College and Research Libraries By JULIAN P. BOYD A Landmark in the History of Library Cooperation in America 1 . . I F THERE is anyone who yet remains un-convinced that the Library of Congress is in fact and deed our national library, let him reflect upon the achievements of the past year. Close upon the heels of a change in administration and in the midst of internal and external complexities of an unparalleled nature, the Library of Congress has shown to the world, both in the formulation of statesmanlike policies and in their execution, a quality of leadership commensurate with its exalted responsibilities. No other library in America had such opportunities for· in- spired leadership in this critical moment and no other could have in like manner sup- ported its vision with equal resources. Its insistence upon a declaration of policy by the government that the contents of Ameri- qm libraries affect the national interest; its part in formulating the proposals for the consideration of UNESCO; its effectively planned and exe_cuted European mission; its distribution of several million texts and reference works to veterans; its initiation and implementation of the cooperative ac- quisitions project; its formulation of plans for publishing supplements to the Catalog of Books Represented by Library of Con- gress Printed Cards-these and many other extraordii?-ary activities were projected in the interest of all American libraries. Vision, courage, and intelligence in high degree were needed to face the enormous difficulties that these enterprises involved. 1 Paper presented at the Conference of Eastern College Librarian s, Columbia University, Nov. 30, 19 46 . APRIL~ 1947 A timorous administration, or one . fright- ened by political and practical obstacles, would have hesitated before such a Gargan- tuan program. The past year unquestion- ably marks the beginning of an era of immense potentialit~es in the world of li- brarianship and one of its most conspicuous promises is the enlightened position of lead- ership accepted by the Library of Congress in the interest of our whole library economy. This leadership was thrust upon it by force of circumstances and we who are its bene- ficiaries should be proud of the response of our national library to that challe~ge. Let its name remain the Library of Con- gress, but .let us henceforth acknowledge it to be what it unquestionably is-our na- tional library. I begin with these general remarks even though the task assigned to me is to appraise the cooperative acquisitions project in a "critical rather than merely laudatory" manner. The cooperat_ive acquisitions proj- ect, like other cooperative ventu~es, bristles with obvious weaknesses, imperfections, and inconsistencies. Yet a "merely critical" assessment would be as grave a distortion as one "merely laudatory." It would serve no useful purpose merely to point out faults that are as familiar to all those who have been in charge of the program as they are to those who have been its beneficiaries. If I criticize, then, it is only for the object of trying to find out what means we can take to eiiminate weaknesses and faults in the future of library cooperation. Never- 101 theless, whatever the deficiences of the cooperative acquisitions project itself, the Library of Congress deserves our applause for its vigorous leadership in this and many other areas. I take it that we are all agreed upon certain fundamental principles of library cooperation. First,. we cannot intelligently plan a sound national library economy, either in respect to growth or use, without a ban- · cloning individualistic, isolated, competitive patterns of librarianship. No library, what- ever its resources, can be complete and self- contained. Second, the : objects of our con- certed planning are, among other things, the establishment of an inventory of research materials now available in this country; the ordering of so comprehensive a national program of acquisition that henceforth at least one copy of every essential work of reference, wherever published, will be ' lo- cated in some American library; the acquisi- tion by purchase or reproduction of the one-'third or more of scholarly works of the past four hundred years of publishing which are not now to be found anywhere in this country; finally, and most important of all, the development of adequate indexes, guides, or controls-<:all them bibliographies or "memexes" or whatever-which will serve to guide the scholar, the professional man, or any other user of libraries through the welter of information and misinforma- . tion that m(\n has accumulated. Means of Achieving Objectives While I think it true that librarians are generally agreed upon these basic assump- tions, it does not follow that we are agreed upon the means of achieving our objectives. Many cooperative schemes among libraries have been advanced in the past half-century or so. Some of them, with limited objec- tives, have been conspicuously successful. Until now no comprehensive program touching the major objectives I have out- lined has been able to gain much headway, first, because the competitive and duplicative pattern of higher education has necessarily imposed a similar pattern upon research li- braries, and, second, because the individual- istic character of scholarship has opposed itself to the programs of librarians. The latest and most generally discussed program of cooperation, the Farmington proposal, is distinguished by its realistic acceptance of this situation. In essence, the Farmington proposal hopes to achieve what the scholar wants, i.e.~ the securing of whatever book he happens to need, whenever he needs it, without touching either the educational pat- tern or attempting to alter the scholar's attitudes toward the problems presente4 by his resources. The Farmington proposal depends upon a wholly voluntary acceptance of responsibility by American research li- braries in a concerted effort to plan the national ,library growth intelligently and adequately .for the needs of American scholarship. It is not enough to proceed unhampered in our established educational programs and in our attitudes-there must be a positive acceptance of responsibility, a recognition of the interdependence of all libraries. Whether this compromise plan will succeed or' not remains to be seen. Some of us are irreconcilable optimists, yet, though we have heard much brave talk of the· unity of knowledge and the indivisibility of the world of learning in most of the programs of bigher education in postwar America, we have observed with discourage- m~nt the almost total silence of all these programs on the subjects which to us seem essential to all ·education-the pr~blem of the scholar in relation to the materials of scholarship. In view of the appalling destruction of book resources on the continent of Europe and the remote possibility that anything 102 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES resembling normal book trade would be established, many librarians, long before the cessation of hostilities, discussed plans for joint acquisition of scholarly resources as soon as conditions would permit. It was known that the s~pply of scientific and, other literature produced in Europe between I 939 and I 945 would be small and the demand great: This demand for joint action on the part df American research libraries arose not merely out of a desire to avoid a competitive scramble in the book markets of the world, such as we experi- enced at the conclusion of World War I. It was recognized as well that the interests of European scholarship should be respected, and a self-imposed restraint was therefore required. Fortunately for research libraries in America, this point of view was held with strong conviction by the Librarian of Congress and his colleagues. As an agency of the federal government, the Library of Congress, having opportunities to pl~ce its representatives in controlled countries long before the ordinary channels of commerce were open, might have pursued an indi- vidualistic policy. It did not choose to do so, preferring to set the interests of all libraries above those of any one library. On July I7, I945, the_Librarian of Con- gress addressed to the Secretary of State a letter that deserves to rank with the very first documents in the history of library statesmanship. Confronted with the pro.blem of securing books and other library materials from foreign countries where the channels of trade were "not adequate to the task of supplying American research libraries with the material which they require for respond- ing to the needs and deman·ds of scholar- ship, industry, and the government" the Librarian of Congress proposed that "the possibility be explored bf making use for this purpose of certain of the facilities which are at the command of the Library of Congress APRIL, 1947 and other government libraries for the de- velopment of their own collections." The Librarian of Congress suggested that if the Department of State should perceive no objections to the purchase by the Library of Congress in foreign countries of multiple copies of books, periodicals, newspapers, maps, etc., for the large research libraries of the United States, the Library of Con- gress would be glad to explore the possibility of securing the necessary joint purchasing agreements, financing the purchases, and distributing the copies' received according to some plan which would best serve the na- tional interest. This proposal was made by the Librarian of Congress "because of the deep conviction based upon daily experi- ence, that the national interest, both in time of war and in time of peace, is intimately affected by the holdings of the large research libraries." To this enlightened proposal the Department of State replied, through Assistant Secretary Archibald MacLeish, with what appears to be the first declaration of policy by the government "that the na- tional interest is directly affected by the holdings of many of the private research libraries." The Department of State there- fore interposed no objections in principle to the employment of federal government facilities to assist in maintaining these specialized coli ctions where the normal channels of acquisition were inoperative. Nevertheless, this declaration of policy was accompanied by certain conditions prece- dent: it would be necessary for the private research libraries to give assurances that they had agreed upon and carefully planned a program of cooperative buying and that such a plan would be supported by the benefiting libraries as long as federal assist- ance was employed. This proposal by the Librarian of Con- gress and conditional acceptance by the . Department of State inaugurated, under 103 . conditions of appalling complexity, a pro- gram which I venture to predict will become a landmark in . the history of cooperative efforts of American libraries. Plan Pu-t into Effect With this declaration of governmental policy in hand, the Librarian of Congress addressed a communication on Oct. I 5, I945, to several hundred American research libraries announcing that the Libraty of Congress was willing to assume the burden of handling the fiscal arrangements with the Department of State and in other ways to facilitate the program. In addition to this plan for buying foreign publications, the Librarian of Congress announced his will- ingness to utilize the cooperative mechanism of distri~ution for the purpose of placing in American libraries several hundred thousand copies of foreign publications that had be- come available for distribution chiefly from French, German, Italian, and Latin Ameri- can sources. Representatives of the ' Ameri- can Library Association, of the Association of Research Libraries, and of various gov- ernmental libraries met with the Librarian of Congress to plan this program. They agreed that it was essential to have the pro- gram of distribution planned by a group generally representative of the library and research interests of the c04lntry. Such a group was formed, headed by Robert Bing- ham Downs and composed of representatives of the Ameri<;an Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Joint Committee on Importations, the N a- tiona! Research Council, the S0cial Scie~ce Research Council, and the American Coun- cil on Education. This Committee to Adv~se on the Distribution of Foreign Ac- quisitions was requested to draw up a sched- -ule of allocation by subject and by priorities in first, second, third copies, etc., of recent foreign books which might become available. In announcing the formation of this com- mittee, the Librarian of Congress made it perfectly clear that libraries wishing to participate in the program wouJd be given priorities by the .committee in accordance with, first, the strength of individual li- braries in particular subject fields; second, their willingness and ability to assume re- sponsibility for acquisition' in these subject fields i and third, their ability to give gen- eral service (including interlibrary loan service and, whenever possible, photocopying service) to the users of the materials thus acquired. The unenviable task that fell to this com- mittee in the next few months was that of assigning some 8,000 priorities to I I 5 li- braries in 254 subject fields. At the Chi- cago meeting . of the Association of Research . Libraries on December 29-30, 'the chairman of the committee reported that every subject of the entire group classification had been wanted by at least 3 libraries and some sub- jects had been checked for priority . by as many as 46. He further reported that as- signments of priorities would be made on. the basis of several criteria : (a) strength of existing holdings, (b) location of highest priori ties among geographical areas, (c) ro- tation of high priorities among different in- stitutions in the same region so as to prevent undue concentration in a few libraries, (d) current research and publications of insti- tutions as well as current appropriations for new books, (e) bibliographical centers where there were well-developed plans for cooperative buying, (f) libraries assuming responsibility f~r an entire field would be favored against'those assuming responsibility for a subdivision thereof. At this meeting, one of the delegates asked the chairman of the committee wheth~r an institution re- questing a given field assumed a commitment for continuing to purchase in that field in 104 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES r the future. Mr. Downs ' replied that li- braries having first priority would definitely assume such an obligation, although, of course, this obligation could not be legally enforced. It was urged in the discussion that followed that the committee should attach high importance to the assignment of priori- ties on the basis of a "future agreement by the library to continue acquisition in the subject assigned." Fundamental Weakness Here then we come to the fundamental weakness of the cooperative acquisitions project: no continuing commitments were exacted as an essential condition of high pri- ority. No doubt this was due to the emerg- ency nature of the enterprise and to the fact that the committee simply did not have time to negotiate with its cons~ituencies and to allow them in turn to nego~iate with their authorities in order to bring forth such com- mitments. · Legal and other obstacles to the making of binding commitments would have consumed so much time that the opportunity would have passed if . this had been done. It is doubtful whether all participating li- braries understood clearly that they were expected to assume a moral obligation for continuing to purchase in the field in which they had been awarded high priority. Nev~r­ theless, whatever the extenuating circum- stances, we cannot escape the conclusion that any permanent program of cooperative ac- quisition will prove chimerical if it follows the precedent here exhibited in the emerg- ency project. So long as we aim a.t_ a frame- work of national acquis'ition through volun- tary and self-imposed obligation, our~,efforts will fail unless we are willing to as1~me a continuing responsibility, regardless of whether this responsibility continues to coin- cide with our .Jocal requirements . .I I£ such voluntary assu~I).s of continu'ng respon- sibility had been £~coming, no doubt the APRIL~ 1947 task of awarding priorities would hav~ been greatly simplified and no doubt also the re- sults would have been less susceptible of criticism. No Flexibility in ,.Priorities On July 22, I 946, the Library of Con- gress announced the "order of priorities in distribution" which, it said, was the result of the "conscientious and informed judgment of a committee representative of the broadest interests of research." With t'his appraisal there can be no quarrel. But in announcing the schedule, the Library of Congress made this statement: "Criticism of the schedule is invited; but, since it is obviously not feasible to reopen the matter of assignment for the purpose of the present project, it is hoped that criticism will be of a kind which may be usefully applied to later and more per- manent attempts in the field of cooperative acquisitions." Here we come to the second notable weakness of the present plan-an understandable and perhaps unavoidable weakness, but a weakness nevertheless. Conscientious and informed though the com- mittee were, and though they applied logical and reasonable criteria, it is nevertheless true that, first~ it was rrot the constituency but the· committee that established the cri- teria~ and second~ once the committee had spoken on the matter of priorities~ it was u ob- - viously not feasible to reopen the matter of assignment." In short, there was little op- portunity for discussion and agreement on criteria, particularly the important 'one of an assumption of continuing responsibility, and there was no opportunity whatever to appeal from the judgment of the committee once a priority had been assigned. Obvious- ly, this weakness proceeded from the emerg- ency nature of the program, ~et, before we can enter upon any permanent, planned pro- gram on a national basis, ea·ch participating institution must know well in advance and 105 as precisely as possible what its opportunities and responsibilities are. Class Number I88 It was the publication of the order . of priorities and distribution 'that brought forth the most vociferous criticism of the project. This criticism from heads of participating libraries was greatly magnified and intensi- fied as s~on as members of their faculties be- . gan examining the books themsdves. Class Number I88, for which 36 institutions had requested priorities, soon became the focus of almost all criticism. This class, German literature, naturally included enough copies in most cases to be distributed to all of the pardcipating libraries and not merely to those that had requested priorities in this classification. The -result,· particularly for many of the college libraries, was distressing.~ These institutions, by and large, had re- ceived low priorities in some of the more competitive classifications, such as art and the natural sciences. They were therefore receiving considerable quantities of novels and other vehicles of Nazi ideology, ma- terials that their faculties in German litera- ture regarded as beyond the pale even if literature were defined in the broadest terms. But they were not receiving, as a co~pensa­ tory reward, the more important works for · which the supply was drastically limited. Some of the larger rese~rch libraries, having high priorities in the more competitive classi- ficatio!ls, received these ·large quantities of so-called German literature more compla- cently; they were assured that this shoddy reflection of the Nazi mind, classed as Ger- man literature and distributed to all par- ticipants in the project, would be, for · them, offse~ by more desirable acquisitions in other pnont1es. But the professors of German literature in colleges and universities alike viewed the increasing piles of Class Number I88 with almost uniform scorn, some sug- gesting that it be burned, others that it be thrown in the wastebasket, and still others that it be returned whence it came. Though Class Number I 88 need not de- tain us in a critical appraisal of the project, sit;1ce obviously the criticism it brought forth will scarcely be pertinent in any long-range cooperative program, I nevertheless pause to make two observations. First, even the shoddiest of Nazi literature is not totally worthless for scholarly research. On the contrary, the materials _gathered under Class Number I88 may be of considerable im- portance to the psychologist delving into the motivations of human behavior, to the stu- dent of propaganda, to the musicologist for the study of the use of music as propaganda, to. the historian, and to many other special- ists in the lower reaches of human kind. Before the professor of German literature is allowed to send this material to the pulp mill, therefore, I would suggest that other disciplines not limited by preconceptions as to what constitutes literature, particularly the historians, be allowed to pass judgment. Order Number 4 Second, the materials gathered under Class Number I 88 enter into the coopera- tive acquisitions program and are distributed to all participating libraries, not because of any joint purchasing effort of American libraries, but as a result of one of the most shameful denials of the principles of free in- quiry ever made in the name of democracy. This travesty of the Hill of Rights was Order Number 4 o~ the Allied Control Au- thority, which was signed in Berlin on. May I3, I946. By this and subsequent regula- tions, . all owners of circulating libraries, bookshops, bookstores, and publishing houses, state and municipal libraries, and libraries of universities, secondary schools, and academies, were ordered to remove from their possession all books, pamphlets, mag- 106 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES ' azines, files of newspapers, albums of photo- graphs, manuscripts, documents, maps, plans, song - and music ·books, ,cinemato- graphic films and magic lantern slides, in- cluding, in the words of O~der Number 4, "everything intended for children of all ages," the contents of which embraced Nazi racial, militaristic, or imperialistic propa- ganda, antidemocratic or antireligious ideas, or attempted· to divide or create disrespect for the United Nations, or to interfere in any way with the process of military govern- ment. These directives not only brought forth the seizure of such Nazi materials but also effectively prevented further publi- cation of books and periodicals containing such proscribed ideas. The preamble to Order Number 4 contains the philosophy on which this far-reaching act of suppression was based : "Bearing in mind the danger presented by the National Socialist doctrine and in order to eradicate as soon as possible National · Socialist, Fascist, militarist and anti-democratic ideas in all forms in which they found expression throughout Ger-. many," the Allied Control Council pro- ceeded with its regulations. Thus three cen- · turies after John Milton wrote Areopagi- tica and more than a century and a half after- we incorporated the Bill of Rights in our substantive law, we, in the name of democracy and in the face of all historical precedent, subscribed to the essentially Nazi belief that ideas can be suppressed by sup- pressing boolcs. Instructions for the disposal of such seized materials, issued by the u.~. Office of Military Government for Ger- many on Sept. 10, 1946, by implication un- derscored the identity between the philoso- phy of Order Number 4 and the philosophy of Nazi Germany when, in providing for the pulping of German publications, these instructions underscored the statement that "under no conditions will any of the ma- terials collected be burned., APRIL~ 1947 The difference between the burning and pulping of books would scarcely be discerni- ble to such a devout exponent of the princi- ples of free inquiry as Thomas Jefferson, whose countrymen, acting in conjunction - with the representatives of other nations, _have thus betrayed on~ of the cardinal be- liefs held and defended by the spokesman for American democracy. The New York Times condemned Order Number 4 as "a way of making the Nazis martyrs," and the President and Executive Secretary of the American Library Association sent tele- grams of protest to President Truman and other officials in Washington. But most of our literary and learned journals passed the matter over in silence and Order Number 4 and the regulations for carrying out its philc:>sophy continue fo affront the beliefs on which libraries rest. Return German Materials I agree, therefore, with the professors of German literature who think that materials received in Class Number 188 should be re- turned, but not for the reasons they give. These materials, seized without moral or intellectual justification, perhaps even with- out legal justification, should either be re- turned or evaluated and provision be made for compensation. At the least, Order Number 4 and the philosophy on which it is based, should receive the most emphatic protest which we are capable of giving, should be re&cinded, and at least some of the copies of German publications that are now cluttering up the cooperative acquisitions project should be _returned to Germany. It would be well also if these evidences of the false promises and false hopes 4eld out by Nazi leaders should be made required reading for German youth. At any rate, we are obligated to the European Mission of the Library of Congress and to some officials in the Allied Military Government for the 107 ' fact that the entire mass of Nazi books seized in 9erman libraries and bookshops was not destroyed in the pulp mill through misguided zeal. Too Few Classifications The third major weakness of the coopera- tive acquisitions project arises from the fact that the number of classifications was too small. In any permanent system of coopera- tive division of responsibility, there must be a narrower definition of subjects. Under the present project, the University of Penn- sylvania, with the distinguished Lea Library among its collections, was not able to receive books on the Inquisition because it was un- willing to accept responsibility for every- thing in Class Number 19; Massachusetts Institute of Technology received a very low priority in mechanical engineering, although it contains one of the best collections on this subject in the country; and Princeton, with a strong position in art and architecture, fell into a similar low priority because it did not request an entire subject classifica- tion. In many cases, despite the fac~ that the committee gave due publicity to the mat- ter, some librarians evidently did not under- stand that willingness to take a whole classi- fication was one of the major requisites for a high priority. Moreover, a single subject in the present list of classifications sometimes received greater subdivision than other per- haps equally important subjects. Philoso- phy, for example, is divided into four cate- gories but medicine is confined to a single group. Consequently, a library specializing in dentistry was handicapped as to priority unless it was willing to take the entire cate- gory of medicine. Although most of the dissatisfaction with the cooperative acquisitions project arises, in the final analysis, because the number of copies is small and the demand is great, it is not likely that this condition will prevail in any long-range program for a division of responsibility among libraries. For current bo_oks we niay assume that, in general, a sufficient number of copies will be available for the necessary amount of duplication. Nevertheless, it is obvious that in C!ny long- range program we shall need a much larger number of classifications. We shall also need to realize that such a program, to be feasible, must be a positive assumption of responsibility as well as a negative willing- ness to refrain from ~ompetition where the supply of copies is small. It has been gen- erally said that the Farmington proposal would not restrain any library from acquir- ing any books it wishes to acquire. Never- theless, in any exploration of the possibilities of that proposal we should remember the circumstances under which the cooperative acquisitions project has been carried out- that is to say, when copies of a given work are severely limited, priorities should be es- tablished according to some logical and nat- ural scheme. Whether these priorities are imposed according to the criteria established · by the Downs committee or by other stand- ards, it will nevertheless be necessary on occasion for some libraries to yield in favor of others. Naturally when the book trade of the world has returned to something approach- ing normal, this negative aspect of coopera- tion will dwindle to relative insignificance. But always, in normal or abnormal times, the one inesca~able feature of a planned pro- gram of acquisitions for the country as a whole will be present-the necessity of com- mitments assuming respon~ibility for given subjects, however narrowly defined. Let it be remembered, too, that when this responsi- bility is assumed, our faculties will inevitably point to the trivia and trash that such categories include. This should not deter us in our comprehensive planning. Rather, it should bring to us the reali~ation of the 108 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES necessity of pointing out to our scholars the immense gaps that at prese~t exist under haphazard and unplanned methods of li- brary growth. The study of "Research Li- brary Acquisitions from Eight Countries" by Edwin E. Williams in the Library Quar- terly~ October 1945, p. 3I3-23, show some of the lamentable results of our former indi- vidualistic policies, imposed upon us for the most part . by scholars who have not given the same amount of attention to the total problem that librarians have given. A weakness of the cooperative acquisitions project and of all other proposals for planned library growth is the fact that we have not yet edud.ted the educators to the importance of these proposals. A Gig tic Project Some of us have been privileged to in_spect .the vast mechanism of the cooperative ac- quisitions project. More than six thousand wooden packing cases full of books, gathered from .many repositories in Europe, trans- ported to America, opened, divided into categories, correlated with the system of priorities established by the committee, and dispatched to I I 5 participating libraries, make an impressing spectacle. More than a million pieces of literature will have passed through this mechanism before the project is completed. When we remember that every book, and, what is worse, every issue of every periodical, has to be recorded and assigned to a participating library, we gain a new appreciation of the immensity of the task of distribution assumed by the Library of Congress. Whatever we may say about the defects and inequalities of the project- and there is much more that might be said- it is nevertheless true that the Library of Congress is carrying to completion an en- terprise that stands as a great landmark in the fast-growing movement toward greater cooperation among American research li- . braries. New Courses 1n Columbia Summer Session The School of Library Service, Columbia UniversitY,, announces two new courses in its summer program 1 July 7-August 15. Julia Wright Merrill, fo~mer chief of the Department of Information and Advisory Services of A.L.A., will conduct a course in rural, county, and r~gional libraries. Combined with offerings -in rural sociology and rural education which will be available on the Columbia campus, this course affords an unusual opportunity for librarians interested in the growing field of library extension. The second course is a revival by Ernest J. Reece, Melvil Dewey Professor at Columbia, of his former seminar in education for librarian- ship. This offering is intended for libra~y school graduates who have had some experience in teaching or whQ have a definite interest in joining a library school faculty. Parallel courses · will be available at Teachers College in curriculum development and teaching methods. The new courses in rural libraries and education for librarianship are in addition to the offerings in the bachelor of science and master of science programs regularly scheduled for the summer session. APRIL~ 1947 109