College and Research Libraries B . EDITING FOR PUBLICATION i . Pre-typing, editing copy and final typing (at $.32 per entry) 2,880,000 C . L A Y O U T OF COPY FOR PHOTOGRAPHING 3 2 , 4 ° ° D . ADMINISTRATIVE AND OVERHEAD COSTS 3 I 5 > 9 5 5 T o t a l Preparatory Costs $3>79I>455 E . PRINTING AND BINDING Format: Same as A r m e d Forces Medical Library Catalog, 4 columns, approx. 6 0 % reduction, 90 entries to page, 1000 pages per volume. (See sample pages 1-6) 1000 sets of 89 volumes each ($7.50 per v o l u m e ) 667,500 T o t a l cost of 1000 copies of 4-column publication $4,458,955 For 500 sets at $9 per vol., deduct $267,000. For 200 sets at $10 per vol., deduct $489,500. Alternative Format: 3 columns, approx. 4 0 % reduction, 50 entries to page, 1000 pages to volume. (See sample page 7) 1000 sets of 164 volumes each ($7.50 per v o l u m e ) $1,230,000 Preparatory costs 3)79!,455 T o t a l cost of 1000 copies of 3-column publication $5,021,455 For 500 sets at $9 per vol., deduct $492,000. For 200 sets at $ i c per vol., deduct $902,000. By A N D R E W D . O S B O R N T h e Future of the Union List of Serials Dr. Osborn is assistant librarian, Harvard University Library. THE Union List of Serials (ULS) is one of the greatest landmarks of American li- brarianship. After nearly thirty years of con- stant use it has come to be recognized as a tool of proven and indispensable value. It is a monument to Harry Miller Lydenberg and others for its promotion and planning; to Win- ifred Gregory Gerould for its compilation and editing on a realistic basis; and to the H. W . Wilson Company for its successful publication in the face of tremendous difficulties. Great and lasting credit attaches to all who have been associated with the work. A thirty-year program is coming to comple- tion this fall with the publication of the second and final supplement to the second edition of the ULS. Together with its supplements the second edition records, for more than five hundred libraries in the United States and Canada, the holdings of periodicals and peri- odical-like publications whose first issue ap- peared previous to 1950. The second supple- ment rounds out the ULS as we have known it. This supplement should be bought by li- braries because it will not be superseded by anything now being planned and because it has the record of wartime and postwar publica- tions. Impressive as the record of the ULS is, the full story is not told until the three comple- mentary union lists are added: for the serial publications of foreign governments (1932), American newspapers ( 1 9 3 7 ) , and the publica- tions of international congresses (1938). None of these other lists went into a second edition or a supplement, so it has been a matter of concern to librarians to realize that the union-list program has not gone ahead uni- formly. Nevertheless the various lists repre- 26 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES sent a solid accomplishment, and the next gen- eration of librarians must find the way and the means to continue a task so excellently started. N O T H I R D E D I T I O N The Joint Committee on the Union List of Serials, which for a number of years has been responsible for the union-list program, has decided that there will be no new edition of the ULS as such; likewise that there will be no more supplements. The committee real- ized that the breaking point had been reached, in terms of both editorial costs and the burden to contributing libraries, particularly the larger ones which have been called upon to assist the editorial work by providing much biblio- graphical aid in addition to the cost of check- ing. It was also realized that the old program involved much repetitive work, since libraries that checked for the first edition generally had to do all the work over again for the second: so a program should be sought which would permit the reporting of a title once and for all. Accordingly the Joint Committee on the Union List of Serials has recommended that the first phase of union-list activities be con- cluded with the second supplement to the sec- ond edition, and that a new phase should be instituted forthwith. In this new phase the Joint Committee is lending its weight to two developments, both of which are possible through Library of Congress statesmanship and leadership. The first of these is a monthly list, cumulated at least annually, of serials that began publication on or after January I, 1950. This work, called New Serial Titles (NST), began publication in January, 1953, although a good many months had to elapse before its true nature as a union list could be realized. The second develop- ment is a punched-card file, under active dis- cussion at the Library of Congress but still to be realized, of virtually all serial titles, new and old, in American and Canadian libraries. Once this program is well under way repeti- tive work should to a large extent be elimi- nated, and there should be adequate control over serial resources in the two countries. N E W SERIAL TITLES The ULS was conceived primarily as a reference tool for the location of sets. It is true that the smaller bulk of the individual supplements gave them added though limited value as an acquisition tool. But it was left for NST to provide real book-selection value through the relatively small monthly issues. So the new publication is designed to serve both acquisition and location purposes: the former through the individual numbers, the latter through the cumulations. The plan is to supply at least one holding for each original listing, and to add further locations in the annual cumulations. The scope of NST reflects the universal outlook that characterizes the new phase of union-list activities. Some types formerly ex- cluded (e.g., annual reports and house organs) will now be comprised. But newspapers, certain categories of municipal documents as yet to be defined, and some minor types, such as comics, will still be excluded. Moreover there will be limited listing of United States government documents and United Nations documents. The Library of Congress will supply the entries for these two classes of serials and will specify that complete sets are usually found in depository libraries. One other qualification: titles which began publica- tion prior to January 1, 1950, will be ex- cluded, even though they were not included in any previous union list. The Joint Committee on the Union List of Serials has introduced a new concept into the picture of serial control, namely that of pri- mary bibliographical responsibility. As li- braries report new serial holdings to the Library of Congress, one or preferably two of them will be asked to undertake the primary responsibility for maintaining a complete file and for reporting to the Library of Congress, whenever desirable, essential data relating to the file (cessation of publication, change of title, etc.). Consideration is being given to the possibility of publishing such data in NST. If a library accepts primary bibliographical responsibility for a given title, it should fol- low up more strictly than otherwise to see that its set is complete. It should have in its files some distinguishing mark for the titles it has assumed responsibility for; a distinctive color for the relevant cards on the visible index, a tab, or a tickler system of some kind. In this way work for NST can at the same time constitute a contribution to follow-up work, an area in which libraries have gen- erally been notoriously weak. If a library cannot find the means to do thorough follow- up work on all its serials, it can help by paying JANUARY, 1954 27 proper attention to the files it undertakes to maintain complete. So the introduction of the idea of primary bibliographical responsibility is an attempt to guarantee the completeness of one or two files per title, and at the same time to have the history of an item made generally available through the cooperative interest of no more than two libraries. Since the Library of Con- gress is very much concerned with the prob- lem of serial control, and since it has—very roughly speaking—about one serial title out of every two held by libraries in the United States and Canada, it naturally would be one of the two libraries accepting bibliographical responsibility in a high proportion of the cases. The other would be chosen from among the institutions that are ready to cooperate; es- pecially a library closely connected with the issuance of a serial (e.g., a state library for the serial documents issued by its own state, or a university library for the serial publica- tions of its own university.) NST then has immense possibilities for ex- tending to serials a larger measure of control than ever before. It is in effect a current union list of wide scope. And in addition it is a long awaited book-selection tool that should be checked regularly to see what new titles should be acquired by gift, purchase, or exchange. Contributing libraries must provide the entries to supplement those of the Library of Congress so the success of NST will be guaranteed. T H E F U L L PROGRAM Now to take stock. NST is gradually tak- ing shape. Further, we have the four bibliog- raphies produced during the first phase of ULS activity. These tools must be husbanded to serve libraries for many years to come. It may not be possible to replace an out-of-print volume, and it may be a number of years before the introduction of the punched-card system can provide an adequate substitute. So we find ourselves in a transition period during which we must safeguard the values we hold and actively plan for the still better years ahead when the critical problem of serial control will have been reduced to more man- ageable proportions. The essence of the new program is the establishment and maintenance at the Library of Congress of a national union list of serials on I B M cards or a similar control method. This consummation must awTait the procure- ment of the necessary funds, approximately $1,000,000. In the formative stages contribu- ting libraries will be asked to go through their official catalogs to report all serials they hold. That will be a less expensive process than the preparation and checking of preliminary check- lists such as were used in the compilation of the ULS. With such an inclusive tool in existence, libraries will still make use of the bibliog- raphies provided in the first phase of union- list work. They may well have recourse to local and regional lists, too, before they call on the national union list in Washington. But, over and beyond this the punched-card records can and must lead to an active publication program. Probably there will never be a pub- lished alphabetical list of all titles, though it is possible to think of a number of centers in the United States and Canada where copies of the punched cards can be housed and serviced, provided these centers are ready to finance the operation. Instead of an alphabeti- cal list, we should look forward to the con- tinuous publication of topical, country, and regional lists, plus lists of the holdings of individual libraries. The possibilities in this direction are enormous. A T I M E L Y D E V E L O P M E N T Future historians may well refer to the next fifty years of library work as the age of serials. The latest annual report of the Library of Congress lends support to this possibility by saying that we are now in an era of serial publication. It says: In the t h r e e - q u a r t e r s o f a c e n t u r y since 1876, the flood o f serial p u b l i c a t i o n s has c o n - tinued u n a b a t e d . W e n o w find o u r s e l v e s in an era o f serial r a t h e r than b o o k p u b l i c a t i o n . T h i s m u s h r o o m i n g o f serial p u b l i c a t i o n m a y b e attributed, in l a r g e m e a s u r e , to the rise o f p o p u l a r e d u c a t i o n , the i n c r e a s e in the n u m b e r o f scholars, scientists, and technicians, all d e - s i r i n g to c o m m u n i c a t e w i t h o n e another, and the g r o w t h o f d e m o c r a c y w i t h its c o n c e p t o f r e p o r t i n g at least a n n u a l l y to the p e o p l e the p r o g r e s s and activities o f a g o v e r n m e n t , an institution, o r a society.1 Moreover, the Library of Congress esti- mates that 75 per cent of the publications it (Continued on page 118) 1 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress, 1 9 5 1 - 52, P- 83. 28 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES T h e Future of the Union List of Serials (Continued from page 28) receives a r e s e r i a l in f o r m , t r u l y a s t a g g e r i n g f i g u r e . A n d C h a r l e s H . B r o w n has i n d i c a t e d the p r o m i n e n t r o l e that serials p l a y in the field of science, by his s a m p l i n g s , w h i c h s h o w t h a t f r o m 9 0 t o 95 p e r c e n t o f the b i b l i o g r a p h i c a l f o o t n o t e s in scientific p u b l i c a t i o n s r e f e r t o a r t i c l e s in serial p u b l i c a t i o n s . M o r e than e v e r , serials c a n be c a l l e d the b a c k b o n e of the r e - s e a r c h l i b r a r y . H a r r y M i l l e r L y d e n b e r g w a s r i g h t w h e n he w a n t e d t o c o l l e c t serials and c u r r e n t p a m p h l e t s f o r the N e w Y o r k P u b l i c L i b r a r y , f o r he k n e w t h a t o u t o f such p u b l i c a - tions w o u l d c o m e the m o n o g r a p h s o f the f u t u r e . I n the c o m p a r a t i v e l y n e a r f u t u r e w e c a n anticipate the a p p l i c a t i o n of t e l e v i s i o n f a c s i m i l e r e p r o d u c t i o n m a c h i n e s t o l i b r a r y p u r p o s e s . T h e r e s e a r c h l i b r a r i e s of the c o u n t r y s h o u l d b e f o r e t o o l o n g be linked up in a n e t w o r k o f these m a c h i n e s , so the r e s o u r c e s of o n e c a n w i t h o u t d e l a y be m a d e a v a i l a b l e f o r all, and at a r e a s o n a b l e c o s t . W h e n t h a t day c o m e s t h e r e s h o u l d be a l a r g e r m e a s u r e o f b i b l i o g r a p h i c a l c o n t r o l o v e r serial p u b l i c a t i o n s than w e n o w e n j o y , since w e c a n f a i r l y anticipate that the g r e a t e s t d e m a n d w i l l f a l l o n serials. A n d h e r e i n t o o lies p a r t o f the r e a s o n f o r d e v e l o p - ing the idea o f p r i m a r y b i b l i o g r a p h i c a l r e - sponsibility in the c o l l e c t i n g of serials. S o w e c a n see the e v e r - i n c r e a s i n g signifi- c a n c e o f the u n i o n - l i s t p r o g r a m . I n the y e a r s that lie a h e a d , w i t h their e m p h a s i s o n the c o o p e r a t i v e c o l l e c t i n g and u t i l i z a t i o n o f serials, w e a r e f o r t u n a t e in h a v i n g the e n t e r p r i s e and l e a d e r s h i p o f the N a t i o n a l L i b r a r y in W a s h - i n g t o n t o g u i d e us. B u t the L i b r a r y o f C o n - g r e s s n e e d s the f u l l c o o p e r a t i o n and s u p p o r t of the c o n t r i b u t i n g l i b r a r i e s , f o r the b u r d e n is v e r y g r e a t . W e m u s t n o t rest o n o u r l a u r e l s . W e m u s t n o t sit b a c k and say t h a t the b a c k of the u n i o n - l i s t p r o b l e m has been b r o k e n , n o m a t t e r h o w p r o u d w e m a y be o f past a c - c o m p l i s h m e n t s . A s f a r as the ULS is c o n - c e r n e d o u r p h i l o s o p h y m u s t be that the r e w a r d o f g o o d w o r k is m o r e w o r k . Now Available: ACRL MICROCARD SERIES No. 1. Anderson, Yeatman, Communica- tion Problems, of Exhibits and the Ap- plication of Modern Museum Tech- niques to Library Exhibits. 46 1, 2 cards, $ 0 . 5 0 . No. 2. Kester, Martha. Stephen A. Douglas: a Bibliographical Study. 55 1, 2 cards, $ 0 . 5 0 . No. 3. Talmadge, Robert Louis. Prac- tices and Policies of the Reference Departments of Large University Li- braries Concerning the Preparation of Bibliographies. 65 1, 2 cards, $ 0 . 5 0 . These first three titles as well as those which will f o l l o w shortly are published by the University of Rochester Press for the Association of College and Reference Li- braries. Individual or standing orders should be sent to Margaret K. Toth, Micro- publication Service, University of Roches- ter Press, Rochester 3, N . Y . Manuscripts to be considered for publication should be sent to Lawrence S. Thompson, chairman of the A C R L Publications Committee, at the University of Kentucky. STATE LAV/5 ON EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN by Dr. Edith L. Fisch, Member of the New York and Federal Bars, and Professor Mortimer D. Schwartz, Law Librarian, Uni- versity of Oklahoma and Member of the Maine Bar. 390 p. $7.50 1953 A reference guide f o r lawyers and for all employers of women, this b o o k is a com- pilation of all state laws affecting the em- ployment of women or intended to provide equality of opportunity and equality of treatment for women in private employment, p u b l i c employment, self-employment, etc. A n introductory section traces the his- tory of state laws dealing with discrimina- tion against women and with employment of women. T H E S C A R E C R O W P R E S S 3 3 4 1 Prospect Avenue, N . W . W a s h i n g t o n 7 , D . C . 118 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES