ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 640 / C&RL News Anthony, immediately answered my call for help. He sent the names of chemicals, procedures to be applied, and literature on preservation. Other col leagues responded equally well and in this report I want to thank them publicly. It was good to know that the University stood by me when I was half a world away from home. This consulting assignment has been most en lightening not only because I learned a lot about the state of librarianship in a less than ideal setting, but also because I experienced a wealth of cross- cultural interactions in living among and working with my Indonesian colleagues. I learned to listen carefully to what my counterparts and other co workers had to say, and was open to Indonesian values and their ways of doing things. I learned to be patient and not to despair when the proposed changes were not implemented as fast and as well as I wanted them. I was always aware that in our reports we must recommend solutions that will be possible in USU and Indonesian contexts. To sug gest that USU should merely accept American ways of doing things and propose a simple transplant of American library services to Northern Sumatra would not work. Wiley Dyer and the library as information processor By S arah B a r b a r a W atstein H ea d , R eferen ce Division Hunter C ollege The A C R L President’s Program in New York last Ju n e took a fresh look at a controversial case study. B y now, many academic librarians nationwide have been involved, directly or indirectly, in the examination of the issues surrounding the rapid in troduction and integration of technology on the mythical campus known as Garfield University. Some of us participated in this examination on O c tober 28, 1983, at a Tri-Chapter ACRL Sympo sium entitled “Life on the Technology Express” (see C & R L News, January 1984, pp.9– 10). Others participated in this examination on June 30, 1986, at the ACRL President’s Program in New York also entitled, “Life on the Technology Express.” This article focuses on the two Garfield University pro grams and provides some background on their de velopment. Garfield University and its dilemmas Easily recognizable to most ACRL members are veral of the most vocal characters and details in e controversy engulfing the Garfield University mpus in suburban Clifton since the inauguration President Wiley Dyer. At the helm of the Heath iff Library on the Garfield University campus is ly Berrien, director of the library for eighteen ars. Other notable library personnel are Mr. A. een Buch, assistant director for public services, d Minnie Roebuck, head of cataloging, and air of D E P O T , Director’s Executive Panel on echnology. Other University notables are Irwin se th ca of cl E ye K an ch T N ovem ber 1986 / 641 B. Moxie, director of the Garfield University Com puting Center, and Katherine Kaufman, member of the Garfield University Board of Trustees and State Representative from the Clifton District. W hat is the controversy all about? W hy did W P U R -T V ’s “Focus on Clifton,” for example, send one of its best interviewers, Stephanie Hendricks, to examine the turmoil surrounding Garfield? At issue is the reorganization of information services at Garfield. It is President Dyer’s intention to reor ganize virtually all Garfield operations according to his belief that the university is an information processor. He advocates assigning each function on campus to one of five groups: input, storage, proc essing, control, or output. Dyer contends that the library is essentially an information processor as most broadly defined, which resembles the univer sity’s computer system. Aware of the growing com petition among the university library and various information processing, communication, and em erging control technologies, Dyer has begun to re think basic questions concerning the library’s pur pose, proper functions, and possibly even its reason for existing. In his provocative article, “Rethinking the Academic Library,” Dyer questions: “Must the library, for example, be a building or even a place? If so, is it one place, several, or many? If more than one, ought these to be differented among input-output, storage, and processing func tions, in some other way, or not at all? If it is not a place, should the special identification of ‘library’ be retained? Should this library serve all campuses in a region? All campuses of the same type? All those in the country? Perhaps in the world?”1 Behind these questions is Dyer’s belief that “em erging technologies promise eventually to change drastically if not eliminate the justification for the library as traditionally conceived.” The controversy is genuine (the characters strug gling to understand the University’s and the L i brary’s future as projected by President Dyer), the issues are co m p lica ted , and the occasion was memorable— the 1986 A CRL President’s Program. Roots The 1986 A C R L President’s Program had its roots in November 1982 when the President-Elect of the New Jersey Library Association’s College and University Section (an A CRL Chapter), and the Presidents-Elect of the Delaware Valley and the Greater New York Metropolitan Area Chapters of A CRL met to discuss the possibility of a Tri- Chapter A CRL meeting in the Fall of 1983. The objectives of this meeting were to select a site for the meeting, brainstorm for topic selection, and re view price considerations. Given chapter sizes, it was felt that a Tri-Chapter meeting could poten- 1Wiley Dyer, “Rethinking the Academic L i b rary,” case study article, January 1985. Type written. W iley D yer (Jam es Beniger) discusses the fu tu re o f G arfield University L ibrary at the A C R L P residen t’s Program . tially attract 300–600 people. Equidistant to Chap ter members in the metropolitan areas of their states, Princeton University was selected as the meeting site. Suggested topics were wide ranging, and, in fact, it was not until March 1983 that pro gram format and content really took shape— a shape which was, at that date, a “first” for ACRL meetings. Symposium participants were asked to read through various documents in advance of their ar rival at Princeton. These documents contained both important and tangential information. They included a description of Garfield University, a re print of Wiley Dyer’s provocative paper, “Rethink ing the Academic L ib r a r y ,” various librarians’ memos and position papers, related articles from Garfield University publications, and other, non library, Garfield inter-office communiques. At Princeton, participants were asked to imag ine themselves as people “vitally and vociferously interested in the decisions being made at Garfield regarding the future of recorded information in a highly technological setting.”2 In short, partici pants were asked to share, insofar as the case per mitted, common experience from which to con sider life on the technology express. The focus of the symposium was the examina tion of the structure, processes and control of tech nology. The centerpiece for the day’s program, a library-oriented case study designed on the Har vard Business School Model, was distributed in ad vance to registrants. The case was highlighted dur ing the symposium, and used both as a vehicle for group discussion and to facilitate the examination of the choices facing all academic and research li- 2Welcome from The Case Study Group, October 28, 1983. How a modem library solved a traditional problem with easy-access microforms. In the midst o f downtown Miami’s skvscrapers is a complex o f low- rise stucco structures collectively known as the Metro-Dade Cul tural Center. The occupant o f the largest o f these structures, the Miami-Dade Public Library/Main Branch, ju st celebrated its first anniversary at the site. When the new library was being planned, provisions were made to update everything from the card catalog — now online — to the heating and cooling sys tem. One system, however, was carried over from the old Main Branch: storing periodicals in a remote location. “Remote storage doesn’t provide the best access, but it worked well enough in the old library so we thought we’d try it here,” savs Head Librarian Edward Kilrov. “Within months, we discovered a problem .” Kilrov explains: “Our downtown patron tage grew dramatically when we moved here. More patrons put more pressure on our staff a n d on our periodical retrieval equip ment — a convevor-type book ilift. During some busv lunch hours, the book lift broke down entirely, leaving us unable to sup f ply people with the information y needed. Th at’s when we an to think seriously about verting most o f our periodical lection to m icroform s.” Business and Science Librar Edward Oswald led the version drive by contacting iversity Microfilms Inter tional. “UMI was already plying us with 200 sub iptions to periodicals in m icro m. We felt confident thev ld help us select and manage n more.” A thoughtful rchasing program, using pop r indexes as buying guides, re ted in 1600 new subscriptions; se were then installed with library’s existing microforms d frequently-used bound riodicals in an inviting, new bv-level reading area. Today’s Miami-Dade patron oys improved access to a wider ge o f periodicals because library sta ff — with UM f s p — rethought their tradi he beg con col an con Un na sup scr or cou eve pu ula sul the the an pe lob enj ran the hel Edward Oswald and Edward Kilrov, Miami-Dade Public Librany. tional system. We can help you solve your institution’s access problems, too; why not call or write us to find out how? Universi M ty Microfilm I s International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 1-800-521-3044 (In Canada, call 1-800-343-5299) U N ovem ber 1986 / 643 brary staff who are affected by the forces of tech nology. The symposium schedule included a welcome to Princeton by Donald W. Koepp, Princeton Univer sity Librarian; greetings from A C R L by Carla Stoffle, A CRL Past President; a keynote address by Irving Louis Horowitz, Hannah Arendt Distin guished Professor of Sociology & Political Science, Rutgers University; presentation of the case; gen eral analysis of the case in small group discussions with library leaders; functional analysis of the case in similar groups; and a closing address by James Beniger, then assistant professor of sociology at Princeton University. From Symposium to President’s Program In the late Spring of 1985, members of the Tri- Chapter A CRL program planning committee were invited to accept appointment as members of the 1986 New York Annual Conference Program Plan ning Committee. The Committee’s charge was to replicate the Tri-Chapter symposium for A C R L ’s national program, in New York, on June 30, 1986. The Committee had slightly over a year to meet this challenge. Components of this challenge in cluded: a more geographically diverse audience; an audience significantly more familiar with the furor over technological turf and the mission of the academic library; a half versus a full day program; a program schedule which must allow for an an nual business meeting, a break, and Librarian-of- the-Year Award presentation; a program which would be embedded in a national conference ver sus a symposium with no competition; and na tional versus predominantly “local” organizational support. Given the midtown location of the Con ference and limited acceptable facilities in New York City, the Committee was also faced with the challenge of “local arrangements”— a challenge of a different nature than working out site details in Princeton! Reviewing the program schedule, examining all Garfield documents from 1983 and targeting ones needing revision, identifying a keynoter, coordina tors, and discussion leaders, clarifying the view point of those who would attend the program, and redoing public relations strategy constituted the fo cus of early Committee meetings. As in 1983, registrants received a packet contain ing various documents in advance of the program. Documents included a profile of Wiley Dyer, a de scription of Garfield and its Library, reprints of key Dyer articles and addresses, diverse interoffice memos, and copies of relevant op-ed columns, let ters to the editor, editorials, etc., from Garfield publications. T he m ajority of documents co n cerned the role of Garfield’s Librarv in a world where, according to President Dyer, information on campus will flow in all directions at once. Participants were asked to imagine they had onsented to serve on an advisory panel at G ar ield. As their predecessors in 1983, they were ex ected to grapple “with the tangled issues on the order between the traditional academic library nd the information technologies and conscious ess emerging elsewhere on campus.”3 In Garfield niversity Trustee Katherine Freylinghuysen’s essage to participants she pleaded, “we are seek ng your counsel to help everyone at Garfield think hrough the future.”4 The revised program schedule began with a brief annual business meeting and a keynote address by utgers Professor Irving Horowitz. Introduced as a person who “values values” and ne whose “ ideas are often va lu ed ,” keynoter orowitz focused on the broad subject of the com unication of ideas. In particular, he examined he complex problem of access— to knowledge, in formation and data. This examination included both a comparison of the political, ideological, cul ural and legal characteristics of democracies and dictatorships, and a comparison of the characteris ics of market and planned economies. In addition o redefining the problems of access as political and conomic issues, Horowitz also established these roblems as geographic and technological issues. His address provided participants with a context or their deliberations, for, at the heart of the G ar ield dilemmas is the justification for the Library as raditionally conceived— in terms of its role in ac cessing information. After the keynote address, participants were then asked to retire to Garfield University and to “analyze its approach to the onrushing information age and to share (their) wisdom about how to hook on to what’s coming down the track.”5 A Garfield University case videotape eased par ticipants into their new roles. It consisted of a seg ment of W P U R -T V ’s “Focus on Clifton” program on the Garfield situation, with interviews of sev eral of the most vocal people in the controversy. Stephanie Hendricks, the reporter, spoke with Ely Berrien, Irwin B. Moxie, Katherine Kaufman, Mr. A. Keen B u c h , M in n ie R o e b u c k , and T e r r y Cloethe, a typical Garfield student. Discussion by “Garfield University Consultants” followed the videotape. Participants were seated at tables of ten, each led by a discussion leader famil iar with the implications of each case, and were as signed to tables by type of library they worked in— 2-year college, 4-year college, small university (under 5 , 0 0 0 F T E students), large university (5,000 F T E students and over). “Notes” sheets 3W elcom e from Sharon A. Hogan, June 30, 1986. 4Letter from Katherine Freylinghuysen, June 5, 1986. 5W elcom e from Sharon A. Hogan, June 30, 1986. c f p b a n U m i t R o H m t t t t e p f f t 644 / C & RL News were provided that facilitated listing of the issue under the following categories: economic, histori cal, technological, educational, political and per sonnel. Each participant was also asked to not s e suggestions for the future of Garfield University. The discussions were lively. Participants vigor ously responded to the challenge of Garfield’s di lemmas, reflected upon by Horowitz, as captured by videotape, and as presented by the case docu ments. Discussion leaders were asked to summarize the discussions at their tables, noting those issues iden tified as most critical, most important to solve, most widespread, and hardest to solve. A space for discussion leaders to record quotes worth saving was also provided. Summary sheets were handed in to James Beniger, associate professor at Annen berg School of Communications, University of Southern California, who offered reflections on the case and a closing address. Dyer/Beniger Confusion, surprise and wonderment marked the surprise visit of Wiley Dyer. Acknowledging that he was “somewhat nervous,” Dyer confronted what he perceived to be an “undue” amount of hos tility coming from the audience. He began his re marks with a confession, tracing his own problems with librarians to his having been spanked as a child with an academic library book which had been checked out by a male and renewed by his fa ther. He proceeded with liberal doses of free advice from his forthcoming book, A G ood L ibrary is the C a t’s Pajam as. Before turning to the dilemmas at hand and his summary comments, he announced that he would soon be posting library director Ely Berrian’s position, and hoped a less absent-minded individual would be successfully recruited and hired. Dyer then summarized comments from each type of library represented. His own remarks consisted of an elaborate justi fication of his belief that libraries are, by tradition, set up to do the information processing function outlined in his numerous articles and speeches. He used the example of the Library Bureau of Boston, established by the American Library Association in 1876, to drive the point home that indeed, ALA had pioneered the information technology business 110 years ago. A second example used to prove his point was ALA’s role in the launching of the com puter industry some 90 years ago. Throughout, Dyer reiterated his belief that what is happening today, at Garfield, and at participants’ libraries is the “libraryifying of post-industrial society, not the computerizing of libraries.” Dyer sees the dawning of the computer and information age not as a threat to librarians, but as “the final and ultimate oppor tunity to the profession.” Enthusiastically hailing librarians as the “original information scientists,” he challenged his audience to rethink not only Gar field’s but their own library’s future. Responses to Dyer’s remarks ranged from loud and raucous cries expressing disapproval to belly laughs and snickers. The 1986 ACRL President’s Program could not have ended with remarks by a more controversial, exciting, and stimulating fig ure than Wiley Dyer (a.k.a. James Beniger). From 1983 to 1986, from a day-long symposium to a half-day President’s Program, Garfield and its characters and dilemmas are still with us, and wor thy of our individual and collective concern. The boomerang has returned— successfully— to its starting point. Modemless computer access at Lehigh On August 4, 1986, Lehigh University, Bethle hem, Pennsylvania, began using an InteC om BX/80 campus-wide integrated voice and data ommunications network that may be unique in igher education. The network replaces the uni ersity’s Dimension 2000 phone system and pro ides data access to both campus and remote com uters without the need for individual modems. The network is now providing 9000-baud access o the Lehigh University Libraries’ online catalog rom every office, laboratory, classroom and stu ent residence room. The libraries implemented he GEAC catalog, circulation, and MARC man gement modules in August 1985, when the new .W . Fairchild Martindale Library and Comput ng Center was opened. A total of 4,200 voice ports and 6,700 data ports I c h v v p t f d t a E i serve a population of 4,400 undergraduates, 1,900 graduates, 400 full-time faculty, and 700 adminis rative staff in 126 buildings on the campus. The etwork is closely integrated with the university’s icrocomputer program. Every full-time member f the faculty has been provided a Zenith micro omputer and there are several hundred more available at public sites, including 73 in the univer ity libraries. Lehigh does not require students to uy microcomputers; rather, it is encouraging hem to do so by presenting attractiv e prices hrough the campus microcomputer store. This fall the libraries are greatly expanding their raining program in end-user database searching to nable faculty and students to take advantage of he new ease with which both their catalog and ex ernal databases may be accessed via the network. ther library applications on the network include n online list of recent accessions. t n m o c s b t t t e t t O a