College and Research Libraries


To the Editor: 

The article on "Microform Develop-
ments" (CRL, Jan. 1973) by the former as-
sistant chief of the photoduplication ser-
vice of the Library of Congress provides a 
useful synthesis pertaining to the handling 
of swiftly changing carriers of stored knowl-
edge, yet not that different from the codex. 
However the .article omits one important 
aspect of the microform picture, that is-
lending by cooperative projects. 

The microform industry is prosperous 
and derives at least a part of its profits by 
providing an excessively highly prized 
product to institutions which, by their na-
ture, are usually financially hard-pressed. 
They occasionally, .as does among others 
Hoover, pass at least costs incurred in serv-
ing its scholars, to the wider community of 
libraries. [sic] To maximize service at lowest 
cost cooperative programs mentioned by Mr. 
Sullivan strive to hold in nonprofit-making 
hands a master negative and loan positive 
made available to member institutions. The 
research material is infrequently used and 
often voluminous . On e copy is likely to suf-
fice for North America or even the whole 
world. The borrowing library has the choice 
between borrowing and buying microform 
or hard copy for immediate, permanent ac-
cess. Nonmember institutions may only pur-
chase microform or hard copy at cost plus 
% the cost of the negative. This applies to 
the Foreign Newspaper Microfilm Project 
on which area studies programs are mod-
eled. 

Librarians that cannot keep up with the 
large volume of special and other journals 
concerned with microform may like to con-
centrate on the Microform Review, a quar-
terly, that started to be published by Micro-
form Review, Inc. at Rogues Ridge, Wes-
ton, CT 06880, in January 1972 at $30 for 

Letters 

the hard-copy and microfiche edition and 
$20 in one medium only. 

Hans E. Panofsky 
Curator, Melville ]. Herskovits Library 

of African Studies 
Northwestern University Library 

Evanston, Illinois, and 
Chairman, Cooperative Africana 

Microform Profect 

To the Editor: 

"Library Group Practice" by Larry Auld 
and Irene Voit (CRL, Jan. 1973) is but one 
more poor attempt to .analogize librarians 
with other professions. In building their 
analogy, they fail to note the extent of 
training needed by the medical specialist. 
They do note, however, that lawyers re-
main unspecialized and a similar fiction fol-
lows among librarians. This is .all poor anal-
ogy. I wish they would examine (measure) 
the time spent by the lawyer with his cli-
ent as opposed to the time spent by the 
medical specialist with his patient (after 
the proper medical workup) . The disparity 
of time elements alone would discourage 
false analogies to the lawyer-client or doc-
tor-patient relationships . 

Librarians as individuals or groups are 
analogous to no one; they are not akin to 
lawyers, doctors, clergymen, faculty, or ad-
ministrators. I suggest the authors spend 
their time examining the unique character-
istics of librarians in mapping their func-
tion. Poor analogy and half-baked sugges-
tions for reorganization show only that li-
brarians have little understanding of them-
selves or their functions. Don't wait for oth-
ers to successfully describe the librarian, 
if we remain a mystery to ourselves. 

Kent D. Talbot 
University of Chicago 
Law School Library 
Chicago, Illinois 

I 223 



224 I College & Research Libraries • May 1973 

To the Editor: 

Re: Eli Oboler's letter ( CRL, Jan. 1973), 
there seem to be problems in Pocatello that 
I cannot match. I'm happy with my job, 
find librariansh~p varied and exciting, and 
therefore do not "find it extremely distress-
ing to have to spend one-sixth of my work-
ing life at the same old grind" with "my 
nose to the grindstone." My confreres are 
productive scholars, not "gadding about ... 
each summer and ... between semesters." 
I earn far more than the faculty, and am 
not "paid . . . miserably . . . in relationship 
to standards for teaching faculty." Indeed, 
after listening to Eli's confession of his sor-
ry lot, one is tempted to counsel vocational 
rehabilitation. 

Obviously, if there will be no pressures 
on librarians as faculty to work for ad-
vanced academic degrees or to publish, and 
they can con the faculty (with whom they 
are now in tight competition for budget) 
into letting them get something more for 
nothing, they should do so. But, as I asked 
in my editorial, who wants to work in such 
a university? The two library staffs men-
tioned in my editorial were not miserably 
paid comparatively and were not required 
to terminate if tenure was denied. The U ni-
versity of Delaware has recently joined the 
group that has decided not to request full 
faculty equivalency. 

Let me emphasize two of my points by 
reshaping them. ( 1) Librarianship as a pro-
fession is at the present time in far better 
condition than the teaching profession, a 
reversal that has occurred over the past 
twenty years. ( 2) Tenure restrictions will 
soon be more rigorous throughout the coun-
try than at any time in history. H librarians 
can steer clear of them, it is to their advan-
tage to do so. Six years ago at Hofstra we 
began to see those squeezed out of the 
CUNY system through tenure quotas drift-
ing out to Long Island. Now if you get 
squeezed out, where do you go? 

Since my editorial, the executive board 
of the American Association of Colleges, 
one of three groups intended to join the 
Joint Statement, has turned it down be-
cause librarians don't distinguish between 
those who engage in teaching functions 
and those who do not. Our blanket claim 
of librarians as teachers has always been 

unjust to all non-public-service librarians. 
Since Oboler and I are antithetical per-

sonalities, we cannot see things alike, but 
nowhere is our difference so marked as in 
his blind and unfeeling rejection of the V e-
n us de Milo, which I protest. As any right-
thinking man can plainly see, Venus has a 
great deal to offer, even without arms. 

To the Editor: 

Ellsworth Mason 
Director of Libraries 
University of Colorado 
Boulder, Colorado 

In his excellent compilation of useful in-
formation regarding acquisition of micro-
forms (CRL, Jan. 1973) Robert C. Sullivan 
very properly pointed out that librarians too 
often think only in terms of acquisition 
from commercial sources, overlooking the 
wealth of material to be acquired from the 
photocopying and microfilming services of 
other libraries. He pointed out also that the 
a priori determination of whether a distant 
library holds a wanted item is becoming in-
creasingly possible with the issuance, now 
about one-fourth completed, of the printed 
National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 ]m.,... 
prints. 

But it is worth pointing out also that mi-
croforms too may be used very handily for 
the location of desired items at distant li-
braries-whether for microfilming, photo-
copying, borrowing, or merely verifying. A 
number of libraries, among them the Yale 
University library, sell microfilm copies of 
their entire card catalog to other institu-
tions to facilitate rapid searching of hold-
ings by scholars or librarians at distant lo-
cations without the need for travel, phone 
calls, or letters. While a microfilm of the 
card catalog of a single library will obvious-
ly have the drawback of being less inclusive 
than NUC for pre-1956 imprints, it can of-
fer the offsetting advantages of being more 
up-to-date, being accessible through all fil-
ing terms rather than only main entry, and 
being fully available right now. And, of 
course, the cost of such microfilm aids and 
the space required for storage are both very 
low in comparison to printed volumes. 

Acquisitions, reference, and interlibrary-
loan librarians should give serious consid-. 
eration to the acquisition of microfilm of the 



full catalogs of at least the few major librar-
ies which they tend to contact most fre-
quently for searches, loans, photocopies, or 
microfilms. 

To the Editor:· 

Ben-Ami Lipetz, Head 
Research Department 
Yale University Library 
New Haven, Connecticut 

Ellsworth Mason's less-than-happy edi-
torial in the November issue of CRL ("A 
Short Happy View of Our Emulation of 
Faculty") is succinct, persuasive, and ex-
tremely misleading. A scholar and former 
English teacher himself, Mr. Mason must 
know that tenure and what he describes 
as "longer vacation periods" are not intend-
ed as academic "rewards," but are vital ele-
ments of scholarly development. Tenure is 
not, by definition, intended to protect the 
incompetent, but is designed to permit 
those who must speak out on controversial 
issues to do so. Nonteaching periods are 
moreover essential if sound research and 
quality publication are to be expected from 
academics. Far from being, as Mr. Mason 
calls them, "sausages from a casing ma-
chine," these elements form the basis for 
perceptive teaching and the expansion of 
knowledge. 

There are in this context, therefore, two 
questions for academic librarians to answer. 
Does librarianship need research? Must li-
brarians, as intellectual members . of the 
community, be free to speak their minds on 
controversial issues such as censorship? To 
both these questions many librarians would 
answer "yes." Further, to Mr. Mason's 
query, ~~Is this the kind of life librarians 
want to lead?" the response is surely again 
strongly affirmative-from at least those 
members of our profession who would be 
professionals. Nor Mr. Mason, to use one 
more of your own adjectives, do we expect 
such a life to be "cushy," just rewarding. 

]. P. Wilkinson, Professor 
Faculty of Library Science 
University of Tor onto 
Toronto, Ontario 

Letters I 225 

To the Editor: 

It was with some surprise that I read in 
the January 1973 issue of CRL that El Cen-
tro is distributing "16mm cartridges to nu-
merous locations on campus." (Page 18, 
paragraph 1.) I do not know where Mr. 
Sullivan got his information, but such is not 
the case. The system he described has nev-' 
er been used, or proposed, at El Centro. 

At present our library catalog is COM 
produced microfiche format. It is not a re-
production of catalog cards. Bibliographic 
information is stored on magnetic tape. Ev-
ery two months, the tape is up-dated and 
a new set of microfiche is produced by a 
contracted service firm. 

Our present catalog is contained on 21 
fiche-7 for author, 6 for title, and 8 for 
subject. This is a listing of about 35,000 
books and 1,500 phonodisks. 

The author and title indexes are similar 
in format. For an author entry, author is 
given first, followed by indented title. The 
order is reversed in the title index. In each 
index, the call number appears above the 
first line of the entry and is indented ten 
spaces. 

The subject index format is a variation 
of the above. A subject heading is given, 
followed by an indented alphabetical list-
ing, by author, of all the books and phono-
disks owned by the library on that subject. 
This author entry follows the format of the 
author index. Cross-references are also list-
ed. (We hope to add "see also" references 
this year.) 

We have found that this shortened bib-
liographic entry is satisfactory for the stu-
dents in a community college library. There 
has been no public outcry for any ·of the 
additional information normally found on 
the catalog card. 

If you will bring this error in Mr. Sulli-
van's article to the attention of your read-
ers, it will be appreciated. 

Mickey M. Sparkman 
Associate Director 
Division of Learning Resources 
El Centro College 
Dallas, Texas