College and Research Libraries


By H A R O L D L . L E U P P 

Probable Trends in University 
Libraries 
Harold L. Leupp is librarian at the 
University of California. 

EX C E P T in those state colleges which in reality are universities in all but name, 
recent years have witnessed few changes of 
a fundamental nature in the organization 
and operation of American college librar-
ies. Material strides have been made in 
the size and strength of many collections, 
the scope of many has broadened, a larger 
proportion of the personnel is profession-
ally competent, and reader accommoda-
tions have been considerably improved, 
but the underlying character of the college 
library as an institution does not seem to 
change much from decade to decade. Nor 
does there seem to be any obvious reason 
why it should. T h e colleges are free from 
most of those problems which advances in 
scientific discovery and technical achieve-
ment, and rapidly changing conceptions of 
man's relationship to man, social, economic, 
and political, have imposed upon the uni-
versities. T h e astonishing growth of grad-
uate schools, the pressure upon every 
university to offer graduate work in ever 
new fields, and the increasing emphasis 
upon independent investigation in under-
graduate courses, are developments of re-
cent years with which university libraries 
are vitally concerned. Probably it was 
natural for university librarians to try to 
meet these changing conditions by adapting 
old methods and old conceptions, as well as 

old buildings, to new necessities. A t any 
rate, that is what most of us did. It has 
become unhappily evident that that is not 
good enough: the whole situation needs to 
be restudied. Fundamental changes are 
called for, embodying conceptions of li-
brary service for universities which differ 
radically from those formerly held. Such 
changes ought to be carefully planned. 
T h e following remarks are intended to set 
forth some of the considerations involved, 
as I see them. 

Most university libraries and all state 
university libraries are at present called 
upon to serve two masters. There is 
Biblical warrant for the belief that such 
an attempt is unlikely to succeed, and ex-
perience seems to bear out the assumption. 
T o try to care for the differing and often 
conflicting needs of hordes of undergradu-
ate students on the one hand, and of 
graduate students, faculty, and research 
men on the other, in the same building or 
buildings, with the same collection of 
books, and very largely with the same 
staff, is to attempt the impossible. T h e 
answer seems to be separate housing, sepa-
rate book collections, and separate staffs. 
T h e needs of most undergraduate and of 
practically all lower division students are 
simple, and can be met rather easily and 
at no great cost. It will simplify matters 
to eliminate from the present discussion 
this large and important but not very com-
plicated element, and to consider only the 

DECEMBER, 1939 57 



problems of service to the more advanced 
group. 

In broad terms, the problem of the uni-
versity library is to provide materials for 
advanced instruction and research for the 
use of faculty and graduate students, in 
all fields in which the institution offers, or 
is likely to offer, graduate work, with em-
phasis placed in accordance with the in-
structional program; and to make these 
materials as accessible as possible, and 
their use as simple as possible, to the vari-
ous groups which have need of them. 
T h i s is about as elementary a statement 
as the situation permits, yet its implications 
are many and call for expenditure on a 
scale which no university has yet at-
tempted. It has become the task of univer-
sity librarians to sell some such conception 
of the university library to the powers that 
be as a preliminary to concrete proposals. 
Those proposals will have to deal in the 
light of local conditions with the prob-
lems of ( I ) assembling the collections, 
( 2 ) housing them, and ( 3 ) administering 
them. Solutions will differ in detail, as 
the problems do, in different institutions, 
but any successful solution must take into 
account certain fundamental considera-
tions. 

Assembling the Collections 

A definite program of acquisition should 
be adopted by the individual or group re-
sponsible for library policy. In most cases 
this will be the library committee. T h e 
program of acquisition should conform to 
the teaching and research program of the 
institution, which in turn will depend to 
some extent upon conditions and require-
ments imposed by geographical location, 
and should take into account both the re-
sources and the programs of neighboring 
institutions of comparable character, and 

the means of making accessible the con-
tents of collections further removed. It 
should be conditioned upon, or at least 
supplemented by, a comprehensive work-
ing plan for inter-institutional coopera-
tion. T h e cooperating libraries should 
agree upon spheres of special interest, and 
each should so plan its purchasing program 
as not to attempt competition with any of 
the others in their special fields, confining 
itself to the acquisition simply of good 
working collections in those fields. Such 
a plan would place at the service of the 
scholar in any of the cooperating univer-
sities, many more outstanding collections 
than his own institution could ever hope 
to acquire. T h e next step, logically, 
would be joint purchasing of private li-
braries or special collections. Cooperation 
of this nature not only would enable the 
libraries in the group to take advantage 
of opportunities not financially possible to 
any one of them alone, but would go f a r 
to eliminate the specter of excessive dupli-
cation which so often blights with rts cold 
dead hand, promising projects for purchase 
en bloc. 

If I may illustrate the foregoing state-
ments from our own recent experience: In 
1 9 3 1 our Library Committee drew up and 
presented to the Academic Senate, which 
formally approved it, a Special Report . . . 
on the Aims of the University Library, 
Based upon the Survey of the Collections. 
T h e objectives in view were stated to be: 

. . . first, to build up the collections of 
books and documents more systematically; 
second, to avoid duplication of special col-
lections, and to reduce the price-raising 
competition among libraries west of the 
Rockies by an interlibrary agreement as to 
special aims; third, to offer Friends of the 
University Library a concrete program for 
their support. 

. . . the statement herewith made of 

58 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



specific aims assumes the continued routine 
accumulation . . . of all fundamental and 
indispensable books and documents, for 
teaching and research, in those fields covered 
by departments of the University. The aims 
indicated as Special are merely extensions of 
the fundamental collections. . . . 

Following a statement of basic immedi-
ate needs in all fields, comes the "Special 
Aims of the University Library," subdi-
vided into ( A ) fields in which the library 
should strive for national preeminence, 
and ( B ) fields in which the library should 
maintain, or strive to attain, preeminence 
on the Pacific coast. T h e final paragraph 
lists ten fields in which the survey showed 
the library to be definitely below par, the 
aim being the development of satisfactory 
working collections. T h e recommenda-
tions in this special report have given defi-
nite direction to our purchasing program, 
and have determined its emphasis. 

Within the last eighteen months the li-
braries of the University of California in 
Berkeley and in Los Angeles, which are 
independently administered and have no 
organic connection with one another, have 
joined forces to purchase abroad two im-
portant private collections, and are now 
negotiating the purchase of a third. Nei-
ther library could have financed these 
purchases alone, and extensive duplication 
would have resulted if it had done so. 
T h e plan adopted for this cooperative pur-
chasing gives to the library having the 
greater strength in any of the fields con-
cerned, the choice of material falling 
within those fields, and the cost is divided 
approximately in the ratio of the material 
acquired by each. T h e two collections 
purchased have been checked in both 
Berkeley and Los Angeles, and the net 
duplication proves to be comparatively 
slight. 

Housing the Collections 

Immediately there arises that hardy per-
ennial, the question of centralization ver-
sus decentralization. T h e problem is not 
simple, but one thing may be stated defi-
nitely: in no large or rapidly expanding 
institution will the answer be found either 
in a single building, or in a battalion of 
departmental libraries. For one reason, 
on a far-flung campus the university M a -
homet simply will not come to the moun-
tain if the mountain is at any considerable 
distance from the center of his activities; 
and if that center is formed by labora-
tories, drafting rooms or shops, he has 
good grounds for his refusal. On the 
other hand, the cost of providing a reason-
ably complete library for every department 
of instruction would give pause even to 
Congress. Compromise is called f o r ; and 
in formulating a compromise program, 
university administrators should accept and 
embalm in their thinking two principles: 
( I ) In determining upon a site for and 
in planning any new building on the 
campus, the requirements of library service 
for the departments which will occupy 
that building should be given careful 
study; and ( 2 ) related departments should 
be grouped together, so far as may be pos-
sible. 

While it is by no means true that all 
knowledge falls naturally into self-suffi-
cient groupings of related subjects, it is a 
fact that the literature of certain groups 
of subjects tends to flock by itself, so to 
speak, evidencing only slight relationship 
to that of other subjects. In general, the 
organization of a university by department 
of instruction displays much the same 
tendency. In particular, this is true of 
the laboratory sciences and technology, 
which seems to indicate the lines on which 
decentralization may be effected with the 

DECEMBER, 1939 59 



greatest satisfaction to the departments 
concerned, and avoidance of most of the 
bad features of decentralization by depart-
ments. T h e essential conditions are: a 
group of departments dependent upon a 
common body of literature for which there 
is no considerable demand from outside the 
group; convenient location of the group 
library with respect to the departments 
constituting the group; concentration in 
the group library of all literature in classi-
fications corresponding to the departments 
in the group; and administration of the 
group library in accordance with the regu-
lations of the main library of the univer-
sity, particularly as regards days and hours 
of opening, withdrawal privileges, and 
similar matters of general concern. T h e 
engineering departments constitute one 
such homogeneous and self-sufficient 
group; the biological sciences form one. 
Probably the literature of the social sci-
ences and of the languages and literatures 
should be concentrated in the main library, 
since interest in it is not confined to the 
departments immediately concerned. Re-
serve collections for undergraduate courses 
should not be included in group concentra-
tions, since considerations of efficiency and 
economy necessitate administration of re-
serve collections as units, regardless of 
subject matter. 

Administration of Collections 

T h e importance of developing subject 
specialists in university libraries (or rather 
as D r . Peyton Hurt puts it, specialists in 
the literature of subjects) is generally con-
ceded; a practical difficulty in attaining 
this ideal is lack of differentiation in the 
background of professional librarians. 
Languages, literature, art, music, history, 
economics, philosophy, psychology—these 
are offered in abundance, but rarely engi-

neering, medicine, or anything in any 
science beyond the elementary work com-
monly required of candidates for the 
Bachelor's degree. Consideration of ways 
to improve this condition, happily is out-
side the scope of this paper, but the 
librarians in charge of group libraries 
should have, or should acquire, sufficient 
familiarity with the literatures of the sub-
jects in their groups to enable them to be 
of real assistance to the experts they must 
serve, and also to contribute largely to 
the development of their respective li-
braries. Subject specialization perhaps 
is less vital on the staff of the main library, 
but even there, training in library tech-
nique and proficiency in foreign languages 
no longer suffice. T o an increasing ex-
tent, more than average knowledge of the 
literature of some subject will be required 
of the professional staffs of university 
libraries, and in making appointments and 
promotions, university librarians will have 
to give more and more attention to diver-
sification of the fields in which their staffs 
are qualified to render expert assistance. 
Logically, this should induce university ad-
ministrators to offer greater inducements 
to library staff members to pursue gradu-
ate studies, and also should lead to changes 
in staff organization designed to secure 
for the library service the maximum bene-
fit from the resulting special knowledge in 
subject fields. Subject specialists in any 
department of the library should be given 
training and experience in public work, 
and should be called upon to assist in de-
veloping the collections in their fields. 

It seems probable that significant 
changes impend in the public catalog, pos-
sibly on the lines laid down by the John 
Crerar Library. T h e Crerar Library has 
an author catalog, and a classed catalog 
with index. T h e index consists of guide 

6 0 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



cards bearing subject headings, and ref-
erences to the classes in which material 
on the subjects will be found. T h i s index 
has been developed into a selected catalog 
by filing behind each guide, cards for the 
latest and most authoritative books on the 
subject. T h e plan combines the best fea-
tures of the classed catalog for the spe-
cialist and the subject-word catalog for 
the layman, with the important additional 
advantage that the layman receives expert 
guidance in his choice of books. Compe-
tent librarians should be constantly on 
duty at the catalog to assist the user, and 
to maintain the important but insufficiently 
emphasized liaison between the public cat-
alog and the special bibliographies and 
other library tools which supplement it. 

Old Idea Must Be Abandoned 

In conclusion, it seems inevitable that 
the old idea of planning for fifty years 
ahead, definitely must be abandoned. Uni-
versities are growing so rapidly, and con-
ditions within them are changing so 
frequently and so radically, that any 
long term program becomes merely an 
invitation to trouble. A t no point are the 
expansion of knowledge and the develop-
ment of ideas static, and progress does not 
necessarily follow straight lines. Fields 
of knowledge tend constantly to overlap 
and merge, or to form new relationships. 
T h e subject groupings of today may be 
wholly changed tomorrow. One can only 

plan for the conditions which exist today 
or which there is reason to believe will 
soon exist, avoiding so f a r as possible any 
mortgaging of the future. Monumental 
library buildings, and programs which 
cannot be rapidly and fundamentally ad-
justed to changing conditions, do mortgage 
the future. Library buildings, like busi-
ness buildings, should be designed to last 
for, say, twenty or twenty-five years, mak-
ing way at the end of that time for new 
buildings, adapted to the changed require-
ments of the new day. Such a plan 
inherently is not impossible; the cost of 
one monumental library building, capital-
ized, probably would finance it for a 
century. T h e inestimable advantage this 
plan offers is, that under it the library 
building would subserve the requirements 
of scholarship. Librarians require no re-
minder of the unfortunate results of many 
attempts to fit those requirements to the 
Procrustean bed of a rigid architectural 
program. I have never heard the idea 
advanced that Omar was a university li-
brarian, but certainly he expressed the 
heartfelt yearnings of many such, strug-
gling to render adequate service in un-
adaptable tombs of literature, when he 
warbled to the girl friend: 

Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate con-
spire 

T o grasp this sorry Scheme of Things en-
tire, 

Would not we shatter it to bits, and then 
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire! 

D i s c u s s i o n 

Charles IV. Smith, librarian, Univer-
sity of Washington, commented on Mr. 
Leupp's paper: 

M R . L E U P P has presented a succinct ac-

DECEMBER, 1939 

count of the problems of the university 
library. A l l university librarians will 
recognize the correctness of his diagnosis 
and will doubtless agree as to the desig-
nated lines along which recovery must 
proceed. 

61 



Assembling the Collections 

Comment may first be made upon 
methods of assembling the collections. 
Librarians are willing to concede the 
potency of that new specific, Cooperation. 
T h e evils of competition are everywhere 
recognized, but what practical methods 
have been developed to combat them ? 
I think we must say that so f a r coordina-
tion is the best answer. Progressive li-
braries are making self surveys of their 
fields of subject interest. In this way 
definite programs of book collecting are 
emerging and ultimately a national pattern 
may be discerned. Neighboring libraries 
are becoming acquainted with the subject 
fields being cultivated by institutions 
within given regions. So f a r so good, 
but all we have thus secured is awareness 
and the benefit of good intentions. What 
of the institutions which are frankly self 
centered? Such interinstitutional pro-
grams as can now be cited are due solely 
to the grace of God and a few benevolent 
and farsighted individuals. W h a t agen-
cies, we must ask ourselves, are available 
for securing group action or enforcing 
commitments? 

It would be instructive to have fuller 
details in regard to the University of 
California survey of its library collections. 
Reference was made by M r . Leupp to 
"an interlibrary agreement as to special 
aims." W a s this agreement reached by a 
common conference at which the various 
institutions were represented and with 
what results? W i l l the California agree-
ments be made known outside of the state? 
I am sure that each university library on 
the coast would profit by a knowledge of 
the California fields of specialization, even 
though they relate solely to its chief in-
stitution. Pacific coast universities are 
dependent to an unusual degree upon the 

holdings of this institution for interlibrary 
courtesies. 

In the Pacific northwest we have found 
it a most difficult problem to reach inter-
institutional agreements involving sacrifice 
or surrender of sovereignty. W e have 
printed a preliminary list of special collec-
tions and certain libraries have been in-
duced to assume special obligations. T h e 
Pacific Northwest Library Association, 
moreover, has proved a useful body for 
coordinating regional activity, but this 
body does not carry power to coerce ad-
ministrative authorities or to prevent them 
from making unwise duplication of cur-
riculums. In spite of considerable effort 
and undoubted progress, we still lack any 
competent central authority to secure and 
enforce educational cooperation. Our 
most successful work has been done in 
securing the adoption of regional responsi-
bilities, especially in the collection of docu-
ments. Practically nothing has been 
accomplished by way of cooperative pur-
chase. 

California's experience in the joint pur-
chase of special collections is most inter-
esting and to an extent reassuring. One 
wonders, however, whether such agree-
ments will not be much more difficult 
among wholly unrelated libraries. Ob-
viously two institutions supported by a 
single state have a very close relationship. 

Housing 

T h e University of California is leading 
the way to a solution of the much mooted 
question of centralization versus decen-
tralization of books. Branch libraries, 
grouped by large subjects, appear to be 
the only feasible solution for large institu-
tions. With the growth of large collec-
tions and the large numbers served, some 
method of bringing books and users into 

62 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



close proximity is necessary. Where build-
ings permit, I think it ideal to have a 
number of these branches within the main 
library building. The branches, in any 
case, should be an integral part of the 
library system and under the full control 
of the librarian. Equal hours of opening 
and adequate reference service are indis-
pensable factors. I agree that reserve 
collections for undergraduate courses 
should not as a rule be included in group 
concentrations. Particularly worth stress-
ing is M r . Leupp's observation that "in 
determining a site for and in planning any 
new building on the campus, the require-
ments of library service for the depart-
ments which will occupy the building must 
be given study." 

Under the head of administration of 
the collections the importance of develop-
ing subject specialists is urged. This is 
essentially the ideal preached for many 
years by M r . Henry at the University 
of Washington. M r . Henry had very 
definitely in mind the idea of subject spe-
cialization when he insisted that a uni-
versity library staff should be composed 
of a battery of trained reference librarians. 
Emphasis is now placed upon subject spe-
cialists, not alone in the reference division 
but in every department of the library, 
and for the main library is well as for the 
branches. 

How to get them? Library schools 
give us some help, but much must be done 
to encourage on-the-job training. In our 
own staff we endeavor to get versatility 
when adding new members, but it is very 
necessary to stimulate continuous speciali-
zation. Those who register for university 
courses are, on approval of the divisional 
heads and the librarian, allowed three 
hours per week of library time for study. 
A university rule permits members of the 

library staff to audit courses without 
tuition fees when such courses are ap-
proved by the librarian. Normally a con-
siderable number of the regular library 
staff are taking credit courses leading to 
advanced degrees. Advanced work is 
chosen with reference to increased useful-
ness to the library. 

A few examples may be cited. A mem-
ber of the Acquisitions Division in charge 
of Canadian documents is taking courses 
in English and Canadian history. The 
head of the science branch library has for 
some years carried work in the Russian 
language so as to be able to read and 
abstract Russian articles for the science 
men. Another staff member has for the 
past two years taken a daily course in the 
Chinese language in order to assist in 
the buying and cataloging of the Chinese 
collection augmented by a recent Rocke-
feller grant. Incidentally, apart from 
the subject knowledge gained, these 
librarian-teacher contacts have proved of 
great advantage. We have learned 
through these contacts how better to 
serve certain departments of instruction 
and we have been able to straighten out 
misunderstandings that have' been discov-
ered. 

As an extra inducement toward staff 
specialization, one week of leave on pay 
in addition to the annual vacation is now 
permitted to staff members in considera-
tion of professional projects undertaken 
during the year. 

I heartily agree with M r . Leupp that 
diversity of subject background is neces-
sary. It is increasingly evident, however, 
that diversity can be secured by in-service 
training. Staff teamwork, moreover, is 
vital and training on the job tends to 
insure a harmonious development of the 
whole staff. 

DECEMBER, 1939 63