College and Research Libraries Council on Library Resources, Inc. T h e f o l l o w i n g press releases o n the establishment of the C o u n c i l o n Library Resources, Inc., by the Ford Foundation, are p u b l i s h e d i n f u l l because the Editors of C R L consider the action of such m o m e n t o u s im- portance that readers should have available the complete proposal and the supplementary background material. * September 18,1956 TH E F O R M A T I O N of the Council on Li-brary Resources, Inc., an organiza- tion whose purpose is to assist in solving the problems of libraries generally and of research libraries in particular, was an- nounced today, following its initial meet- ing at the Ambassador Hotel, New York, at which it elected officers and voted to accept a $5,000,000 grant of funds from the Ford Foundation to support its initial activities over a five-year period. Elected as president and executive head of the council is Verner W . Clapp, who today resigned his position as Chief As- sistant Librarian of the Library of Con- gress to accept this post. He has had a long experience with the problems of re- search libraries and with efforts to solve such problems through interlibrary co- operation and the application of labor- aiding devices. T h e chairman of the board of direc- tors of the council is Gilbert W . Chap- man, president and director of Yale and T o w n e Manufacturing Company, chair- man of the National Book Committee, a trustee of the New York Public Library, fellow of the Morgan Library, a director of the Saturday Review magazine, co- chairman of the advisory council of the College English Association Institute for Industry-Liberal Arts Exchange, and a director of Franklin Publications. T h e vice-chairman of the board of di- rectors is Dr. Louis B. Wright, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Wash- ington, D.C. T h e other members of the board of directors of the council are: Gilbert W. Chapman, chairman of the board of directors, and Verner W. Clapp, president and executive head of the newly established Council on Library Resources. Douglas M. Black, president of Double- day and Company, publishers, and of its subsidiaries; Lyman H. Butterfield, edi- tor-in-chief of the Adams Papers project of the Massachusetts Historical Society; Dr. Frederick Hard, president of Scripps College; Dr. Barnaby C. Keeney, presi- dent of Brown University; Dr. Joseph C. Morris, vice-president of Tulane Univer- sity, and a director of the National Sci- ence Foundation; John M. Schiff, partner of Kuhn, L o e b and Company, New York, investment bankers; Dr. Frederick H. Wagman, librarian of the University of Michigan; Dr. Warren Weaver, vice- president of the Rockefeller Foundation for the Natural and Medical Sciences; and Dr. Herman B Wells, President of Indi- ana University. Purpose of the Council T h e Council on Library Resources, Inc., a wholly independent non-profit ed- ucational research organization, has been incorporated under the laws of the Dis- trict of Columbia, and has its national offices in Washington, at 1025 Connecti- cut Avenue, N . W . T h e council's purpose is to assist in the solution of the problems of libraries gen- erally, but more especially of the prob- lems of research libraries, by conducting or supporting research, demonstrating new techniques and methods, and dis- seminating the results, through grants for these purposes to institutions or individ- uals or in other ways, by coordinating efforts to improve the resources and serv- ices of libraries, and by improving rela- tions between American and foreign li- braries and archives. Background of the Council's Establishment T h e situation which led to the forma- tion of the council may be simply de- scribed as one in which libraries, as chan- nels of communication, are threatened with being glutted to the point of inef- fectiveness by the quantity of the very in- formation which they should transmit. Many examples of the rapid increase of publications and other informational ma- terials could be given, and of the obstacles which this plethora of publication puts in the way of all research. For instance, a recent study of the relationship of legal research to legal literature has concluded that " o n e can find anything if one knows where to look and applies oneself long enough. T h e trouble is that, as things now stand, a lifetime is scarcely long enough." Fremont Rider's prediction may also be recalled: He discovered that research libraries have a way of doubling in size every 16 years, and he calculated that, in consequence, by the year 2040 the Yale University Library would contain 200,- 000,000 volumes on 6,000 miles of shelves, and that its catalog alone would occupy 8 acres of space and that it would require a staff of 3,000 catalogers to record its in- take. Quite apart from the validity of the prediction, users of research libraries complain that, on the one hand, there is an excess of informational materials, and, o n the other, that individual collections are insufficiently comprehensive; that in- formation is not available at the points needed; that subject-analysis and index- ing are inadequate, subject to excessive delays, and unmanageable in any case. T h e cost of literature-searching today is enormous. In the United States alone it has been estimated to cost $300,000,000 a year. In addition, it is rapidly becoming less and less possible to conduct research prof- itably away from the largest collections of material; while at the same time the university libraries tend to become re- search libraries for the faculty and to lose their effectiveness in undergraduate edu- cation. (See also the Supplementary Back- ground Statement at the end of the arti- cle.) Support of the Ford Foundation T h e council owes its inception to the recommendations resulting from two meetings held in January and March, 1955, in Washington, D.C., under the auspices of a committee chaired by Dr. Louis B. Wright, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, and of which the other members were L. Quincy Mumford, Librarian of Congress, and Dr. Leonard Carmichael, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. These meetings brought to- gether a distinguished group of scientists, research scholars in the humanities, uni- versity administrators and librarians. This group proposed to the Ford Foun- dation the creation of a national library council or planning group. After more than a year's extensive study of library problems, the foundation concluded that their size and complexity, as well as the amount of work that has al- ready been performed o n them, indicated that no quick or easy solutions existed but that there was great need for the kind 470 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES of planning and research the g r o u p rec- o m m e n d e d . Following the completion of the pre- liminary steps toward the establishment of the council, the Ford Foundation trus- tees once more reviewed the proposal, and then approved a grant of funds of $5,000,000 to the council f o r a five-year period. T h i s grant, which was tendered to Gilbert W . Chapman, as the chairman of the board of the council, by H . R o w a n Gaither, Jr., chairman of the board of the Ford Foundation, was today formally accepted by the council. In making the grant to the council, Mr. Gaither stated: As part of its broad program for assistance in the development and improvement of for- mal education, the Ford Foundation sought means by which to aid in the solution of the problems of libraries generally, and of re- search libraries in particular. In view of the magnitude of the need, the foundation de- sired that a means be found to provide for a long-range undertaking, and accordingly it sought the advice of many distinguished scholars, librarians and other persons over the past two years. The conclusion of the foundation was that the most effective attack upon the problems of libraries upon the broadest possible basis required the estab- lishment of an independent corporation en- tirely devoted to this purpose. Application of Initial Grant of Funds T h e council plans to concentrate ini- tially u p o n seeking solutions to the prob- lems of research libraries through the fol- lowing: 1. Development of applications of sci- entific techniques and mechanisms to li- brary procedures, with a view to improv- ing the utilization of available library resources, expediting and otherwise im- proving service, providing more effective use of space and staff, and reducing costs. 2. Extension of interlibrary coopera- tion in selectivity, specialization, sharing responsibilities, contributing to c o m m o n resources, etc. 3. Promotion of developments to en- able libraries of educational institutions to give better attention to the needs both of research and undergraduate education. 4. Promotion of liaison and coopera- tion with foreign libraries and archives to the end of assisting scholarship through the free international availability of li- brary resources, and of contributing to the improvement of library services and the reduction of library costs (e.g., through international standardization of library procedures). Chief Categories of Expenditure Five chief categories of expenditure will be as follows: 1. Planning, including normal pro- gram planning, evaluation of procedures and techniques developed in other fields which have application f o r library p r o b - lems, re-evaluation of library procedures and methods f o r improvement. Activity in this area will include both grant-mak- ing and direct operations. 2. Development, including projects de- signed to obtain particular devices and procedures which have been identified through planning, as required to multiply and improve library resources and facili- ties; filling identifiable gaps; extending the capabilities and specific applications of existing instruments and procedures. Activity in this area will be largely grant- making. 3. Demonstration, including projects designed to test new devices, methods and procedures and to insure their currency and m a x i m u m use in the library world. Activities in this category will be largely grant-making. 4. Coordination, including leadership and integration of the movement to im- prove library resources and services, elim- ination of duplication in research and demonstration, j o i n t dissemination of in- formation and results, p r o m o t i o n of li- aison and cooperation with foreign li- braries and archives. Activities in this category will include both grant-making and direct operations. NOV EMBER, 1956 471 5. Administrative and professional functions, including b o t h normal oper- ating expenditures, salaries of profession- al staff members, the use of consultants, etc. In the identification of the problems of libraries with a view to making a con- certed attack u p o n them, the council pro- poses to institute certain investigations, whether with its o w n staff or under grant or contract, and to call, in addition, u p o n the advice of advisory committees of li- brarians, reinforced by specialists in scientific and other applications w h o may be able to suggest fruitful avenues of research toward the solution of particular problems. T h e council also plans to make grants f o r research into particular problems and toward the development of techniques and procedures offering promise f o r the improvement of library resources and services. Grants f o r pilot projects f o r the demonstration of such procedures or tech- niques also come within the council's scope. In addition, the council may un- dertake certain activities of a purely co- ordinative nature with a view t o the im- provement of resources or services or of relations with foreign libraries through the dissemination of information and the development of procedures to assure avoidance of unnecessary duplication of effort. In announcing the organization of the council its board chairman, Gilbert W . Chapman, said: The users of libraries, including not only the educational and scientific users but also those from industry and commerce, will be grateful to the trustees of the Ford Founda- tion who are making possible the formation of the Council on Library Resources, Inc. The resources and services of libraries are so linked to education and research and indus- try that it can almost be said that nothing assists libraries unless it thereby assists all segments of our society. Verner W . Clapp, president of the council, made the f o l l o w i n g statement after the organizational meeting: Libraries did not create the problems which have resulted from a plethora of pub- lication, but both libraries and their users suffer from the situation which the glut of publications has brought about. It has been said that libraries assisted in bringing in the age of mechanization and automation, but have themselves gained less than any institu- tional organizations from it. The aim of the Ford Foundation's grant to the council, and the council in its turn, is to attempt, without losing any of the values which libraries now contribute to our civili- zation, to make these values more accessible and more effective. Though there are few problems of libraries which money could not solve even with present procedures, it is quite unlikely that they will all be solved that way. The aim of the council is to bring concerted intelligence, as well as money, to these solu- tions. S U P P L E M E N T A R Y BACKGROUND S T A T E M E N T The basic problem which libraries face is a very old one: It is the increase of publica- tions at a rate beyond their technical abilities or manpower with which to cope. But espe- cially in recent years it has become obvious that publications and sources of information are increasing at an ever-accelerating rate, while the reader-demands upon these data are also multiplying rapidly with the increasing intensity, variety and urgency of research, and with expanding interest in the United States in the affairs of other parts of the world. For example, for the 114-year period 1800- 1914 the Royal Society of London listed only 1,555 scientific periodicals in its Catalogue of Scientific Papers, while for the much shorter period 1900-1950 the World List of Scientific Periodicals lists approximately 50,000 peri- odicals. Similarly, in 1910 Chemical Abstracts listed less than 15,000 articles in chemistry, while 472 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES in 1955 it listed more than 70,000; there was an increase of 275 per cent in the number of articles in the decade 1945-1955 alone. Again, in 1880 there were approximately 860 medical journals producing approximate- ly 20,000 articles a year; now there are ap- proximately 7,000 medical periodicals pro- ducing approximately 175,000 articles a year. In 1940 the "unpublished scientific report" was practically unknown; today these im- portant research documents appear at a rate of approximately 1,000,000 a year. Faced with enormous supplies of source materials on the one hand, and insistent read- er-demands on the other, libraries attempt to bring the two together through their tech- niques of selection and acquisition, catalog- ing, storage and service. But the users com- plain that these techniques are insufficient in any case and all the more inadequate as ap- plied with present power. For more than a century, libraries in this country have attempted to meet these in- creasingly developing problems by coopera- tive effort, by the use of mechanical devices, and in other ways. Over a century ago—in 1850—the librarian of the Smithsonian Insti- tution, Charles C. Jewett, proposed a method of cooperative cataloging which would have saved the libraries of that day a great deal of manpower, but after an initial brilliantly suc- cessful demonstration his pilot project found- ered on the rock of the imperfect technology of the printing industry of the time. Despite this first failure, cooperative or central cataloging became a principal objec- tive of the American Library Association when it was founded in 1876, and was finally achieved in 1901 with the Library of Congress as the central source of catalog cards. Similar- ly, the A L A adopted in 1876 as its first proj- ect the cooperative development of an index to periodicals. So impressed at the time was the manager of the Adams Express Company with the cooperative nature of this project that he claimed the right to participate by providing free transportation of the indexing slips. This project was a principal step in a development from which the United States now possesses outstandingly excellent indexes to periodical literature. Such cooperative enterprises between li- braries are now very numerous and affect al- most every branch of library work. They cover such activities as book purchasing, cataloging, warehousing, lending, indexing, microfilming of deteriorating files as a protection against destruction, microfilming of unique manu- script materials in inaccessible depositories to make them more accessible for research every- where, the maintenance of bibliographical centers, the compilation and publication of union catalogs, etc. T h e so-called Farmington Plan is, for ex- ample, a cooperative arrangement by which American research libraries attempt to assure the acquisition and availability of important foreign books without unnecessary duplica- tion. As another example, the Midwest Inter- Library Center in Chicago is a cooperative storage library where a number of midwest libraries deposit less-used books to be held for common use. T h e National Union Cata- log at the Library of Congress in Washing- ton is a register of copies of the millions of different books held by principal research li- braries throughout the United States and Canada. American libraries have also attempted to make use of technological developments to improve service without comparable increase in cost. Jewett's pioneering project of 1850 was such an attempt. T h e 3" by 5" card index is a notable tech- nological development of American libraries, which also early put to use the pneumatic tube, the book conveyor, microfilm, photo- charging, etc. Punched card systems both of the manual and machine-sorted types have found numerous applications in a number of libraries, though not yet generally used, and tele-facsimile as applied to the long-distance servicing of library materials is still in the experimental stage. But neither cooperative arrangements nor technological applications have been suffi- cient to make it possible for the research li- braries to keep abreast of the rising flood of publications and the increasingly intensive demands of users. Meanwhile, however, there is a strong feeling on the part of many users of research libraries and many observers of the situation that a concerted attack upon the problems, making use of the full resources of modern science—including the techniques of micro-facsimile and tele-communication, the "giant brains" of the modern computor (Continued on page 496) NOV EMBER, 1956 473 vision, rather than in so marking the v o l u m e that it can be identified after theft.4 In the separate housing of rare books under close supervision, and in the re- stricted loan regulations applying to them, they may be considered in a special class, like microfilm, microcards, and mi- croprint. Unless unusual loan practices or other conditions warrant the use of an ownership mark, it w o u l d seem unneces- sary to mark these materials. D e p e n d i n g o n the local loan regulations and other conditions, phonorecords, scores, maps, plates, and other u n b o u n d materials might also best be left unmarked. T h e two criteria to be applied in regard to 4 The Library of Congress has recently decided (In- formation Bulletin, X V (1956), 243-44) to stamp its manuscripts "with a small Library of Congress seal imprinted in a pale red ink." This decision was the consequence of a theft of certain valuable manuscripts, which were recovered after a bookdealer in Philadel- phia had reported the offer of some manuscripts under unusual circumstances. Another measure following the theft was the addition of a guard in the Manuscripts Reading Room, besides the guards regularly stationed at the library exits. The decision to stamp all manu- scripts was made only after a careful study of avail- able inks, in order to find one that would be both per- manent and transparent. The use of the ink stamp seems to me to be an extreme measure, and one of doubtful efficacy. The recently stolen manuscripts were recov- ered even though they were not stamped. It would be an unimaginative thief, or at least an unambitious one, who could not remove any ink stamp which did not touch the text. The superior protection of valuable documents would seem to be the careful issuing and checking of documents before and after each use. each of these special classes of material lie in two questions: Does an ownership mark serve in any way to reduce possible loss of the material? Is the time involved in applying marks of ownership, and other disadvantages, in any way commen- surate with the amount by which loss may be reduced? Unless the material is avail- able f o r use outside the library, o r is of sufficient value to encourage theft, the application of ownership marks probably cannot be justified. T h e elimination of unnecessary owner- ship marks is undertaken as much in the interest of e c o n o m y of operation as in the protection of books f r o m mutilation. A program based o n numerous rules and re- quiring a separate decision for the proc- essing of each v o l u m e w o u l d defeat its o w n purpose. T h e program should be streamlined in its operation as well as in its use of different marks of ownership. A normal routine of processing books and serials should be adopted, involving the fewest rules consistent with adequate pro- tection. Exceptions to this routine should be held to a m i n i m u m , and these should be readily identifiable by those engaged in the processing operations. Council on Library Resources, Inc. (Continued from page 473) systems, modern developments in printing and duplication, mechanical translation, and various devices for mechanizing the processes of information storage and retrieval—might produce very rewarding results for both li- braries and their users. Importance of Libraries Libraries constitute in a very real sense the communal memory of mankind. They are charged with maintaining the organized rec- ord of human experience. Having access to this record, mankind can progress; lacking it, each generation would be condemned to end- less repetition of the experiments of its an- cestors. This is true even for the laboratory sci- ences. Although the individual laboratory scientist may not himself make much use of the great libraries, yet the critical tables, the compendia, the abstracting services and the literature surveys which make his laboratory research profitable have all been made pos- sible by libraries. Meanwhile, for the non- laboratory sciences—history, law, and the other humanities and social sciences—the li- brary serves to a large extent as the "labora- tory," where books replace test-tubes and for- maldehyded frogs. 496 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES