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University library book selection policy revisited
ht.
Libr.
Rev.
(1971)
3, 61-65
University Library Book Selection Policy Revisited J. PERIAM
DANTON?
Arthur Hamlin, in his article, “The Book Collections of British University Libraries : An American Reaction,” has a section on the “Theoretical In this section he discusses some proAspects of Book Selection.“l posals in a book of mine. s I wish to respond to this discussion. I do so not simply to set the record straight but, more importantly, because I believe it to be of the utmost consequence to university librarianship as it moves, in North America at least, toward increased library staff bookselection responsibility, that the essential elements of the emerging policy and practice be made abundantly clear. Without such understanding, plans may be instituted which would do great harm to university library collection building programmes. Briefly summarized, Mr Hamlin’s position is that book-selection, except for works of reference and bibliography, and certain types of journals and newspapers), should remain in the hands of the faculty where, in the Anglo-American countries, it has been and still largely remains today; that, “basically the library staff, as normally constituted, can only aim to influence the faculty in its function of selection while taking principal responsibility in certain limited areas.” (page 147). I wish to consider, setiatim, the principal arguments he advances in support of his position, but I should note at the outset that the issue does not concern “library staff as normally constituted;” the whole tenor of my proposals called for quite a new order of things, as Mr Hamlin must be well aware. He begins his discussion by quoting my suggestion that “The university administration, following consultation with, and advice from, appropriate academic groups, should provide the library with an official statement of policy, in some detail, as to the institution’s present and probable future programme of teaching and research. The statement t School of Librarianship, University of California, Berkeley, 1 Znt. Libr. Rev. 2, 146-151 (1970). 2 J. Periam Danton (1963). Book Selection and Collections: American University Libraries, pp. 133-137. New York: Columbia
California
94720,
U.S.A.
A Comfiarison of German University Press.
and
62
J.
P. DANTON
should indicate the institutions’ level of interest in specific areas of learning, and the extent to which they will be supported and prosecuted . . .” (op. cit., p. 133). He then suggests that “Few vicechancellors or presidents on either side of the Atlantic are in a position to chart ‘the probable future programme of teaching and research’ . . .” To this I can only say: long-range future, no; short-range future-say three to five years-indispensably. If the institution does not know, at least in general, where it is going, and what areas it intends to support at what levels, it is in a bad way. How can effective planning of any kind, financial or personnel, take place without this sort of information ? Most universities do, indeed, plan ahead, but the problem is that the libraries have not been kept fully informed. Much of this planning is, of course, only a reaffirmation of programmes and levels of commitment currently in existence; it is of the prospective new or expanded activity that the library particularly needs to be informed. Not only informed; the library needs to be involved in planning, and plans, once made, must be understood and accepted by all concerned. Hamlin : “Furthermore faculty members the world over are highly individualistic and hardly likely to determine their personal research interests according to any institutional plan. An idea strikes, an interest develops by chance, and the man is mounted and off he goes. No vicechancellor or policy statement will hold him.” Of course. But this statement is irrelevant here. We are not asking to know the specific research interests of every member of the faculty, useful though that information would be. We are asking only that the library be told, for example, that the university expects to support teaching and research in British 19th century history, or medieval art, at the highest possible level, or at some other level. What research the individual faculty member undertakes in these fields or any others, is, as it must be, entirely his own business. One might add here that one of the major hindrances to the creation of good book collections in Anglo-American university libraries has been precisely the professor who has, so to speak, mounted and gone off. The professor, as book selector, has operated as an independent, virtually autonomous individual, with almost no regard for departmental, area, or university book collection interests, needs, or priorities. Hamlin : “But even if such factors could be brought under some degree of control. it is doubtful that the university would prosper intellectually by confining certain fields of study to elementary levels. If, for example, astronomy is so designated should the university seek, for this elementary level instruction, faculty who would swear to renounce research interests and never to seek material for student or personal use beyond the level called for in the master plan?” The fact is, that all
BOOK
SELECTION
POLICY
REVISITED
63
universities do and must set limits upon their programmes, simply because no institution can afford to cover the whole world of learning at the highest levels. To deny this, is to claim that every university is prepared to provide library and other support, and faculty, for doctoral degrees in Amharic, biostatics, Chinese painting, high temperature chemistry, history of the book, Rumanian literature, etc. It is surely well-enough known that every university supports different subjects at different levels. What I obect to rather more in this comment, however, is that Mr Hamlin has drawn a red herring across the trail. The issue is not at all one of hiring “for elementary level instruction faculty who would swear to renounce research interests. . .” and so on. The university may offer only two years of Hindi, but the man who teaches it is probably either (1) a professor whose main interest (including research) is Sanskrit, or (2) a native lecturer of whom no research is expected and who is not interested in doing it. Somewhat similarly for other fields where, if onZ~ more or less elementary instruction is offered, and if it is unrelated to other subjects which might provide instructor-researchers, the courses are usually not taught by regular, full-time faculty. Hamlin : “Any scheme of this sort [i.e. a corps of library staff bookselectors] will effectively kill faculty co-operation in building library collections, and no university can hope to duplicate, with a corps of book-selectors, the collective knowledge of that body. Not only is knowledge involved, but also the contacts of individual members . . . If [the faculty] have once been told, sharply and clearly, to keep hands off the procurement of materials, they are not likely to feel any . . . obligation to steer collections its way, nor are they likely to make donations of their own.” Now just a minute, please. I challenge Mr Hamlin to point to any existing programme or proposal in which, even by implication, there is the slightest suggestion of faculty being or having been “told, sharply and clearly, to keep hands off the procurement of materials.” Mr Hamlin is building a straw man, and these comments fill me with sadness and dismay. They seem to suggest that Mr Hamlin has quite forgotten a major and essential part of my policy proposal: “Faculty participation in selection should be encouraged and fostered and, especially, should be made more nearly universal than it is now. To this end the library staff book-selectors should be expected to devote possibly a fifth to a tenth of their total time . . . to working with individual members of the faculty. In particular, new appointees, and those who have previously shown little or no concern for the library, should be visited, their interests discovered, their special bibliographic knowledge exploited, and offers of assistance and the strongest possible
64
J.
P. DANTON
encouragement to active participation in book selection given. A programme of this kind, pursued over a period of years, would result in personal acquaintance of the library staff members with most members of the faculty. Contact by mail and telephone, between personal visits, should be maintained.” (op. cit., p. 137). This is, in fact, pretty much what is happening at those institutions which have gone furthest in developing a corps of library staff book-selectors, for example the Universities of Indiana, Toronto, and California at Los Angeles, each of which has a staff of about a dozen full-time book-selectors. Hamlin: “Finally there is always the financing to be considered. The machinery represented by this corps of scholars would use an immense amount of financial power that might better be applied to actual purchases.” Of course, the more money spent for books, the better, so why not eliminate the cataloguing staffs, too, and use the savings for staff, which is everywhere more book purchases ? The cataloguing numerous than even the largest book-selecting staff, is maintained because the catalogues are the key to the contents of the library. But the key is only as valuable as the resources it opens, and these resources in Anglo-American libraries in recent years have not been as well developed as they should and could have been. Full reliance on the faculty (where the time-costs are subsidized, hidden, and not specifically identified) to build these resources is now no longer effectively possible. It may be unfortunate that the library now has to pay large sums of money to do the book-selecting job, but if it must do so to insure that the task is done reasonably well, this is simply an economic fact which has to be accepted. It is fully as justifiable as the expenditure of larger sums on cataloguing staff. One more point needs to be made here. I believe that many of Mr Hamlin’s readers will be confused, as I was, by his apparent approval, later on in his article, of the “more attractive proposal . . . of K. W. Humphreys, which calls for employment of subject specialists in . . . university libraries.” (page 15O)i. Here the specialists are not full-time book-selectors, but would engage also in other professional activities. I suggested precisely this alternative (op. cit., pp. 135-137). That, however, is not my reason for referring to Mr Hamlin’s statement. Book-selection, if performed by the library staff at a certain level and comprehensiveness will take X amount of time, let us say, for the sake of argument, 200 hours per week. It does not very much matter to the success of book-selection, though it may matter in other respects, whether these hours are the result of five staff members working 40 1 Kenneth W. Humphreys Libraries. Libri 17, 29-41.
(1967).
The
Subject
Specialist
in National
and
University
BOOK
SELECTION
POLICY
REVISITED
hours a week, or ten working
65
20 hours, or 20 working ten hours. The cost with regard to financing is, consequently, completely irrelevant. Finally, I would say to this point, and in general to all the specifics of Mr Hamlin’s argumentation: let no one write-off the notion of university library staff book-selectors without closely examining its operation in those institutions which have successfully instituted it. Besides the three mentioned above, Cornell University, Harvard University (chiefly for current publications), Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin, and Yale University, among others, have all gone some distance in this direction. to the library in sta$ time is exactly the same in each case. The argument
Libr.
Rev.
(1971)
3, 61-65
University Library Book Selection Policy Revisited J. PERIAM
DANTON?
Arthur Hamlin, in his article, “The Book Collections of British University Libraries : An American Reaction,” has a section on the “Theoretical In this section he discusses some proAspects of Book Selection.“l posals in a book of mine. s I wish to respond to this discussion. I do so not simply to set the record straight but, more importantly, because I believe it to be of the utmost consequence to university librarianship as it moves, in North America at least, toward increased library staff bookselection responsibility, that the essential elements of the emerging policy and practice be made abundantly clear. Without such understanding, plans may be instituted which would do great harm to university library collection building programmes. Briefly summarized, Mr Hamlin’s position is that book-selection, except for works of reference and bibliography, and certain types of journals and newspapers), should remain in the hands of the faculty where, in the Anglo-American countries, it has been and still largely remains today; that, “basically the library staff, as normally constituted, can only aim to influence the faculty in its function of selection while taking principal responsibility in certain limited areas.” (page 147). I wish to consider, setiatim, the principal arguments he advances in support of his position, but I should note at the outset that the issue does not concern “library staff as normally constituted;” the whole tenor of my proposals called for quite a new order of things, as Mr Hamlin must be well aware. He begins his discussion by quoting my suggestion that “The university administration, following consultation with, and advice from, appropriate academic groups, should provide the library with an official statement of policy, in some detail, as to the institution’s present and probable future programme of teaching and research. The statement t School of Librarianship, University of California, Berkeley, 1 Znt. Libr. Rev. 2, 146-151 (1970). 2 J. Periam Danton (1963). Book Selection and Collections: American University Libraries, pp. 133-137. New York: Columbia
California
94720,
U.S.A.
A Comfiarison of German University Press.
and
62
J.
P. DANTON
should indicate the institutions’ level of interest in specific areas of learning, and the extent to which they will be supported and prosecuted . . .” (op. cit., p. 133). He then suggests that “Few vicechancellors or presidents on either side of the Atlantic are in a position to chart ‘the probable future programme of teaching and research’ . . .” To this I can only say: long-range future, no; short-range future-say three to five years-indispensably. If the institution does not know, at least in general, where it is going, and what areas it intends to support at what levels, it is in a bad way. How can effective planning of any kind, financial or personnel, take place without this sort of information ? Most universities do, indeed, plan ahead, but the problem is that the libraries have not been kept fully informed. Much of this planning is, of course, only a reaffirmation of programmes and levels of commitment currently in existence; it is of the prospective new or expanded activity that the library particularly needs to be informed. Not only informed; the library needs to be involved in planning, and plans, once made, must be understood and accepted by all concerned. Hamlin : “Furthermore faculty members the world over are highly individualistic and hardly likely to determine their personal research interests according to any institutional plan. An idea strikes, an interest develops by chance, and the man is mounted and off he goes. No vicechancellor or policy statement will hold him.” Of course. But this statement is irrelevant here. We are not asking to know the specific research interests of every member of the faculty, useful though that information would be. We are asking only that the library be told, for example, that the university expects to support teaching and research in British 19th century history, or medieval art, at the highest possible level, or at some other level. What research the individual faculty member undertakes in these fields or any others, is, as it must be, entirely his own business. One might add here that one of the major hindrances to the creation of good book collections in Anglo-American university libraries has been precisely the professor who has, so to speak, mounted and gone off. The professor, as book selector, has operated as an independent, virtually autonomous individual, with almost no regard for departmental, area, or university book collection interests, needs, or priorities. Hamlin : “But even if such factors could be brought under some degree of control. it is doubtful that the university would prosper intellectually by confining certain fields of study to elementary levels. If, for example, astronomy is so designated should the university seek, for this elementary level instruction, faculty who would swear to renounce research interests and never to seek material for student or personal use beyond the level called for in the master plan?” The fact is, that all
BOOK
SELECTION
POLICY
REVISITED
63
universities do and must set limits upon their programmes, simply because no institution can afford to cover the whole world of learning at the highest levels. To deny this, is to claim that every university is prepared to provide library and other support, and faculty, for doctoral degrees in Amharic, biostatics, Chinese painting, high temperature chemistry, history of the book, Rumanian literature, etc. It is surely well-enough known that every university supports different subjects at different levels. What I obect to rather more in this comment, however, is that Mr Hamlin has drawn a red herring across the trail. The issue is not at all one of hiring “for elementary level instruction faculty who would swear to renounce research interests. . .” and so on. The university may offer only two years of Hindi, but the man who teaches it is probably either (1) a professor whose main interest (including research) is Sanskrit, or (2) a native lecturer of whom no research is expected and who is not interested in doing it. Somewhat similarly for other fields where, if onZ~ more or less elementary instruction is offered, and if it is unrelated to other subjects which might provide instructor-researchers, the courses are usually not taught by regular, full-time faculty. Hamlin : “Any scheme of this sort [i.e. a corps of library staff bookselectors] will effectively kill faculty co-operation in building library collections, and no university can hope to duplicate, with a corps of book-selectors, the collective knowledge of that body. Not only is knowledge involved, but also the contacts of individual members . . . If [the faculty] have once been told, sharply and clearly, to keep hands off the procurement of materials, they are not likely to feel any . . . obligation to steer collections its way, nor are they likely to make donations of their own.” Now just a minute, please. I challenge Mr Hamlin to point to any existing programme or proposal in which, even by implication, there is the slightest suggestion of faculty being or having been “told, sharply and clearly, to keep hands off the procurement of materials.” Mr Hamlin is building a straw man, and these comments fill me with sadness and dismay. They seem to suggest that Mr Hamlin has quite forgotten a major and essential part of my policy proposal: “Faculty participation in selection should be encouraged and fostered and, especially, should be made more nearly universal than it is now. To this end the library staff book-selectors should be expected to devote possibly a fifth to a tenth of their total time . . . to working with individual members of the faculty. In particular, new appointees, and those who have previously shown little or no concern for the library, should be visited, their interests discovered, their special bibliographic knowledge exploited, and offers of assistance and the strongest possible
64
J.
P. DANTON
encouragement to active participation in book selection given. A programme of this kind, pursued over a period of years, would result in personal acquaintance of the library staff members with most members of the faculty. Contact by mail and telephone, between personal visits, should be maintained.” (op. cit., p. 137). This is, in fact, pretty much what is happening at those institutions which have gone furthest in developing a corps of library staff book-selectors, for example the Universities of Indiana, Toronto, and California at Los Angeles, each of which has a staff of about a dozen full-time book-selectors. Hamlin: “Finally there is always the financing to be considered. The machinery represented by this corps of scholars would use an immense amount of financial power that might better be applied to actual purchases.” Of course, the more money spent for books, the better, so why not eliminate the cataloguing staffs, too, and use the savings for staff, which is everywhere more book purchases ? The cataloguing numerous than even the largest book-selecting staff, is maintained because the catalogues are the key to the contents of the library. But the key is only as valuable as the resources it opens, and these resources in Anglo-American libraries in recent years have not been as well developed as they should and could have been. Full reliance on the faculty (where the time-costs are subsidized, hidden, and not specifically identified) to build these resources is now no longer effectively possible. It may be unfortunate that the library now has to pay large sums of money to do the book-selecting job, but if it must do so to insure that the task is done reasonably well, this is simply an economic fact which has to be accepted. It is fully as justifiable as the expenditure of larger sums on cataloguing staff. One more point needs to be made here. I believe that many of Mr Hamlin’s readers will be confused, as I was, by his apparent approval, later on in his article, of the “more attractive proposal . . . of K. W. Humphreys, which calls for employment of subject specialists in . . . university libraries.” (page 15O)i. Here the specialists are not full-time book-selectors, but would engage also in other professional activities. I suggested precisely this alternative (op. cit., pp. 135-137). That, however, is not my reason for referring to Mr Hamlin’s statement. Book-selection, if performed by the library staff at a certain level and comprehensiveness will take X amount of time, let us say, for the sake of argument, 200 hours per week. It does not very much matter to the success of book-selection, though it may matter in other respects, whether these hours are the result of five staff members working 40 1 Kenneth W. Humphreys Libraries. Libri 17, 29-41.
(1967).
The
Subject
Specialist
in National
and
University
BOOK
SELECTION
POLICY
REVISITED
hours a week, or ten working
65
20 hours, or 20 working ten hours. The cost with regard to financing is, consequently, completely irrelevant. Finally, I would say to this point, and in general to all the specifics of Mr Hamlin’s argumentation: let no one write-off the notion of university library staff book-selectors without closely examining its operation in those institutions which have successfully instituted it. Besides the three mentioned above, Cornell University, Harvard University (chiefly for current publications), Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin, and Yale University, among others, have all gone some distance in this direction. to the library in sta$ time is exactly the same in each case. The argument