College and Research Libraries By GUY R. LYLE Southern University Libraries in the Twentieth Century TH E GOVERNOR1 has offered us a new look at the twentieth-century South. President Richards has asked me to make the application to university li- braries. When I think of a region in terms of university libraries, I think first of library cooperation. Library co- operation is a natural among neighbors. I want to speak briefly, then, of the fac- tors which influence university library cooperation in the South. When a writer acknowledges a debt for the sources of his ideas, he uses a footnote. I wish to begin with a verbal footnote in large type. During the past two years I have had the opportunity to sit in on meetings of the Southeastern Interlibrary Research Facility, popularly known as SIRF. For those of you who may not know about SIRF, I should say simply that it is a cooperative library group composed of six libraries in Flori- da and Georgia, represented by universi- ty administrators, head librarians, and representatives of the Southern Regional Education Board, which is also a mem- ber and a very important one. SIRF has a full-time librarian executive secretary and an office at the Southern Regional Education Board headquarters in At- lanta. I have listened carefully at the SIRF 1 Governor Clements of T e n n e s s e e , an earlier speaker at the same session. Mr. Lyle is director of libraries, Emory University. This paper was pre- sented at the General Session, ALA Con- ference, Miami Beach, June 22, 1956. meetings. If it seems to those in the au- dience who have also attended these meetings that I have developed the sen- sitivity of a photographic plate, let me emphasize that these are my personal views—that I am not presuming to speak for SIRF—even though I owe much of what I have to say to my observations there. One more prefatory note. Library co- operation in the South is not as remark- able as its press notices, but it has a record of solid accomplishment. It would be easy for me to stress the accomplish- ment, but I have a horror of repeating what is already thoroughly reported and recorded. T h e outsider, looking in. would immediately point to the dis- tinguished career of Louis R . Wilson and his efforts in library cooperation, would hail the successful venture in in- terlibrary cooperation between Duke and Chapel Hill, the establishment of the Joint University Library in Nash- ville and the union catalog center at Nashville, the establishment of the Un- ion Catalogue of the Atlanta-Athens Area as a part of the University Center program there, the comprehensive de- scription of library resources in the area by Robert B. Downs, Richard B. Harwell and others, and most especially the coop- erative efforts spearheaded by the South- eastern Library Association and its off- ers. I feel sure these accomplishments are well known to all of you. I am sure also that you and I will agree that these accomplishments have been truly out- standing. I am equally sure you do not 386 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES wish me to take your time repeating the story once again. Rather, in developing the background on university library cooperation in the region, let me suggest three factors which affect cooperation and relate them to the specifics of what may be accomplished. First, the central importance of na- tional library cooperative effort cannot be over-emphasized. Important as the force of regionalism is, it should not lead us to secede from the United States. No single library lives in bibliographical isolation; neither can the region. For ex- ample, on the one hand, less than 50 per cent of the titles searched by readers in the Union Catalogue of the Atlanta- Athens Area since September, 1955, were located in the area. Seventy-five per cent of Emory's interlibrary borrowings this year came from libraries outside the South. On the other hand, cooperation at the national level has done much to unite the resources of the world of books. Southern librarians team up with their colleagues in other parts of the country to establish a national pool of foreign newspapers on microfilm. South- ern librarians join with librarians in the East, Middle West, and Far West in tap- ping the federal treasury to offset their fiscal limitations in promoting library ex- tension services. Southern scholars bene- fit as much as their colleagues from Maine to Minnesota through the serv- ices of the National Union Catalog. Many other examples might be given, but it should be clear from these few illustrations why our first obligation as individual librarians and as state and regional library associations is to pro- mote bibliographical organization and programs at the national level. They have proved worth while and much re- mains to be done. In the second place, we recognize that the coordination of research collections must be identified with strong, healthy entities. Only two libraries in the South have as many as a million volumes and one of these is almost outside continental United States. Mere numbers is a crude measure of strength, but when the di- versity of subject matter demanded by the range of university studies is taken into account, it is readily apparent that few southern university libraries have the collections necessary to support their present graduate and research programs. The lacks are not in peripheral areas; they may be characterized as an absence of the principal standard treatises, source editions, and periodicals in the basic disciplines, without which higher research is impracticable. In spite of re- cent gains, we have less to spend on our college and university libraries than any other region in the country. The South spends $309 per thousand population for college and university libraries. The northeast and north central regions struggle along on $425, while the far west has to be content with $560. We feel that this deficiency must be made up. Cooperation will not make libraries strong if they are inadequate to begin with. It takes time, money, and great effort to build wisely selected research collections. We are not deluding our- selves into thinking that we can achieve greatness by drawing closer together a mass of mediocrity. Even though we may be able to draw a chart showing there is no overlapping in our library collections, the chart won't show the volumes we don't have, without which higher research will not be possible. Parenthetically, I should like to add that because of the economies frequently identified with cooperation, there is real danger that administrators, trustees, and legislators may be misled into thinking that cooperation may make up for the deficiencies in our individual library book budgets. The force of this opinion does not arise in theory but from prac- tical experience. I recall that shortly after a meeting of SIRF in Atlanta, SEPTEMBER, 1956 387 there appeared an editorial in one of the metropolitan newspapers stating that through their cooperative efforts six li- braries in Georgia and Florida expected to save as much as two million dollars in the next five years. N o one at the SIRF meetings, as I recall it, particularly stressed the economies of cooperation, and no one, for certain, remotely sug- gested the idea of any such saving as this. Nevertheless the news was spread abroad, and inasmuch as the amount of the saving is only slightly less than the probable combined book budgets of the six institutions for the next five years, the reader of the editorial might readily surmise that if we cooperated just a little more vigorously the book budgets of the six libraries could be entirely liquidated. In the third place, we recognize that the most effective and efficient method of coordinating resources is not open to us, at least not at the present. As we all know, university libraries could build stronger libraries cooperatively and more economically if there were a di- vision of the field of collecting. Such a division necessarily depends upon the willingness on the part of scholars and university administrators to discourage the graduate offerings in a particular subject or subjects when a quality j o b is being done at some other institution in the region. This is the point where the professor's interest in cooperation be- comes merely academic. As a matter of fact, I am inclined to think that the scholar who is interested in any kind of library cooperation is the exception rather than the rule. Talk to him about placing his departmental collection in the main library where the books will be more readily available to the uni- versity public as a whole and he reacts as though you were rubbing sandpaper —the double-zero number—on his stom- ach ulcer. Talk to him about substitut- ing interlibrary loan for the purchase of an expensive journal file which he believes he or his students may con- ceivably use some day and you pump another pint of sulphuric acid into his system. And as Dr. Robert D. Leigh of Columbia has pointed out, "Few indeed are the administrators who accept the notion that any field of learning should be assigned permanently to a sister insti- tution, along with the major responsi- bility for maintaining the library collec- tions in that field."2 It is not the j o b of the librarian to reconcile these competi- tive views and aspirations of scholars and university administrators, but until the latter achieve a greater measure of success in allocating the areas of gradu- ate work and research, the most direct and effective route to interlibrary co- operation is roadblocked. These, then, are the three principal factors that must be taken into account when we plan the machinery of inter- library cooperation in the South. Con- versely, I feel that any plan of coopera- tion which contradicts or ignores these factors will fail in its purpose. Now, as to the specifics of what may be accomplished in the immediate fu- ture. In W o r l d War II it was found that the most effective method of advance was to press on where you are strong, rather than to reinforce where you are weak. W e are strong and well estab- lished in our interlibrary lending prac- tice. Not all faculty members have re- alized the significance of a free flow of interlibrary loans, nor reacted to its pos- sibilities. T h e more the scholar realizes its advantages, the less prejudiced he will be about other forms of library co- operation. A material improvement in interlibrary loan service is possible with- out overstraining the library. For a number of years in the south- east, and I expect it is true of other re- gions, there has been a kind of unwrit- 2 " T h e Background of Interlibrary Cooperation," California Librarian, X V I I ( 1 9 5 6 ) , 123-124. 388 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES ten code in force among neighboring li- braries which provides for a more liberal policy of interlibrary loan than the na- tional code w o u l d seem to allow. N o t all libraries adhere to the unwritten code partly because of a tiptoe caution o n the part of the librarian or library commit- tee, but chiefly, I suspect, because the borrowing library is hesitant about ask- ing f o r material whose loan is discour- aged by the national code. W e have been raised, you know, to l o o k u p o n interlibrary loans as a courtesy or favor one library renders to another. Perhaps at the regional level we should regard it as a duty to lend and not a favor to ask. T h e kind of lending restricted by the national code includes current fic- tion, current issues of periodicals, do- mestic in-print books, books for class use, rare books, a high percentage of the books basic f o r a thesis, a large number of titles at one time, and works difficult and expensive to pack. T h e statement covering the lending of microfilm is in- adequate and there is n o mention of mi- crocards and microprint. Certain librar- ies in the southeast and in other areas are lending many types of material re- stricted by the national code and experi- encing n o difficulty in d o i n g so. T h e r e - fore, it w o u l d seem likely that a revision of the code for regional purposes to in- corporate the liberal lending policies which many libraries are n o w practicing w o u l d furnish a salutary stimulus to in- terlibrary lending in the region. Secondly, we could profit greatly by the publication of regional u n i o n lists and guides to special collections and types of research materials where the j o b is not or cannot be d o n e at the national level. T o close the gap between the Union List of Serials and New Serials Titles, for example, by compiling and publishing a supplement to the former w o u l d be tremendously helpful in lo- cating hundreds of journal files acquired by southern university libraries in the past seven years and f o r determining titles of journals not available anywhere in the South. A n o t h e r f o r m of library cooperation that might be reinforced has largely gone unheralded. It consists of infor- mal agreements among neighbor li- braries to avoid needless duplication of expensive sets, the relocation of par- tial sets where it is mutually advanta- geous, and the occasional joint under- taking of an expensive purchase or mi- crofilming j o b . O n e set of Adams Papers, or Early American Imprints, is suffi- cient for all users in the Atlanta-Athens area even though each set is held by a different library. T h i s kind of coopera- tion goes o n all the time; it does not de- pend u p o n formal organization rein- forced by binding agreements or sweet- ened by a grant of f o u n d a t i o n money. Its usefulness w o u l d be extended if the acquisition of these monumental re- search publications were promptly re- ported and the information distributed to the principal research libraries in the region. Photoduplication services, imagina- tively used, afford a powerful stimulus to library cooperation. T h e feasibility of a single agency in each state undertaking a newspaper microfilming program of its local newspapers has already been dem- onstrated in Florida, Louisiana, Ala- bama, Kentucky, and Georgia. In these states the state university library o r the state historical agency has undertaken the task of filming local newspapers in the state which are not already available o n film f r o m the publisher o r in some other library. A l t h o u g h the experiment is limited in scope, partly through want of funds and partly through the neces- sity of developing cooperative machin- ery in accordance with actual local re- quirements, it has already demonstrated its practicability and convinced those w h o are familiar with it that it is an (Continued on page 422) SEPTEMBER, 1956 389 without isolating them f r o m those f o r related materials already in the catalog. In the o p i n i o n of the library staff, the benefits of the project far outweigh the difficulties involved and the time and effort spent. T h e catalog is n o w more accurate and complete because some er- rors in cataloging, typing, and filing have been eliminated. Statistics of the number of cards withdrawn f r o m the catalog were not kept, but the removal of cards for see also references, inverted titles, and unnecessary series d i d result in a slight reduction of the size of the catalog. T h e librarians believe that they learned much about the b o o k collection represented by the cards in their particu- lar section of the catalog. T h e reference librarian also says that she learned a great deal about cataloging and can bet- ter interpret the b o o k collection f r o m the catalog. She reports that she actually misses her daily stint of card catalog re- vision! Southern University Libraries in the Twentieth Century (Continued from page 389) indispensable part of any program of interlibrary cooperation. Finally, the university libraries of the South have felt the need for some broad- ly based organization in the region to serve (1) as a clearing house and dis- cussion g r o u n d f o r cooperative projects and (2) to give direction, guidance, and support to those that are deemed suffi- ciently important. T h e genesis and spirit of this idea is to be f o u n d in SIRF, the Southeastern Interlibrary Research Fa- cility. S I R F as n o w defined, however, is limited to library cooperation between university libraries in Georgia and Flori- da; if the regional aims of the Southern Regional Education Board are to be car- ried out, S I R F should become a genu- inely regional library cooperative organ- ization. T h i s will come about, it seems to me, inevitably, but the immediate r o a d b l o c k to expanding S I R F is the cost to the participating libraries of main- taining a strong central organization to give thrust and m o m e n t u m to the ideas for cooperative action generated by the librarians of the region. If the Southern Regional Education Board c o u l d see its way clear to maintaining and financing a library department, particularly in the next few years when southern university libraries are straining every dollar to strengthen their collections and services, it w o u l d greatly speed u p the machinery of interlibrary cooperation and enable us to serve scholarship better in the Southeast. I am aware that the proposal for establishing a library department o f the Southern Regional Education Board is one which is asking the board to u n - dertake an additional financial responsi- bility of some magnitude. O n the other hand, each library will be contributing substantially f r o m its own funds and staff time in assisting the department t o carry out specific cooperative biblio- graphic projects. T h e extension I sug- gest w o u l d provide additional services beyond what could be provided by a li- brary association staffed with purely vol- untary assistance. It is the kind of ex- tension which I feel sure the Southern Regional Education Board, of which our principal speaker is an important mem- ber, w o u l d not refuse if it were satis- fied that it was f o r the general welfare of education in the South; moreover, this w o u l d enable it to extend some por- tion of the benefits of their p u b l i c funds to the great multitude of scholars in the South w h o d o not have the neighboring backstop of great repositories such as exist in the Harvard and Yale Univer- sity libraries. 422 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES