College and Research Libraries Rider Revisited B Y H . W I L L I A M A X F O R D IN 1940 Fremont Rider, then librarian of Wesleyan University, published a study which showed that, taken as a whole and on the average, American col- lege and university libraries tended to double their holdings every fifteen years.1 Given the facts that in 1900 Harvard University was the only university in the United States possessing over 500,000 vol- umes in its library and that there were 25 universities listing over a million vol- umes in their libraries by 1960, it seems appropriate to check and see how far Rider's axiom of library growth is still operative. I n the accompanying table are listed the university libraries with over a mil- lion volumes in 1960, their holdings in 1946, the number of volumes added dur- ing the fifteen-year period, and the per- centage increase in library holdings. While it is not fair to say that acquisition statistics are wholly unreliable, they should be considered as approximate rather than 100 per cent correct. T h e fig- ures are taken from the Library Statistics of Colleges and Universities: 1959-60 published by the U.S. Office of Educa- tion, and from the July 1947 issue of Col- lege and Research Libraries and the 1945 edition of the American Library Direc- tory. As can be seen in T a b l e 1, only four universities out of the 25, the University of California at Berkeley, Wisconsin, U C L A and Indiana, increased their hold- ings 100 per cent or more between 1945 and 1960. Furthermore, the over-all aver- 1 R i d e r , F r e m o n t , " T h e Growth of American College and University L i b r a r i e s and W e s l e y a n ' s , " About Books, Vol. X I , No. 1 ( 1 9 4 0 ) , 1-11. Mr. Axford is Assistant Director of Librar- ies, University of Denver. age percentage increase fell short of Rider's figure by 22 per cent. These fig- ures seem to indicate that the validity of Rider's axiom tends to decrease the larger a library's holdings become. However, given the rise in book costs during these years, it is remarkable that the percent- age increase in holdings of the 25 largest university libraries in the United States was as high as 78 per cent during this period. Rider drew one other axiom from his study of the growth of college and uni- versity libraries: W h e n e v e r the growth of any library has slackened you will always find that its college has been slipping; a n d the o t h e r h a n d , if any library has spurted ahead of the 15 year average during any decade, you will find on investigation t h a t dur- ing that decade, its college, f o r some reason, has been taking on a new lease of life. I n fact, we may assert as also a x i o m a t i c : unless a college or university is willing to be stagnant, willing n o t to m a i n t a i n its place in the steady flow o f cultural d e v e l o p m e n t , it seems to be i n e v i t a b l e that it must d o u b l e its library in size every fifteen or twenty years.2 Whether or not there is a direct and clear-cut relationship between the size and rate of acquisition of the library and the quality of education offered by the 2 Ibid., p. 11. J U L Y 1 9 6 2 3 4 5 TABLE 1 Institution Total Library Holdings 1946 Total Library Holdings 1960 Total Volumes Added Percentage Increase Harvard 4 , 8 0 4 968 6 697 111 1 , 8 9 2 142 44 Yale 3 , 5 3 9 596 4 394 988 855 392 24 Illinois 2 , 0 0 3 622 3 288 158 1 , 2 0 4 539 64 Columbia 1 , 7 7 8 058 2 875 761 1,097 703 60 Michigan 1,267 518 2 818 341 1 , 5 5 0 823 122 California (Berkeley) 1 , 3 7 8 602 2 503 060 1 , 1 2 4 458 81 Cornell 1 , 0 9 4 117 2 161 230 1,067 113 97 Chicago 1 , 4 9 8 889 2 094 824 595 935 40 Minnesota 1,422 529 1 968 101 545 572 38 Pennsylvania 997 929 1 665 114 667 185 66 Princeton 1 , 0 5 8 920 1 626 537 567 617 53 Stanford 897 658 1 592 287 694 629 77 UCLA 504 941 1 464 308 959 367 190 Duke 740 493 1 435 164 694 671 93 Northwestern 788 832 1 429 431 640 599 82 Wisconsin 567 000 1 384 222 817 222 144 Ohio 688 900 1 369 348 680 448 98 801 637 1 350 671 549 034 68 Indiana 617 947 1 317 269 699 322 113 Johns Hopkins 703 912 1 159 747 455 835 65 New York University 668 795 1 067 946 399 151 59 Washington (Seattle) 594 320 1 060 086 465 766 78 Brown 665 041 1 02b 479 360 438 54 Iowa State 374 796 1 021 441 646 645 58 Missouri. . 525 557 1 002 263 476 806 90 7 8 % 7 8 % Institution T A B L E 2 Total Library Holdings 1946 Total Library Holdings 1960 Total Volumes added 1946-60 1. California (Berkeley).. 2. California Institute of Technology 3. University of Chicago. 4. Columbia 5. Cornell 6. Harvard 7. Illinois 8. M I T 9. Michigan 10. Princeton 11. Wisconsin 12. Yale 13. Indiana 14. Johns Hopkins 15. Minnesota 16. New York University. Northwestern Ohio State Pennsylvania Stanford UCLA 17 18 19 2 0 , 2 1 , 22. Washington (Seattle). 1 , 3 7 8 , 6 0 2 5 7 , 6 1 0 1 , 4 9 8 , 8 8 9 1 , 7 7 8 , 0 5 8 1 , 0 9 4 , 1 1 7 4 , 8 0 4 , 9 6 8 2 , 0 0 3 , 6 2 2 3 8 5 , 0 0 0 1 , 2 6 7 , 5 1 8 1 , 0 5 8 , 9 2 0 5 6 7 , 0 0 0 3 , 5 3 9 , 5 9 6 617,947 703,912 1 , 4 2 2 , 5 2 9 6 6 8 , 7 9 5 788,832 6 8 8 , 9 0 0 9 9 7 , 9 2 9 8 9 7 , 6 5 8 504,941 5 9 4 , 3 2 0 2 , 5 0 3 , 0 6 0 1 , 1 2 4 , 4 5 0 121 2 , 0 9 4 2 , 8 7 5 2 , 1 6 1 6 , 6 9 7 3 , 2 8 8 704 2 , 8 1 8 1 , 6 2 6 1 , 3 8 4 4 , 3 9 4 1,317 1 , 1 5 9 1 , 9 6 8 1,067 1 , 4 2 9 1 , 3 6 9 1,665 1,592 1,464 1 , 0 6 0 439 824 761 230 111 158 955 341 537 222 988 269 747 101 946 431 348 114 287 308 086 63 595 1,077 1,781 1,892 1 , 2 8 4 319 1 , 5 5 0 567 817 855 699 455 545 399 650 680 667 694 959 594 ,829 ,935 ,703 ,644 ,143 ,536 ,955 ,823 ,617 ,222 ,392 ,322 ,828 ,572 ,151 ,599 ,448 ,185 ,629 ,367 ,320 Average. 3 4 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 university is somewhat difficult to demon- strate. T h i s is at least partly true because the quality of education offered by any given institution is a matter of subjective judgment. However, in 1960 Bernard Berelson published a book called Grad- uate Education in the United States which contains the results of one survey which can be helpful.3 In this survey, Berelson asked 92 graduate deans and 92 graduate faculties to list those universities, which in their opinion, were the top graduate institutions in the country. T a b l e 2 shows the 22 institutions most often men- tioned, in order of frequency, their li- brary holdings in 1946 and in 1960, and the percentage increase in holdings dur- ing this fifteen-year period. T h e degree of correspondence be- 3 Berelson, Bernard, Graduate Education in the United States (New Y o r k : McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 280. tween the institutions appearing in the tables would seem to have some signifi- cance. Missing from Berelson's list of 22 top graduate institutions are only five of the 25 universities in the United States that have book stocks of over a million volumes: Texas, Brown, Iowa State, Duke, and Missouri. From this it would seem that Rider's emphasis on the rela- tionship between the rate of growth of the university library and the over-all quality of the educational program is still essentially correct. It is probable, however, that the percentage rate of growth of the largest university libraries will continue to decline, even though the total number of new volumes added each year will continue to increase, and that only a few of the largest university li- braries will be able to double their col- lections every fifteen years. C U S H I N G - M A L L O Y , I N C . 1350 North Main Street P.O. 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