College and Research Libraries By DEAN P. LOCKWOOD Cooperative Acquisitions in .the United States Versus a World Library I I I HAVE BEEN asked to represent the small college libraries in a 'discussion of the Boyd-MacLeish-Metcalf plan for coopera- tive acquisitions in the interest of national resources. By this plan one copy of every book pub- lished anywhere in the world, which might conceivably be of interest to a research · worker in America, shall be acquired by at least one research library in the United States. The books thus acquired shall be promptly cataloged and duly listed. The modus operandi shall be as follows: each cooperating libr-ary shall assume re- sponsibility for complete coverage in a given I subject or area. The entire field of human knowledge (subdivided according to the L.C. or a similar classification) shall be ap- portioned out to the cooperating research libraries under a central steering committee. As a preliminary trial, however, the acquisi- tions shall be limited to publications in the Latin alphabet. II It is my opinion that small college li- braries can have no direct share in this plan. I find two major obstacles to their participa- tion: (I) Any area of knowledge in which a small college could assume responsibility would be infinitesimal. A nationwide organi- ·zation of pin-points of knowledge would be 1 Paper presented at the Conference of Eastern College Librarians, Columbia University, Nov. 30, 1946. unmanage;:tble. Small colleges may have spe- cial collections, but such collections are only hobbies-they are scarcely even drops in the ocean of knowledge. Haverford, for instance, has Quakeriana but has never been able to acquire everything published. In a field of this sort, moreover, the collector's chief effort is expended on unprinted or irregularly printed materials, not in the book trade. ( 2) The small college library cannot ex- pand indefinitely. A small colle. is one whose enrolment is limited to a 'l's-than- average total. Consequently, the size of its · library is limited; and for this as well as for. pedagogical reasons the small college library must be wholly selective. For instance, Haver~ · ford College, limited to four hunared stu- dents, may not reasonably go beyond a library of two hundred thousand volumes. "Beyond that figure we begin to discard at~ other end. There is no room in such a libr~ry for unlimited expansion in any field of re- search. The budget will not allow it; the faculty would not ·approve it. III ·I turn now to general · criticism of the whole plan. In this, I represent an indivi- dualistic view which is characteristic (I believe) of the small college. Having de- voted my life (in a humble way) to pure scholarship, I am in a position to criticize the plan as a consumer. In my opinion the whole scheme is im- practical and fundamentally unsound. You cannot devise a system which will take the place of individual initiative. The proposed plan is a will-o'-the-wisp whi"ch has appeared in many forms. Some- one is always trying to organize the futme, 110 COLLEGE d.ND RESEARCH LIBRLI.RIES to anticipate history. For instance, historians (in moments of desperation) have been known to say: "Let's preserve everything~ so that there w~ll be no more controversy in the future!" But God forbid that we have a world of Morgenthau diaries: there would not be even standing room for the living. Text-critics have been known to say: "Let's collate all the manuscripts and all the editions, and produce a definitive text, never to be questioned!" But no problem involv- ing human judgment is ever definitively set- tled. Librarians have been known to say: "Let's a!l get together and catalog all the manuscripts in the world, once and ·for al'l !" ~ut thealibrarians did not know that th~t Is mor~an all the competent scholars m the ~odd could do in a hundred ·years. So now other librarians say: "Let's ac- quire av the/ books in advance; then we won't be pestered by these scholars asking us for something we haven't got." Alas, scholars are as ingenious as the devil, and can think of more things than were ever dreamed of in the librarian's philosophy. Two Separate Problems But I . am not denying that there is a problem. Actu~lly, there are two problems, and I am n<;>t sure that they are clearly dis- tinguishable. They are: (I) how to supply American scholars with as many books as possible here at home and ( 2) how most conveniently to guarantee one copy of every book in the world to research workers. To the second of. these problems (which is by far the more important) the committee ad- ded "in America." This· qualification is pertinent to the first problem, but not to the second. I deplore the narrow national- istic point of view. Without remitting our efforts to supply as many foreign books as possible to American libraries, let us strive APRIL~ 1947 in the larger field to guarantee one copy of every book in the world to the research workers of the world! As to how this may be done, I shall presently offer some sugges-" tions. Returning to the proposed plan for co- - operative acquisitions by American libraries, is it not a whole generation behind the times? In a world which is rapidly shrink- ing geographically, would it not be cheaper and surer and quicker to send the scholar to the books he needs than to try to bring all the books in the world to the scholar before he needs them? Mohammed (in his day) was wiser-he went to the moun- tain. Still, many voices cry out in consterna- tion: "How can we keep up with the pro- cession?" This is an old problem, now grown acute. It is not confined to the li- brary field. It prevades all modern life and thought-education, scholarship, human knowledge in general. We are faced with an intellectual world expanding at an astronomical rate. The areas covered by modern learning are so diverse and so vast that a single individual can hardly even survey them-let alone en- compass therri (a feat which Aristotle was , the last man to achieve). Tlie activities of the human mind are unbounded-and grow- ing more so every day and hour! Books in All Languages As a first step, then, toward solving this problem, we are offered a tentative acquisi- tion of books in the Latin alphabet-a test case which so dodges the real difficulties as to be practically useless. Scholarship krtows no boundaries of alphabet. Only when we get books on every subject in Russian, He- brew, Arabic, Gr~ek, Turkish, Armenian, Hindustani, and what not, will we approach our goal. I am aware of the fact that we are promised them later~ but success in ac- 111 ' quiring our own kind of books is no guaran- tee of success in the far more difficult field. Even in the case of books printed in the one alphabet legible to us, I doubt whether we will ever get half the guarantors we need to cover all knowledge. Even univer- sities have other demands on their income. And as for the books in strange alphabets, I have a feeling that we will never get them. Even when we get books from all coun- tries (irrespective of alphabet) , ·we are promised only those "which may conceivably be of interest to a research worker in Amer- ica." And who_ is to decide what will be of interest to research workers? Librarians · are not competent to do so. The Army (and other government departments) are not competent to do so-as proved by the melancholy results of the current foreign acquisitions project. Never again, after this experience, will I sign a blank check to the order of a cooperative purchasing commit- tee. Even the scholars who are going to use the books are not competent to do so: they can hardly be expected to foresee every fu- ture development and trend of hum~n thought. These selected books, . temporarily to be chosen from those which have passed the nationality test, "will then be scattered all over the land, in accordance with an ap- proved classification of knowledge. So then -provided the chain has no weak links ( lo- cal failure of funds, changes of policy, etc.) -the scholar will have the satisfaction of knowing that the books he wants are here, but (alas) distributed all over the United States from San Francisco to Boston. Sure- ly a· single location would be far more sensi- ble. But even so, this would merely be one step m a syst-em of nationali~tic duplication, by which all books from other countries would be brought to our country, and all our books would be taken to each of ~any other coun- tries, and so on ad infinitum-a clumsy and ponderous meth,od, if ever there was one ! 117orld JSibrary Omitting the mmor problem of how to acquire as many good books as possible for the United States, there can be but one logical answer to the major problem (how to guarantee one copy of every book in the world to res~arcli workers-and I add, "of the world"). The answer is: a United N a- tions library! One world, one library! Wherever the UN or UNESCO shall de- cide (be it in Europe, Asia, Africa Q.f Amer- ica-but preferably not in Americ'at, where the cost of living is too ~igh), let us c;reate a new Alexandria, to which each cultural unit shall contribute its whole output of printed matter: a haven for scholars, and a paradise for librarians. I envisage not a single library building, but a city of libraries. The solution is an- alogous to that of the language problem: many mother tongues, but one international language. So each country will keep its national library, but will send one duplicate of every piece of printed maher to the in- ternational center. Starting 'Yith current publications, ways and means of supplying the older materiah can be worked out. Th€ location should be in a dry and salu- brious climate. Stratosphere travel to this one center will of course be easier than a series of visits to all or many of the national capitals of the world. I believe that each nation will be willing and anxiQus to con- tribute such a sample copy of its annual out- put of printed materials to the world library. 112 CQJSJSEGE AND RESEARCH JSIBRARIES .