College and Research Libraries The Centrifugence Of University Libraries BY DAVID W. H E R O N T T IS P E R H A P S infelicitous to compare the evolution of a university library with the gyration which causes water to fly olf a wheel or which presses clay against the potter's hand. Yet there is a tendency in the rapid growth of our major academic libraries which can be compared, at least superficially, to the inertia which carries a revolving body away from the axis of its rotation. T h e r e is nothing new, of course, in the ubiquitous pressure for decentraliza- tion of university libraries. T h e develop- ment of central library service is recent enough, in fact, to reverse the metaphor, speaking of the librarian's unnatural ef- forts to gather all of the university's books into one great incomprehensible, unmanageable hoard. Reading and con- templation are still best in solitude, and the scholar's ideal library is still his own study, lined with the books essential to his inquiries. University librarians cannot afford to forget that our own centripetal point of view may occasionally require explana- tion. If our libraries are reasonably effi- cient, however, it should never require apology. T h e simple fact is that few, if any, universities can still provide even their most distinguished scholars with private libraries, nor can many of them afford private libraries for their depart- ments and professional schools. No one has mourned the passing of the term "library economy" from the language of the profession, but the necessity for cen- tral library service to American institu- tions of higher education can be most simply expressed in these terms: it is an economic necessity. T h e growth in en- rollment, particularly during the two Mr. Heron is Director of Libraries, Uni- versity of Nevada, Reno. decades since the beginning of World War II, the resultant growth in the size of faculties and demand for libraries ade- quate to their research (and that of their graduate students) are perhaps the most conspicuous reasons. T h e increase in the number of books and journals published in almost every field of academic en- deavor is another, as is their increasing cost. Still another, and in some ways the most interesting, of these pressures upon universities and their libraries comes from the new relationships which have developed among the various disciplines of human inquiry, the erosion of the bar- riers which have separated the physical sciences from one another and from the biological—and even the social—sciences. "Erosion" is probably not the word with which to describe the impact of the atom, the rocket, and human fecundity. Society today demands of its universities a new measure of universality. Only the striking and increasing changes of the last two decades justify exhuming the decentralization question, to which Keyes Metcalf addressed him- self so well in 1949,1 and which Robert A. Miller considered systematically a dec- ade earlier,2 marshalling the arguments publicized by the University of Chicago 1 Keyes D. Metcalf. " H a r v a r d Faces Its Library Problems," The Place of the Library in a University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 47. 2 Robert A. Miller, "Centralization Versus Decen- tralization," ALA Bulletin, X X X I I I ( 1 9 3 9 ) , 75-79, 134. M A Y 1 9 6 2 223 as early as 1924, when it began the ex- amination of its own decentralized li- brary system.3 T h e most striking of these changes is the last two decades' growth in the size of our universities, lately reminiscent of Paul Bunyan's cottage, " a house that was so high that the last five stories had to be put on hinges to let the moon go by. . . . " T h e ALA statistics for this pe- riod show that our libraries have grown in proportion, most of them more than doubling in size, and several measuring their growth in millions of volumes.4 Unfortunately, the quality of individ- ual service is not a direct function of the size of a library. Our faculties and stu- dents are alarmed to find that although they have many books from which to choose, it is difficult to abstract from these great assortments the particular volumes which they need. Not only do our libraries become more complex as they become larger, but the competition for books is in proportion to enrollment. It is the faculty to whom this growth and its growing pains are most evident, for they can recall the good old days, and their response is frequently—and not unreasonably—to gather their own collec- tions into their offices, where they can be logically arranged and where they are safe from the dilettante forays of other faculty members' students.5 Of course, the library books thus se- questered are not entirely safe, and the competitors most likely to track them down are his own colleagues and gradu- ate students. T h e i r efforts, together with the limited capacity of his office, are likely to suggest the establishment of a 3 University of Chicago Commission on the Future Policy of the University Libraries. Tentative Report (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924). See also J . C. M. Hanson, "Central Versus Departmental L i b r a r i e s . " Library Quarterly, X I I I ( 1 9 4 3 ) , 132-35. 4 See "College and University Library S t a t i s t i c s " in the ALA Bulletin and CRL. 5 Maurice F . Tauber, Technical Services in Libraries (New Y o r k : Columbia University Press, 19S3) p. 266. writes, " T h e r e will always be some patrons who will disagree with any classification. The problem which the librarian faces is that of resolving individual dissatis- faction in relation to the whole." department library. He can anticipate the support of his colleagues in this pro- posal, and that of other departments who have or who want their own libraries. T h e only opposition is likely to come from the librarian (perhaps supported by the fiscal authorities) and from those departments which have not succeeded in establishing their own collections.6 T h i s is, of course, an oversimplified de- scription of a complicated process, and implies disapproval of departmentaliza- tion, overlooking many arguments in its favor.7 As a rule, however, the librarian's most defensible position is in opposition to this form of decentralization because it is generally uneconomical of space, book funds, and salaries. Moreover, un- less department collections are composed entirely of duplicates, they isolate sig- nificant parts of the library's collection from the whole, with consequences which may be significant to both education and research. In spite of these hazards, however, a number of university librarians have themselves advocated and adopted vari- ous forms of decentralization, even in the absence of strong partisan pressure for department libraries. These depar- tures have frequently been justified in terms of the welfare of undergraduates or of other significant segments of the university.8 Spatial problems, however, have generally contributed to the proc- ess. T h e need to provide more space for books as well as for students without meeting the formidable cost of a new central library building has often been decisive. T h e decentralization has taken the form not only of departmental li- braries but of undergraduate libraries, 8 " W h e t h e r unfortunately or not, a departmental li- brary is frequently an important part of the physical establishment by which a department's stature and vitality may be judged, and it may be essential for ac- creditation of a program by outside agencies." Stan- ford University, informal history of department li- braries ( M S ) 1960, introduction, p. 2. 7 Louis R. Wilson and Maurice F . Tauber, The Uni- versity Library, (2nd ed.; New Y o r k : Columbia Uni- versity Press, 19S6), pp. 148-53. 8 F . H. Wagtnan, " T h e Case for a Separate Under- graduate L i b r a r y , " CRL, X V I I ( 1 9 5 6 ) , 150-55. 224 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S storage facilities, and special libraries serving groups of related disciplines.9 Closely related to the last of these is the subject divisional arrangement within the central library building which aroused considerable interest a few years ago.10 In addition to providing some de- gree of flexibility in a congested situa- tion, the subject divisional system has provided interesting opportunities for specialized reference service11 and some of the convenience to particular depart- ments which they might have expected from departmental libraries. T o regard subject division as fragmen- tation in the same sense as the forma- tion of department libraries may seem to draw a fairly fine line. It must be so regarded, nevertheless, in terms of in- quiries which transcend the boundaries of the disciplines delimiting the vari- ous collections. Subject division, like the separation of departmental libraries, will take such an inquirer to two or more different places to find books which in the context of his inquiry should be found together. T h e interdisciplinary or peripheral question is likely to be the exception rather than the rule even among faculty and graduate students; undergraduate assignments are certainly more likely to be within the boundaries of the estab- lished disciplines than in the uncertain border areas. Departmental or divisional libraries quite obviously provide the best possible service to those disciplines for which they have been set aside, as- suming that they are carefully selected and efficient in their operation. Since the majority of inquiries will be circum- scribed by these disciplines, how self- conscious should we be when we ask a 8 Wilson and T a u b e r , op. cit., pp. 153-56, 469-70. 1 0 R . E . Ellsworth, " S i g n i f i c a n c e of the Divisional Room P l a n f o r U n i v e r s i t y L i b r a r i e s , " University of Colorado Studies, X X V I , No. 4 ( 1 9 4 1 ) . 3 3 - 3 9 ; F . A. Lundy, " T h e Divisional Plan L i b r a r y , " CRL X V I I ( 1 9 5 6 ) , 145-48. J . R . Blanchard , in his " D e p a r t m e n t a l L i b r a r i e s , " CRL, X I V ( 1 9 5 3 ) , p. 247, wrote: " D e p a r t - mental libraries are becoming obsolete in systems where the divisional plan is used . . . " 1 1 R . C. Swank, " T h e Educational Function of the U n i v e r s i t y L i b r a r y , " Library Trends, I ( 1 9 5 2 ) , 37-48. M A Y 1 9 6 2 member of the minority "to go to more than one library, especially for material peripheral to his field"?12 T h i s question cannot be answered satisfactorily without knowing how much time he will spend walking from library to library in relation to the time he spends reading, and how much time his teaching, writing, and committees per- mit him to spend on either. Neverthe- less, it is clear that the fragmentation of a university library has a tendency to discourage the peripheral research which relates one field of endeavor to another, and such a tendency may detract from the strength and vitality of our scholar- ship. If this hazard is of any real signifi- cance, it should perhaps be considered along with the advantages of, if not the actual necessities for, decentralization of university libraries. Among the scholars who have one way or another identified themselves with this minority is Georges Gusdorf, dis- cussing the relation of the social sci- ences: " W e cannot avoid remarking that the eminent scientists do not understand one another because they do not have a common language. In addition, we ask ourselves, not without some concern, if they have anything to say to one an- other. Each one pursues his inquiry in an area of his specialty without worrying about the others, aside from the few colleagues who are concerned with the same problems but who profess gener- ally conflicting opinions."1 3 Likewise pessimistic is Admiral Hyman Rickover, who feels that one of the major prob- lems of education is that " T h e gap wid- ens between the experts and the people who depend for their well-being on the work of these experts. T h i s disturbing 1 2 M a u r i c e F . T a u b e r , C. Donald Cook, Richard H . Logsdon, The Columbia University Libraries (New Y o r k : Columbia University P r e s s , 1 9 5 8 ) , p. 126, ac- knowledge Columbia U n i v e r s i t y ' s " . . . policy of con- centrating on doing the job in one place only, expect- ing the user to go to more than one library, especially for material peripheral to his field." 1 3 Gusdorf, Georges, " T h e Ambiguity of the Sciences of M a n , " Diogenes, ( S u m m e r , 1 9 5 9 ) , 54. 225 cleavage exists in the humanities no less than in the sciences."14 Arnold Toynbee, in a recent article on general education, relates this reser- vation more closely to universities and their libraries: ". . . even the disinter- ested pursuit of science becomes sterile if it runs in narrow ruts. Specialization in particular branches of natural science soon runs dry if it is cut off from its source in comprehensive and philosophi- cal scientific thinking." 1 5 Because of the explosive impact of atomic science upon the expansion and interrelation of physics, chemistry, and the biological sciences, it is perhaps ap- propriate to quote finally from two pa- pers by J. Robert Oppenheimer bearing affirmatively upon university research: " T h e r e is a lot of relation in this world of science. It has structure and refers to a beautifully ordered world; it is rich; it is always astonishing; it is always dif- ferent; it is always subtle; there is order so that things cohere, so that general things encompass special ones . . . " 1 6 and " W e find between the different subjects, even as remote as genetics and topology, an occasional sharp mutual relevance. They throw light on each other. T h e y have something to do with each other. Often the greatest things in the sciences occur when two different discoveries made in different worlds turn out to have so much in common that they are examples of a still greater discovery."17 T h e r e is no way of measuring the frequency with which a university li- brary is able to provide members of its faculty and its students with evidence of the "occasional sharp mutual relevance" which crosses subject boundaries. Yet, if 1 4 Rickover, Hyman, Education and Freedom (New Y o r k : Dutton, 1 9 5 9 ) , p. 71. 1 5 Toynbee, Arnold, " E d u c a t i o n : the Long V i e w , " Saturday Review, X L I I I (November 19, I 9 6 0 ) , 62. 1B Oppenheimer, Robert, "Tradition and Discovery," ACLS Newsletter, X (October. 1 9 5 9 ) , 13. 1 7 Oppenheimer " S c i e n c e and Culture," Bulletin of the International House of Japan, (October, 1960), 7. the discoveries to which Professor Op- penheimer refers are made in our librar- ies as well as our laboratories—and they must be—then the fragmentation of our research collections must to some degree diminish the chance of their occurrence. Of more practical importance, how- ever, is the effect of these discoveries upon the boundaries themselves. One need only contemplate the evolution of such new fields of endeavor as the be- havioral sciences, astrophysics, biophys- ics, and nuclear engineering as avenues of inquiry into the mysteries of man and the universe to realize that they are fol- lowing directions and methods never imagined a quarter of a century ago, and that the libraries must take into account—even though they do not antic- ipate—the changing relationships among the arts and sciences. T h e size of our libraries makes this difficult enough—as the great inertia which may even now foredoom the Dewey decimal structure demonstrates— but the compartmentalization of our col- lections, not unlike the integrity of numbers, compounds this inflexibility. Some of our institutions can afford better than others the duplication of books, of space, and of services which is the price of decentralization. Frequently, practical considerations of a spatial, po- litical, or financial nature make the es- tablishing of departmental or divisional libraries the wisest, if not the inevitable, course for a university library. Strong arguments have been advanced in favor of divisional organization in terms of its advantage to instruction, particularly of undergraduates. It is well to consider its cost, however, and it may be well to speculate upon the intangible but potentially important ef- fects of the centrifugal pressure upon the structure—and perhaps ultimately upon the substance—of university libraries. 2 2 6 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S