College and Research Libraries By M A N N I N G M. P A T T I L L O The Appraisal of Junior College and College Libraries MOST OF Y O U ARE INTERESTED IN CRI-TERIA for the evaluation of junior college libraries and would like to know the trend of thinking on this subject in the Commission on Colleges and Univer- sities of the North Central Association. Perhaps you hope that some of my re- marks tonight may help you in the solu- tion of the immediate problem you face, that of agreeing on national standards for the junior college library which may serve as guides to librarians and other ad- ministrators throughout the country. With your indulgence, however, I should prefer to discuss the problem of library evaluation in a somewhat broader frame- work. Although the junior college library differs in certain important respects from the library in other types of academic in- stitutions and it is appropriate that jun- ior college librarians deal as specifically as possible with their own problems, it is true also that in theory and technique the problem of evaluating a junior college library is part of the larger problem of evaluating any academic library. Once we have decided how best to appraise col- lege libraries in general we shall be well on our way to the solution of the more specialized junior college problem. Therefore my remarks will be rather gen- Dr. Pattillo is associate director of the Lilly Endowment, Indianapolis. He was formerly associate secretary, Commission on Colleges and Universities, North Cen- tral Association. This paper was pre- sented at a meeting of the Junior Col- lege Section, ACRL, Chicago, Febru- ary 1, 1956. eral and afterwards we can discuss the issues as they bear especially on the jun- ior college library. After some seven years of coping with the practical problems of examining in- stitutions for accrediting purposes, I can testify that the library is one of the most difficult phases of an institution's pro- gram to evaluate adequately. This is gen- erally recognized among men who have made many surveys of colleges and uni- versities. In almost every other area of an institution's program informed per- sons have a reasonably clear notion of what to look at and how to draw conclu- sions in an evaluation. This is not to say that the appraisal of a faculty, for exam- ple, is an easy matter, or that a great deal of refinement in methods is not possible in the future. But, in general, survey spe- cialists are agreed on what is important in judging the competence of a faculty and on the kinds of data and the methods of securing data that are required to do this job. In the area of the library there is no such unanimity. There seem to be serious problems in almost every method of ap- praising the effectiveness of a college li- brary. Beyond certain very general propo- sitions which would be widely accepted, there is a paucity of constructive thought as to how to proceed in the specific situa- tion. Somehow we need to develop some very different way of looking at the whole problem. It is helpful to review what has been done in the past. There have been some important changes in the procedures for evaluating college libraries. Here person- al experience makes it desirable to refer SEPTEMBER, 1956 397 to the policies of the North Central Asso- ciation. T h e y are reasonably representa- tive of what is being done by other ac- crediting agencies. First, consider Standard X I , entitled "Libraries and Laboratories," which set forth the standards for j u d g i n g college libraries for accrediting purposes in the North Central Association in 1928. T h a t portion of the standard which pertained to libraries read as follows: The college shall have a live, well-distrib- uted, professionally administered library of at least 8,000 volumes exclusive of public doc- uments, bearing specifically upon the sub- jects taught and with a definite annual ap- propriation for the purchase of new books and current periodicals. It is urged that such appropriation be at least $5.00 per student registered. T h i s standard provided something defi- nite for the examiner. If a given college had a library with fewer than 8,000 vol- umes and if the appropriation for the purchase of new books and current peri- odicals was less than five dollars per stu- dent, the library was unacceptable and the institution w o u l d not be worthy of accreditation. T h e application of such a standard is a fairly simple matter. T o be sure, this standard specified that the col- lection should be live, well distributed, and related to the subjects taught in the institution, and that there should be a professional librarian in charge. T h e in- clusion of these factors in this standard was a change f r o m some of the earlier standards which were almost entirely what are called m i n i m u m quantitative standards, but the 1928 standard was probably administered almost entirely o n a statistical basis because the statistical parts of the standard were those which stood out. T h e n in the early 1930's, f o l l o w i n g a comprehensive study of institutional evaluation, the North Central Association adopted a radically different philosophy of accrediting. T h e fundamental proposi- tions of this new philosophy, which were subsequently f o l l o w e d by almost every other accrediting agency, were: A n insti- tution should be evaluated in terms of its o w n avowed purposes. T h e criteria em- ployed should be primarily qualitative rather than quantitative. A n institution w o u l d be j u d g e d o n the basis of the over- all picture of strength and weakness it presented rather than o n the basis of the application of discrete standards. T h e new procedure was set forth in 11 sections which make a small b o o k . T h e whole procedure became a m u c h more elaborate affair. G o n e were the simple yardsticks which could be applied rou- tinely with easily secured data. T h e eval- uation of an institution became almost a research project, so v o l u m i n o u s was the b o d y of information secured and so com- prehensive were the criteria employed. In place of a one-paragraph statement o n the library, the new Manual of Accredit- ing had a whole section o n the library, consisting of four printed pages. In broad outline, the library criteria were as fol- lows: T h e first two criteria concerned the holdings of reference books and periodi- cals. T h e principle was that an institu- tion should have in its library the works of general and special reference and the periodicals that are generally f o u n d in g o o d institutions having similar curricu- la. T h e application of these criteria de- pended o n the use of check lists of ref- erence books and periodicals which were regarded as important in institutions of various types. In the use of the check lists, special provision was made f o r dif- ferences in curriculum; that is to say, an institution that offered n o courses in as- tronomy w o u l d be exempted f r o m the astronomy section of the lists. T h e precise measure employed in the application of the criteria was the percentage of books f r o m the selected list which were held by the institution. Each institution was ranked o n this item o n the basis of norms derived f r o m the actual holdings of the member higher institutions of the asso- 398 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES ciation. There were four sets of norms: one for junior colleges, one for bachelor's degree-granting institutions, one for somewhat more complex institutions usu- ally offering the master's degree, and one for universities. There were some statisti- cal refinements which we need not con- sider here, but you have a broad outline of the criteria and the way in which they were applied. After the use of these two measures for about fifteen years, certain significant weaknesses became apparent. First, there was a tendency on the part of librarians to use the check lists as buying guides. It is clear that the lists were originally de- vised as a fairly systematic sampling de- vice and were never thought of as includ- ing all the holdings that any institution would find it desirable to have. Up to a point, the use of the check lists as sug- gestive of purchases was legitimate, but heavy reliance on them would certainly place an undesirable limitation on the processes for the selection of library ma- terials. This would make selection a much more routine enterprise than it ought to be in any institution. Secondly, there was the sheer difficulty of keeping the check lists up to date and of assuring that the titles listed were the ones that were most important. Such a list does not take proper account of dif- ferences in instructional procedures as well as subject-matter areas in an institu- tion. T o use an extreme example, a pro- gressive college such as Sarah Lawrence with its heavy emphasis upon contem- porary problems might well need much more extensive holdings of periodicals, particularly in the social sciences, than would an institution like St. John's where the curriculum is heavily weighted in the direction of classical materials. Any kind of standard list introduces a rigidity which cannot be defended if one holds the view that diversity is desirable in American higher education. T h e result of all this was that in 1949 a committee of distinguished librarians which was advising the Commission on Colleges and Universities on its proced- ures for the evaluation of libraries con- cluded that check lists of the type that had been employed should be abandoned. T h e committee explored alternative kinds of lists which might be used for ac- crediting purposes, but concluded that no type of list had been suggested which really got around the criticisms which had been leveled at the older lists. T h e North Central Association does not now use check lists in its evaluations of college libraries. T h e next two criteria have to do with expenditures for books and salaries. T h e measures used in connection with these two items have undergone some modifica- tion, but they have remained statistical and involve the use of norms for four dif- ferent groups of institutions. Thus, a giv- en junior college would be compared in expenditures with other junior colleges holding membership in the association. Here, as in other statistical measures, the notion of absolute minima had been abandoned in the early thirties. An in- stitution's standing depended on its rank in comparison with similar institutions. T h e rank is expressed in terms of percen- tiles; for example, an institution which is at the median would have a percentile rank of 50. Zero is the lowest rank and 100 is the highest rank. It should be noted that the norms on which these ranks are based are derived from actual data and not from decisions as to what would be ideal. As the criteria for expenditures for books and expenditures for salaries have evolved they have become, respectively, the expenditure for the previous fiscal year per student for books, periodicals, binding, and rebinding; and the expendi- ture for the previous fiscal year per stu- dent for library salaries, including part- time workers and student assistants. In the application of these criteria, account is taken of the trend of expenditures in recent years. SEPTEMBER, 1956 399 There are some obvious difficulties about expenditures per student. W h o can say that the individual student is really the unit that determines how great the expenditures for library purposes should be? Is it true, for example, that a college of 500 students should spend twice as much for books and salaries as a college of 250 students? W e have simply not had enough research in the field of librarian- ship to justify such an assumption. Our next two library criteria concern student and faculty use of the library. Our commission has thought that this was one of the really important factors in the evaluation of a college library. T h e use of the library reflects clearly the degree to which the library is a functioning part of the educational program. It makes no difference how fine the facilities, how complete the holdings, how well trained the librarians, if the library is not used. In this connection our examiners have been asked to scrutinize the methods em- ployed by the library in encouraging stu- dent use, the adequacy of the number of reserve books, the accessibility to books through open stacks or otherwise, the availability of desks in the stack for stu- dents working on special problems, the announcement of books by displays and notices, and other means of promoting student interest. T h e examiners have studied the trend in the circulation sta- tistics, including especially the average number of two-week loans per student. Some rough statistics have been available to the examiners for making a judgment on the latter point. It should perhaps be said that in actual operation the examiners have had to give primary attention to the degree of aware- ness of the significance of student use and statistics bearing on it rather than to re- fined procedures for comparing actual use in one institution with use in others. As you know, there is great difficulty in securing comparable circulation statistics from institutions. For example, how can the statistics for an open-stack library possibly be made comparable with figures for a library having closed stacks or lim- ited access to the stacks? In many institu- tions, especially urban colleges and uni- versities, circulation statistics at best are incomplete because of the availability of other libraries to students. In the area of faculty use, attention has been given to similar matters. Our exam- iners have inquired into the provisions for securing special library material needed by faculty members, for inform- ing instructors of new publications in their fields, for notifying teachers of the receipt of new publications, for generous policies relating to faculty withdrawals, and for compiling data regarding the ex- tent of faculty use. After looking at these features, an intelligent examiner can dis- tinguish between a college or university library which is functioning as a vital part of an educational program and one which is seriously moribund, but the North Central Association admits it has not developed measures for arriving at any more than a very rough approxima- tion of student and faculty use. W e hope that the library profession it- self can undertake studies of student reading which would go far beyond any- thing that has yet been attempted. Insti- tution after institution has grappled with this problem with little success. Bet- ter measures of student reading would give us an indication not only of the ef- fectiveness of the library but also of the vitality of the whole instructional pro- gram. Probably student reading habits are as good an index as we could get of the probability that the students will con- tinue to pursue important intellectual questions after they graduate from col- lege. T h e results of some of the studies that have been made of the reading hab- its of college graduates are as serious an indictment of American higher educa- tion as one could possibly find. If we had more precise measures of student read- ing, they would enable us to undertake significant experiments in the promotion 400 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES of student reading. At the present time, we have only the crudest notions of the amount and quality of reading done by college students. T h e last library criterion of the North Central Association is called "Distribu- tion of Holdings and Expenditures." In applying this criterion the examiner at- tempts to make a rough judgment as to the relationship between the library hold- ings in different subject-matter areas and the degree of curricular emphasis of the institution in these areas. If a college, for example, has a large number of students majoring in the social sciences, it would be expected that the amount of library holdings would reflect this curricular emphasis. Also, the budgetary procedure of the institution will be explored to make sure that the needs of the library are taken account of in the preparation of a budget and that there is a rational plan for allocating library funds to dif- ferent purposes. T h e concern here is pri- marily with sound procedures and atti- tudes and not with precise formulas. This brief outline gives you some idea of our methods, the limitations of these methods, and the large amount of unfin- ished business in library evaluation from the point of view of an accrediting agen- cy. From time to time officers and commit- tees of the North Central Association have considered the possibility of criteria relating to size of library staff, profession- al education of librarians, proportion of educational and general expenditures that should be devoted to the library, the status of librarians in an institution, and other matters which are important in the development of effective library service. However, the problem of defining good practice in these matters without at the same time straitjacketing institutions and discouraging departures which might be desirable in individual institutions has been an obstacle to the development of policies. Also, an accrediting agency, as a representative body, has to proceed on the basis of reasonable consensus and is not in a position to adopt policies which are unsupported by convincing research or by what might be called the informed opinion of the academic profession. If this picture of the present state of af- fairs in the evaluation of college libraries is reasonably accurate, and admittedly the description is somewhat disconcert- ing, what lines of thought seem most promising for the future? As already sug- gested, research on student reading hab- its in relation to instructional methods is a most promising field of inquiry. Such research, better than any other type of study, would dramatize the common in- terests of librarians and college teachers. Are there other promising avenues? In this connection mention should be made of a mode of attack on the whole accred- iting problem which is now being ex- plored by a special committee of the Com- mission on Colleges and Universities. This is to abandon the time-honored practice of carving an institution up into discrete parts for purposes of analysis— such parts as purposes, faculty, curricu- lum, instruction, library, student person- nel services, and administration—and basing the whole procedure of evaluation on certain central questions about an educational program. These would be big questions that would entail the gathering of data from many relevant sources. Such questions as the following would provide the guidelines for evaluation: 1. Does the institution have a clearly defined educational task? Under this con- sideration would be given to such items as definition of clientele, scope and char- acter of the program, relationship to oth- er institutions, and plans for the future,. 2. Does the institution have the re- sources necessary to carry out its pur- poses? This question invites attention to financial support, size and competence of faculty, library and other facilities for in- struction, physical plant and site, and special considerations in a research insti- tution. SEPTEMBER, 1956 4 0 1 3. Is the institution well organized for the consideration of educational policy? Here the data would relate to the opera- tion of the governing board, administra- tive leadership, faculty organization and stability, and provision for institutional studies. 4. Has the curriculum been carefully developed in the light of the institution's purposes? T o answer this question one would have to look at the admission re- quirements, the provision for general ed- ucation, the provision for specialized education, the incorporation of new knowledge in the curriculum, and the limitation of the offerings to courses which are really substantial. 5. Are the conditions of teaching sat- isfactory in this institution? This involves such matters as faculty personnel policies, teaching loads, class size in relation to field and teaching methods, syllabi and course organization, adaptation of meth- ods to subject matter and student popu- lation, and student reactions to teaching. 6. Does the institution have a climate of serious intellectual interest? This is a difficult question to answer. Among the topics that might be included are: the student use of time; student retention; student reading (including use of the li- brary); student understanding of the edu- cational policies of the institution; edu- cational experimentation in the institu- tion; the vigor of student organizations in such fields as debating, journalism, dra- matics, and religion; independent study by students; and scholarship program. 7. Is the student life well balanced and responsible? This would call for an exam- ination of the conditions of student liv- ing, the maturity of student behavior, the scope of student participation in in- stitutional government, student employ- ment, the counseling program, student ') if: ' activities, the values reflected in student life, and similar matters. 8. Is there evidence that the level of educational achievement of the students is satisfactory? T h e answer to this would come from the results of tests; the pro- portion of graduates continuing their education; the academic records of grad- uates going on to higher institutions; studies of vocational, professional, relig- ious, civic, and other achievements of graduates; quality of student papers, theses, and other types of performance; and institutional provisions for evalua- tion of student achievement. Now, if such an approach is adopted, this would mean that the North Central Association would no longer consider the library in isolation as a separate agency in an institution, which is certainly a ten- dency where separate criteria are adopted for a college library, and would instead focus attention on large questions which more nearly cut across the whole life of the institution. Student reading would be considered, not as reflecting the effec- tiveness of the library alone, but as a manifestation of the total effectiveness of the institution. Is this not a sound approach? Has the time not come to adjust the techniques of evaluation to the ideas we have been advocating on the unity of the education- al process? From a practical point of view, this proposed approach has much value. It would give more point to much of the data-gathering that goes on in American higher education, both by professional organizations and by faculty committees engaged in self-studies. This may be something that the Junior College Li- brary Section of the Association of Col- lege and Reference Libraries will wish to take into consideration at its earliest convenience. 402 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES