College and Research Libraries To the Editor: I am one of "those idealistic librari- ans ... who espouse both unionism and participation," to quote Richard De Gennaro's CRL editorial for May 1972, "Participative Management or Union- ization?" While De Gennaro perceives union- ization and participative management as a dichotomy, I feel that the two trends are not mutually exclusive. The advent of unions on college campuses has led to staff involvement in library decision- making where often none existed be- fore. Similarly, the growth of collective bargaining has b y no means reinforced the conventional hierarchical structures; the situation at City University of New York is but one example of this. Some of D e Gennaro's sweeping gen- eralizations about white-collar unions are invalid and reflect his obvious manageri- al bias. Not all labor unions are con- servative and authoritarian, with but "a veneer of democracy." One should con- sider the recent emergence of AA UP as a bargaining agent. There is a need for impartial research to determine the effects of collective bargaining upon participative manage- ment in libraries. If the facts were known I b elieve that the benefits would outweigh the disadvantages of unioniza- tion. Leonard Grundt Director of Library Nassau Community College To the Editor: Ellis Mount and Paul Fasana con- Letters elude their May 1972 article "An Ap- proach to the Measurement of Use and Cost of a Large Academic Library Sys- tem: A Report of a Study Done at Co- lumbia University Libraries" by stating, " ... preliminary analyses have already provided the librarian with significant results which are beginning to affect the libraries' policies and attitudes." Such a conclusion is outrageous. First, the re- sults are not significant, in fact, they are seriously biased. Second, the effect upon the equity of user services could be dis- astrous. Hidden among all the fairly objec- tive surveys conducted are two that real- ly matter-literature survey, current and retrospective. These two surveys, upon which are based the Catalog Staff Sur- vey, Space Survey, Literature Cost Analysis, Salary Survey and Equipment and Supply Survey, are entirely subjec- tive. Librarians and faculty, "insignifi- cant" users of library services them- selves (faculty 5.9 percent of all users- Table 2), dictate values for the remain- der of the user population of over 90 percent. The basis of their judgment: an intuitive sense of the popular versus the esoteric. The article begins simply enough. The aim of the study was to determine "the relationship between library costs incurred to support research and those incurred to support instruction." A user survey of all users in all units of the li- braries was conducted on four separate days-a total of 15,302 survey forms completed. Subsequently, a special user survey was conducted to define "in · greater detail that segment of the li- / 485 486 I College & Research Libraries • November 1972 braries' user population involved pri- marily in noninstructional activities." Unfortunately, over 40 percent of the users in the sample of 15,302 are exclud- ed arbitrarily from the special user sur- vey. Excluded are undergraduates, non- degree students, other staff and non- Columbia. The assumption seems to be that undergraduates and others work on a superficial basis, i.e., they only study. -Graduates, on the other hand, well- adapted as they are to the system, can be relied upon to state positively, "Our work? Well, it's research of course." In- deed the most significant fact about the special user survey is the nonresponse factor of 56 percent. The literature surveys conclude that over 80 percent of all materials are in .support of "Research." Thus, the col- lection seems overwhelmingly in support of the research activity of groups which number well under 60 percent of the user population. It now appears that li- brary services are going to be further tailored to meet the needs of the re- search groups. Someone is being short- changed! Finally, considering the number of instructional-related materials in the collection (less than 20 percent), the undergraduate body of users, compris- ing more than 25 percent of all library users, can not be faulted and are mak- ing good use of that collection. More- over, the primary effort should be to at- tract more undergraduates through the acquisition of more relevant materials. "Yes, but the research funds?" "Oh, 'tis a pity." Charles Martell Doctoral Student University of California, Berkeley To the Editor: Although I found Mr. Holley's paper ·"organization and Administration of Urban University Libraries" ( CRL, May 1972) interesting reading, I would like to correct a possible false impression. On p. 186 it is indicated that union or- ganization at the University of Chicago library has been "dropped for the pres- ent." On the contrary, library unionism is alive and well and living at the Uni- versity of Chicago library! Mr. Holley correctly states that the NLRB dismissed the original petition of Local 103-Distributive Workers of America, in the spring of 1971, on the grounds of supervisory participation. In that proceeding the question of who should be deemed a supervisor was not litigated in detail. Since the dismissal of the original pe- tition a number of events have oc- curred. The original Local 103 no long- er exists, as the presence of profession- al and nonprofessional staff in the same unit was one of the factors involved in the supervisor problem. There are pres- ently two locals functioning in the li- brary: Local 103A for professionals and Local 103B for nonprofessionals. Local 103A has been involved in representa- tional hearings before the NLRB since the beginning of 1972, and the final de- termination of the issues will probably determine the limits of the right to or- ganize in private academic libraries. The transcript of the hearings already runs to 1,200 pages, and much more is expected, although the hearings are presently in adjournment pending a de- cision on an unfair labor practices charge filed against the university. The two key issues being litigated are who · is a supervisor and who is a professional within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended. It is the contention of the union that the criteria for supervision cannot be ap- plied in the same manner to profession- al workers in an academic context as they can be applied to industrial work- ers. In recent cases involving university faculties, such as Fordham University and Adelphi University, the NLRB has tended to agree with this position, and we expect that the University of Chica- go case will set the standards for librari- ans. In the meanwhile the union re- mains very active in the library, and can take credit for a number of policy re- forms which have taken place in the li- brary over the last two years. The path of change is never easy, but fundamen- tal changes in the governance of li- braries must occur. If more library ad- ministrators, wiser than ours have been, recognize that fact the experience may turn out to be considerably less painful. Patricia S. Coatsworth Documents Librarian University of Chicago Library To the Editor: In his discussion of the formula for collection adequacy devised by Clapp and Jordan,1 Mclnnes 2 fails to define the term "adequacy," as they did. It seems reasonable that such a definition is essential to the development of a formula designed to. provide a theoreti- cal measure against which the size of li- brary collections can be judged. I sug- gest that adequacy should be defined as the capability of the library to respond within a given time to a given percent- age of book calls in general, and to giv- en percentages for different types of material (monographs, periodicals, etc.) and different levels of content ( intro- ductory, advanced, etc.), immediately. It is apparent that a larger collection will be required to fill 95 percent (say) of book calls immediately, than 80 per- cent, and that a collection adequate to fulfill the latter requirement will be in- adequate to satisfy the former. Trues- well has shown that a general charac- teristic of inventory in business and in- dustry-about 80 percent of transac- tions are satisfied from about 20 per- cent of the items stocked-is also ex- hibited by libraries. 3 In 1971, I undertook partial tests of the Clapp-Jordan formula applied to Letters I 487 the collection at Sir George Williams University, 4 based on use surveys of so- cial science and humanities monographs and periodicals in hard copy. Although the tests are not conclusive, they are suggestive. Application of the 80/20 rule to a random sample of monographs showed that had 80 percent of the calls been satisfied by 20 percent of the vol- umes sampled (instead of the 28 per- cent that did), the sample would have been 40 percent larger. The total real collection of monographs (including science and engineering) was 221,775, and the Clapp-Jordan "collection" was 310,300, for a deficit of 88,525; the col- lection should therefore, have been 40 percent larger, to meet the limit of ade- quacy defined by Clapp and Jordan. For the library concerned, if the validity of the 80 I 20 rule is accepted, there is some evidence that the formula is valid for monograph volumes. The test for peri- odicals was undertaken by considering the title: volume ratio, assuming that it was desirable to satisfy 90 percent of use from volumes not in storage. Ap- plication of the 80 I 20 rule showed that the social sciences and humanities col- lection should have included 1,315 titles, compared with the 3,100 titles held, and that the total collection should include between 2,000 and 2,500 titles, against the 1,500 required by the Clapp-Jordan formula. Consideration of the title: volume ratio indicated that there should be between 40,000 and 45,000 volumes in the collection, rather than the 32,000 required by the formula, or 50,000 ac- tually held. For the collection con- cerned, there is some evidence that the formula underestimates the number of periodicals by title and volumes re-· quired for an adequate collection. These observations indicate that the validity of the Clapp-Jordan formula and its derivatives could be tested by controlled experiments, in a number of libraries, provided levels of satisfaction are set. 5 • 6 These levels could be: ( a) for 488 I College & Research Libraries • November 1972 undergraduates, 95 percent of book calls satisfied immediately-on the basis that it is generally agreed that universi- ties should provide for their own under- graduate needs without calling on other libraries, save in exceptional cases, and that it is not unreasonable to anticipate that on occasion a student will have to wait for a heavily used volume; (b) for graduates and faculty, 95 percent of calls for basic research materials satis- fied immediately, 80 percent of calls for materials related to the specific project satisfied immediately, and 10 percent satisfied within a week. A factor neither Mcinnes nor Clapp and Jordan take into account is obso- lescence, although Mcinnes does suggest that some collections are larger than they need be because the institutions re- gard the preservation of material as a valid function. Numerous studies show that use of volumes declines at a statis- tically determinable rate (e.g. Brookes 7 ), so any formula for adequacy should take this into account, by a "devaluation" fac- tor related to the age of volumes. This factor would vary with the type of ma- terial and with the discipline, but an average or weighted average could b e developed. Mcinnes dismisses as lacking credibil- ity the result of his regression analysis that only nonscience doctoral programmes are significant in determining collection size. My work on the application of the Clapp-Jordan formula to the Sir George Williams University collection indicates that the introduction of doctoral pro- grammes has a very significant effect on the required size of collections. 8 One would expect this, since it appears like- ly that collection size is probably more nearly related to programmes offered, and their level, than to the number of individuals involved-whether one or 100 persons are involved, the same titles would be required, and the number of volumes would not be changed signifi- cantly. An indication of this is the find- ing of Clapp and Jordan that the ratio of monograph titles to volumes is about 1: 1.2 (the excess of volumes over titles is partly accounted for by multivolume sets, and partly by the provision of mul- tiple copies ) , and of periodical titles to volumes 1: 15. A way of determining the influence of the size of the faculty and student body would be to examine the percentage of titles held, on average, in multiple copy, since the main justifica- tion for multiple copies is the need to satisfy coincident demand by two or more individuals. I suggest, in conclusion, that a viable formula for the determination of an adequate collection for the normal teaching and research activities of an academic library collection should take into account: (a) the level of service desired, in terms of immediate satisfac- tion of demands for volumes; (b) the rate of obsolescence of volumes; (c) the publication rate of relevant materi- al by level of content and discipline; (d) the n eed for multiple copies to sat- isfy coincidental demand for heavily used material. George ]. Snowball Head, Administrative Services Sir George Williams University Library Montreal, Canada REFERENCES 1. Clapp, Verner W. , and Jordan, Robert T. , "Quantitative Criteria for Adequacy of Academic Library Collections," CRL 26, no. 5 (Sept. 1965) , p. 371- 80. 2. Mcinnes, R. Marvin, "The Formula Ap- proach to Library Size: An Empirical Study of Its Efficacy in Evaluating Research Li- braries," CRL 33, no. 3 (May 1972), p. 190-98. 3. Trueswell, Richard L., "Some Behavioral Patterns of Library Users: The 80/20 Rule," Wilson Library Bulletin 43, no. 5 (Jan. 1969'), p. 458--61. 4. Snowball, George J., "Comparison as a Means of Verifying the Results of Simplified Statistical Investigations," CACUL News- letter 3, no. 4 (Feb. 1972), p. 153-59. 5. Interinstitutional Committee of Business Of- ficers, "A Model Budget Analysis System for Program 05-Libraries," Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington: Office of In- stitutional Business Studies, 1970. 6. Axford, H. William, "An Approach to Per- formance Budgeting at the Florida Atlantic Letters I 489 University Library," CRL 32, no. 3 (March 1971 ), p. 87-104. 7. Brookes, B. C., "Obsolescence of Special Library Periodicals: Sampling Errors and Utility Contours," Journal of Documentation 21, no. 5 (Oct. 1970), p. 320-29. 8. Snowball, George J., "Evaluation of an Academic Library Collection by Reference to Three Standards for Size," CACUL News- letter 3, no. 3 (Nov. 1971), p. 120-40.