College and Research Libraries t J_. Collection Development from a College Perspective: A Comment and a Response Editor's Note : We are pleased to present below a comment on the preceding article prepared by Evan I . Farber, Librarian , Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana . A response by William Miller, one of the authors of the article, follows. EVAN I. FARBER A COMMENT T 0 BEGIN WITH, I agree fully with the main thrust of the article-that the ap- proach to building a college library's collec- tion must be very different from that for a university library and that it is really the college librarian's responsibility, not the faculty's, to ensure the collection's useful- ness. I do , however , have several reser- vations about specific points. 1. Periodical collections "should, for the most part, reflect the titles covered in the major indexing tools the library receives." To be sure, whether or not a periodical is indexed should be an important considera- tion, but it is also important to have as many of those titles as possible that are im- portant for supporting course work. Re- stricted to indexed periodicals, most college libraries would not consider subscribing to Paris-Match or Der Spiegel, for example, because they're not in the generally avail- able indexes, even though students taking French or German should be able to see them. A periodical not covered by the indexes needs to be examined very carefully for pos- sible subscription, but should not be elimi- nated from consideration on that basis alone. The reason its being indexed is im- portant, of course, is because that makes its use more likely. If other factors , such as class assignments or even student browsing, ensure its use, whether or not it's indexed is not as important. There's another reason f(>r not using in- dexing as a primary goal. It takes a while fC>r any new periodical to get into an index- and that is particularly true, of course, of the Wilson i~dexes, for which inclusion of particular titles is determined by subscrib- ers' votes. I think, however, that a college librarian has a responsibility for adding new periodicals-not constantly or hastily, but judiciously, with as much or more care than is given to book selection . Among the titles our library has added within the past year are some not covered yet by any index, but I can defend the selection of each of them on some other basis of selection: Omni, Grants Magazine, Asia, Bennington Review , Public Opinion, and the Cornell Review. In a few years they probably will be indexed, but it's up to li- brarians to make sure that students do find out about them before then. Encouraging students to read, to browse, to become familiar with new books and periodicals is part of a college librarian 's responsibility, and what the indexing services have chosen to cover cannot obviate that . 2. Another objection stems from the au- thors' overemphasis on bibliographic in- struction, their claim that it should be the most important criterion in determining additions to the collection. Now this may I 325 326 I College & Research Libraries • July 1979 seem a strange comment from one who is so closely identified with bibliographic instruc- tion , and r m sure our agreements about it are more numerous and important than our differences. But the suggestion that "de- partments which have resisted bibliographic instruction should very properly have their book budgets cut" simply runs counter to what I think is the desirable , even neces- sary, approach to bibliographic instruction. Such a punitive device will hardly engen- der that spirit of cooperation , that sense of common endeavor between teaching faculty and librarians that is the sine qua non for an ongoing program of bibliographic instruc- tion . It's . too easy to forget that biblio- graphic instruction is not an end in itself- its justification and primary purpose are the enhancement of the teaching/learning pro- cess. Together with teaching faculty , we col- lege librarians are in the business of educa- tion and regarding and approaching biblio- graphic instruction as an end in itself, with- -out considering its educational context, can only be counterproductive and result in an unsupported and eventually dismantled program. I think that one source of the authors ' error here is their implicit assumption that all teaching has the same thrust, that biblio- graphic instruction can be equally useful for all disciplines , or even for all types of teach- ing. For example, after all these years , I still find it difficult to relate bibliographic instruction to mathematics courses or to foreign-language courses that emphasize language skills. One might respond that , okay, then these departments don' t need much library support, but that's very dif- ferent from saying that they should "have their book budgets Gut." Librarians must understand and ap- preciate that there are many approaches to teaching, and not every one, not even some of the most successful ones, entail use of the library. To be sure , we believe that good teaching can be made even better if stu- dents are required to use the library and are given instruction in that use, but that does not extend to every course. We need to respect the different ap- proaches to pedagogy and work with those that are appropriate for bibliographic in- struction. Our creativity and energy should be focused on the teaching faculty with whom we can work-there's enough to be done just with them. Penalizing others will only put faculty on the defensive and ruin a working relationship that was probably fragile enough to begin with. 3. Librarians "should secure control of the acquisitions budget, if they do not al- ready have it. . . . While the faculty may know their subjects, they probably know lit- tle about how students use the library, and their judgment as book selectors is ques- tionable. " I'm not quite sure what Miller and Rockwood mean by "secure control," and if they mean the librarian is responsible for al- locating the budget and supervising its ex- penditure over the fiscal year, I cannot argue with that . But if, on the other hand, they mean (and this is what I think they do mean) that the librarian should initiate all ordering or at least have to approve every request, I can't agree. First of all , it's not wise politically and will surely test the fragility of that relation- ship I spoke of earlier. More important, though, it assumes that librarians know more about the content of disciplines than most do, or even more than they should be expected to know. It is unfair to categorize faculty members (even with a qualified "too often") as " lacking in their knowledge of books, disinterested in books ... prone to selecting only narrow research works on the one hand or textbooks on the other." My experience is that the few faculty members who fit that description will not even bother to order, and then the librarian can fill that gap. It is more likely that most faculty mem- bers can' t be depended upon to maintain some sort of balance in the library's collec- tion, but that is where the librarian comes in: to suggest titles for filling in gaps and, more important, to work with faculty and help them develop a wider perspective. The library collection is not an end in itself: It exists primarily to support the teaching pro- gram, and teachers should be interested in making sure the collection does that. If they do not, then it's up to the librarian, but he or she should always be conscious of faculty expertise aml responsibility. WILLIAM MILLER A RESPONSE wE APPRECIATE Evan Farber's thoughtful critique, which gives us an opportunity to clarifY several matters. Farber senses, quite rightly, that our article is somewhat rigid and doctrinaire. It is so because we were at- tempting to define some theoretical, objec- tive criteria and then explore what the logi- cal consequences of these criteria might be, ignoring for the moment the political and social context in which the library exists. In real life, of course, we do not ignore the political and social context, and as a result we end up behaving very much as Farber suggests that we should. .._ Nevertheless, we thought it valuable to theorize, with this question in mind: "If I were not running the risk of offending de- partment X, and if I did not need to do a favor for professor Y, what objective criteria could I apply to my acquisitions process, to provide maximum educational benefit to the greatest number of students, given a budget which does not allow me to purchase every- thing I want?" This question is complex and frustrating, so much so that many college librarians re- fuse to accept its legitimacy, preferring in- stead to follow whims, hunches, and preju- dices, and to bemoan the inevitably insuf- ficient budget. A second group of college librarians ac- knowledges the question but says, in effect, "Although we cannot order everything, which every faculty member might theoret- ically want, we can and will order anything any faculty member actually does request." We see little difference between the first and second responses; in both cases, librar- ians are refusing to make professional judg- ments. We suggest a third response: "Although I have the money to order any particular item and could order it if I wanted to, I do not want to unless it fits into a collection de- velopment policy built around an objective set of criteria, which I have already de- fined." With that third response in mind: we should like to respond to Farber's three specific reservations. A Comment and a Response I 327 1. In emphasizing that periodical collec- tions should reflect titles covered in index- ing tools, we acknowledge we are out on a limb and would like to address important questions he raises. There are many thousands of fine peri- odicals, all of them potentially useful for course work. But which ones will students actually use? Clearly, they will almost al- ways use the most highly indexed peri- odicals, because indexing provides their most important subject access. There are, of course, bibliographies that students might use, and they may be introduced to peri- odicals in several other ways. But how can one rationally build a small periodicals col- lection based on these other ways? On the other hand, we know for certain that stu- dents will be using the periodicals sug- gested to them in Readers' Guide and the other more common indexes. We have no wish to make demigods out of the people at H. W. Wilson, and we rec- ognize that there are other bases on which to collect periodicals, but they are weaker, more subjective, and too dependent on in- dividual needs that may be transitory. Therefore, for small academic libraries, we have no hesitation about calling the acquisi- tion of highly indexed periodicals the pri- mary task in the development of the collec- tion, assuming that the primary goal of col- lecting is use, and not the creation of that mythical budget-eating monster, the "bal- anced collection." Der Spiegel illustrates our point well. Any large academic library should have it, and any -small academic library should have it, if it is actually playing a part in the instruc- tional program. But we would hate to see a library of 700 or 1,000 periodical titles sub- scribing to Der Spiegel simply because someone believes that it is the most impor- tant German newsmagazine, something that one "must" have. We would ask librarians at such an institution: "As far as you can tell, do any students actually use it?" "Is there any faculty member who seriously (and not just wishfully) supports the sub- scription as an aid to the instructional pro- gram, or who expects students to use it?" If the answers are "no" on both counts, then the subscription should be cancelled- unless there is a political consideration that - ----- .---~----------------------------------------------------------------- 328 I College & Research Libraries • july 1979 outranks one's normal criteria. Certainly, after cancellation, there may be an occa- sional person who asks for Der Spiegel . But how many students ask, every day, for more common titles that the library cannot supply? 2. Perhaps we were too insistent about library instruction. We do counsel an ag- gressive instruction program , but Farber is right to make a distinction between depart- ments that are noncooperative and those that simply cannot accommodate library work into the structure of their courses . A hostile attitude toward either kind of de- partment is certainly inappropriate and self-defeating. We like Farber's distinction between con- sulting with departments about their re- duced need for support rather than telling them that their budgets are being cut. The difference can certainly be substantive as well as semantic and political. At the same time , it is also appropriate to make special efforts to enrich the collections in those areas where bibliographic instruction has created increased demand. 3. By " securing control of the acquisitions budget, " we meant that librarians should apportion a large part of the acquisitions budget among departments , expecting de- partments to initiate the bulk of their own book ordering, but standing ready , not only to expend departmental funds , but also to exercise judgment on all departmental orders. We do think that librarians should re- serve the right to approve every request, but this does not mean imperious , arbitrary action ; it means questioning and negotiating requests that seem too specialized, too ex- pensive , too redundant, or otherwise inap- propriate. We think also that librarians should retain approximately 25 percent of the budget for discretionary buying. Here , and in their control of the departmental funds, librarians would be exercising their professional judgments.