared to say, but re-
gional organizations are contemplating the
possibility of their own centralized cata-
loging.
One of our other unsolved problems is
how to store the rising influx of acquisi-
tions. We are justified in trying to solve
the problem on the assumption that we
shall continue to deal with the book in its
traditional form plus reasonable amounts
of microphotographic material. The micro-
card has been discussed so throughly that
I wish to add just one thought with respect
to it. The system proposes to eliminate
the cataloging problem by wrapping book
and cataloging into one package. In view
of the deficiencies of the card catalog, does
anyone believe that the limited subject ap-
proach proposed for microcards will be
anything but less satisfactory than the pres-
ent subject catalog?
The most constructive step to the solu-
tion of our space problem is the cooperative
19 Metcalf, "Division of Fields ... ," op cit.
deposit library, not merely because it costs
an estimated ro cents to store a book for
one year in a deposit library vs. approxi-
mately $r .oo in our conventional buqdings,
but because this idea has implications for
regional and national planning.17 We have
heard a great deal in regard to the experi-
ence of the New England Deposit Library
which is located near the participating li-
braries. We look forward with interest to
the possible founding of a deposit library
on a more ambitious scale in the Middle
West because it would represent wider
geographical coverage and give us added
evidence with respect to the feasibility of
this type of undertaking.
Pending the accumulation of this evi-
dence, however, we shou~d consider the
implications that the cooperative deposit li-
brary may have for our other problems.
First, we must prove that it is practicable
to locate a deposit library a few hundred
miles from some of the cooperating libraries.
If this be true, we have established an
extremely important point. Second, only
if we amalgamate deposit library books from
all cooperating libraries and eliminate most
duplication will we realize the full potenti-
alities of the deposit idea. Such elimination
of duplication is the only intelligent manner
I can see to reduce our bookstocks, for it is
generally conceded that weeding on any
other basis is an impossibility. If we pro-
ceed on any basis other than merging of
deposit library collections and elimination
of duplicate copies, each library might as
well build its own warehouse and forget
the problem of geographical location.
Conclusions
If we are going to meet the deficiency
of the subject approach to materials, we
must turn to pure subject bibliography on
a national scale. The job is too large for
any one region. It requires national plan-
17 Doherty Francis X. "The New England Deposit
Library." Library Qt,arterly x8:252-53, October 194~\.
253
ning and national financial support. If we
are going to acquire huge amounts of ma-
teria~s, we are obligated to make them
useful to the scholar wherever he may be.
How can the individual library interpret
this mass of mfl.terials except by subject
bibliographies rather than through a single
subject or classified catalog in Washing-
ton, D.C.? Farmington planning at one
point recognized that it would be difficult
to specialize and that both for this reason
and for economy in handling material it
would be preferable to put one copy of
everything in a super-library, i.e. the Library
of Congress. An alternative to the single
super-library idea was considered in order
to reduce the dangers of the atomic ·age and
the disadvantages created by the great dis-
tances which sep~rate so many areas from
Washington. This alternative was to es-
tablish three super-libraries, each of which
would house duplicate copies of Farmington
materials. 18 It is easy to understand why
it was not possible to proceed at once on
such an ideal basis, but that is the ultimate
key to the satisfactory solution of many
of our problems. In addition to serving
as regional super-libraries, these institutions
could become the deposit warehouses for
libraries in their respective regions. By this
means we could create strong collections of
older materials in the two super-libraries
· outside the Library of Congress, and even
its collections could thus be made more
complete as checking of the Philadelphia
Union Catalog has demonstrated. Backed
by these regional collections, each research
library could tailor its acquisitions and serv-
ices to its special needs. It seems unreal-
istic to expect a university or even a public
research library to do otherwise.
Just one warning. When President
Roosevelt proposed the production of 50,000
18 Ellsworth, Ralph E. and Kilpatrick Norman L.
"Midwest Reaches for the Stars." Coizege and Re-
search Libraries 9: I 36-44, April ~948.
aircraft per year at the beginning of World
War II, many people, including industrial-
ists, said it was impossible. No one thought
to ask who would service and fly the air-
planes, and the Air Forces were hampered
by trained personnel shortages throughout
much of World War II. Impossible
through it may now seem, some national
approach to our problems can and must
come as surely as our manufacturers turned
out 50,000 airplanes a year. Cooperation
and plans are not enough. We must meet
the need for much better trained reference
librarians, catalogers and bibliographers.
Let us stop paying lip service to the idea
that we are educators unless we get the
educator's training and point of view.
Carman/9 Mcintosh, Conant, 2° Colwell, 21
Hutchins22 and people in our own profes-
fession, such as Beals23 and Gitler, 24 have
emphasized the need of a general education.
Shall we continue to compromise by moving
any part of library training into the under-
graduate school, thereby diluting its cur-
riculqm? The cry of research libraries
from one end of the country to the other
is for subject specialists. We need p_eople
with a sound general education, plus subject
specialization and proper library training.
Reference librarians and catalogers as pres-
ently trained-and I say this with some
knowledge of the changed curricula of our
library schools-are not being equipped to
meet today's needs and will surely not be
equipped to deal with tomorrow's problems.
We must produce cataloger-bibliographers
with a scholar's appreciation of research,
1~ Speech delivered at the Conference of Eastern
College Librarians, Nov. 27, I948, Columbia University.
20 Harvard University. Committee on the Objectives
of a General Education in a Free Society. General
Educatwn in a Free Society . ... Cambridge, Mass.,
The University, I945- (See introduction)
21 Colwell, Ernest C. "The Role of the Professional
School in the University.'' Library Journal 73 !I340-
44. Oct. I, I 948.
22 Hutchins, Robert M. The Higher Learning in
America. New Haven, Yale University Press, I936.
23 Beal~ Ralph A. "Education for Librarianship."
Library ~.tuarterly I7:296 ff., October I947·
24 Gitler, Robert L. "Today's Librarians Need Broad
Education." Library Journal 73:359 -63, Mar. I, I948.
254 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES
and reference librarians who know how to
use the entire range of resources of great
libraries, not merely 200 or 300 ready ref-
erence books. To command people of this
quality, we must pay higher salaries. Those
of us in the field owe it to our library
schools to get the salaries which will justify
the type of people we demand and need.
We must undertake integrated planning
with respect to all our problems and criti-
cally examine both our methodology and
our isolated experiments at solving our
problems. What we need is a full scale
planning organization composed of carefully
selected research library directors with
divergent points of view, not merely parti-
sans who favor regionalism on the one·
hand or a completely national approach on
the other. In addition, the planning organi-
zation should include expert catalogers, out-
standing research librarians and subject
bibliographers, the last group preferably
from outside the profession. We should
look to this organization to bring us an
over-all plan which we will support both
as it affects our libraries and as it has
broader implications. We are going to need
more than token federal financial assistance
if we are to start a new era in librarian-
ship. Our services and collections have
proved indispensable to national defense
and to education. Federal aid to libraries
is every bit as important as federal aid to
education. In fact, the one is incongruous
without the other, and it is up to us to
prove our case by concerted action and the
assistance of those who need our services.
Before this can be done, we need an in-
telligent plan with the wholehearted back-
ing of our own profession.
Joir{t Committee on Library Education of C.N.L.A.
The second meeting of the Joint Committee
on Library Education of the Council of N a-
tional Library Associations was held in New
York on May 27. Among topics discussed were
the following: the urgent need of a public
list of library schools accredited by the A.L.A.
Board of Education for Librarianship, the
question of establishing standard examinations
which could be substituted for professional
training, the possibility of a thorough study of
the backgrounds of training needed for special
librarianship, and the development of informa-
tional services by the joint committee.
Maurice F. Tauber represents the Associa-
tion of College and . Reference Libraries on
this committee.
1949"50 A.C.R L. Officers
The following persons, elected by mail
ballot, took office July I , I 949· A complete
list of A.CR.L. officers, including section of-
fic~rs, will appear in the October issue.
PRESIDENT: Wyllis E. Wright, librarian,
Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.
VICE PRESIDENT AND PRESIDENT-ELECT:
Charles M. Adams, librarian, Woman's Col-
lege Library, University of North Carolina,
Greensboro.
TREASURER: Thomas S. Shaw, assistant in
charge, Public Reference, Main Reading
Room, Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C.
255