ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

President’s Report, 1966/67

Dr. McCoy

The Association of College and Research Libraries, through the work of its sections and committees, has carried out a variety of programs and projects during the course of the past year. With more than twelve thousand members, ACRL is now the largest division in the American Library Association.

Perhaps the most active of all ACRL units has been the Junior College Libraries Section, reflecting the urgent need for library support of the rapidly expanding junior college movement. Guided by the ten-point national program outlined at the junior college conference at Pomona, California, held in 1965, and under the chairmanship of Harriett Genung, the Section has initiated a series of projects: With a $5,000 grant from the ACRL Grants Committee the Section is drafting proposals for establishing demonstration junior college libraries similar to the Knapp project for elementary and secondary school libraries; the Section has submitted a proposal to the J. Morris Jones—World Book Encyclopedia—ALA Goals Award to establish at ALA Headquarters on a one-year basis a clearinghouse of information relating to junior college libraries; a third proposal, still in the planning stages, is for a nationwide survey of junior college libraries, with the object of establishing criteria for library support that would be acceptable both to the American Library Association and the American Association of Junior Colleges. The ALA and the AAJC have continued to work together through the close association of the two executive officers— William G. Shannon, executive director of AAJC and George M. Bailey, executive secretary of ACRL. A conference on Junior College Libraries, sponsored by the two associations and the University of California at Los Angeles, will be held at UCLA on June 21-24. The conference is intended for junior college administrators and instructional staff, as well as for librarians. The Junior College Booklist, under the editorship of James Pirie, is expected to be completed in 1968.

A preconference institute has also been planned by the Rare Books Section, to be held at Stanford University on June 22-24. The theme is “Techniques of Special Collections” embracing such topics as disposing of duplicates, exhibition techniques, and valuations and appraisals. Some questions have been raised as to the scope of the Section—whether or not it can be expanded to encompass the interest of manuscript librarians or whether they should be accommodated elsewhere in the Association. A meeting of those concerned will be held during the San Francisco conference.

Consideration continued to be given both at Midwinter and by correspondence to the petition of the Subject Specialists Section for divisional status in the ALA. An alternate proposal made by the chairman of the ALA Committee on Organization, was that the Section become a roundtable. This was unacceptable to the Section. Subsequently, the Reference Services Division proposed that the various special subject groups be given section status in their division. A conference on this proposal will be held in San Francisco with representatives from ACRL, RSD, and the ALA Committee on Organization. The Agriculture and Biological Sciences Subsection has arranged the San Francisco Conference program on “Establishment of a National Medical Information Network,” the speaker being Dr. Martin M. Cummings, director, National Library of Medicine.

The ad hoc Committee on Community Use of Academic Libraries, created by the College Libraries Section in 1964, completed its nationwide survey of library practices which was published in the May 1967 issue of College and Research Libraries. The questionnaire study, directed by E. J. Josey, reflected on the whole, a rather liberal attitude, on the part of a large majority of the 783 college and universities responding, toward permitting use of their libraries by persons not formally associated with their institutions. At the recommendation of the Planning and Action Committee the ACRL Board of Directors approved the continuation of the Committee as an ACRL Committee since it concerned matters not limited to colleges but shared by all sections of the Association.

“Trends in Academic Library Budgeting” is the topic of the San Francisco program of the University Libraries Section. The Section’s Urban Universities Library Committee plans a session on means of access to material relating to urban studies. The Committee on Academic Status is preparing a number of papers for publication as an ACRL monograph. On completion of this task, the Committee asked to be discharged and a new standing ACRL Committee on Academic Status be appointed.

Section II–A of the Higher Education Act of 1965 was funded for the 1967 fiscal year to the amount of $24.5 million, as opposed to $8 million for the previous year. This will permit complete funding of basic ($5,000) matching grants and partial funding of supplemental and special purpose grants. Guidelines and application forms were distributed by the U.S. Office of Education on February 24, with April 10 as the deadline for receipt of applications. The formulae for making grants were based on recommendations of the Advisory Council on College Library Resources, appointed by President Johnson. Title II–B of the Act continued fellowships for library education; Title II–C provided $3 million to the Library of Congress for the Shared Cataloging program; Title VI provided $17 million for audio-visual equipment. Because of the large number of applicants for grants under Title II–A and the shortage of time for wise spending of funds granted, the U.S. Office of Education has announced “forward financing” of the title, which will permit libraries to expend their grants during the following fiscal year.

Much of the credit for the passage of the library section of the Higher Education Act of 1965 should go to Edmon Low, chairman of ACRL’s Legislative Committee, who worked closely with Germaine Krettek, able head of ALA’s Washington office. At the New York meeting of the Board of Directors of ACRL, appreciation was expressed to Edmon Low “for his many years of distinguished service to the Association and for his significant contributions in promoting library development through his work on federal legislation.” The ACRL Committee on Legislation has been asked by the Board of Directors to “take a direct and active role in formulating objectives and in planning legislative action at the national level.” It is the intention of the Board that the Committee on Legislation initiate legislative proposals as well as promote them and that it assume the additional role of communicating to the membership about funds available.

The distribution in March of this year of Library Statistics of College and Universities, 1965–66, published by the Library Administration Division of ALA was welcomed by academic libraries across the nation, who were still relying on figures for 1963-64, the last year for which U.S. Office of Education figures were available. The project was partially financed through a $9,600 grant from the ÚSOE and was under the direction of the LAD Statistics Committee for College and University Libraries, headed by Robert L. Talmadge. Special appreciation goes to Alphonse F. Trezza, executive secretary of LAD, and to Frank L. Schick and Theodore Samore of the school of library and information science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which was under contract to perform the editorial and statistical work and the machine tabulations. Eightythree per cent of the colleges and university libraries responded.

A comparison of statistical information collected during the last seven years (1959/60- 1965/66), prepared by Schick and Samore, shows a tremendous growth of college and university libraries, both in terms of number of volumes and total budgets. Volumes increased from 176.7 millions to 265 millions. However, due to increased student enrollment, the number of volumes per student decreased from 52 to 46. While expenditures for library materials increased from 40.7 million to $111 million during the seven years, price increases in books and subscriptions (estimated at 150 per cent) and a near doubling of United States book titles, means that libraries are probably no better off in covering published output than they were seven years ago. Dr. Schick also points out that increased expenditures for library materials is made up by a limitation of funds for salaries and wages, the ratio for salaries and wages having dropped in the seven years from 61.3 to 56.3. He suggests a reevaluation of federal support funds to take into consideration library manpower requirements.

A significant organizational change took place during the year in a redefining of the role of the Planning and Action Committee. Concern was expressed by members that the Committee in recent years was devoting most of its time at Midwinter and annual conferences to its role as an executive or agenda committee at the expense of long-range planning and review. A special two-day session of the Committee was held on March 14-15 in the pleasant surroundings of Neal R. Harlow’s home in New Brunswick, New Jersey, at which time members scrutinized the objectives of the Association and statements of purpose of all ACRL units as supplied by the chairmen. Recommended changes will be discussed with chairmen and, where appropriate, the Board of Directors; Mr. Bailey and Dean Harlow were commissioned to revise the ACRL organizational manual to reflect changes. It was decided that the Planning and Action Committee would, henceforth, meet in mid-May to examine the reports of ACRL units in terms of total goals and programs of the Association and that an Executive Committee, consisting of the three ACRL officers, meeting shortly thereafter, would develop the agenda for the meetings of the Board of Directors. Removing the planning activities from the pressures of the Midwinter and annual conferences should enable the Planning and Action Committee to fulfill the function for which it was created.

The Audio-Visual Committee [is developing] a draft statement of audio-visual guidelines for academic libraries, for consideration at the San Francisco Conference.

The Committee on Grants, headed by Helen M. Brown, awarded a total of $62,500 in aid to eighty-one colleges and a special grant to the Junior College Libraries Section. The U.S. Steel Foundation continued to supply the major financial support. Others contributing to the fund were: Library Bureau, McGraw-Hill, Olin Mathieson Charitable Trust, Pitney- Bowes, Time, and The H. W. Wilson Foundation. In awarding grants special consideration was given to emerging colleges in the South and to approval of the employment of consultants to advise on the building of book collections and the over-all development of library services. A check for $50,000 received from the U.S. Steel Foundation on May 22 ensures continuation of the program for 1967-68.

The Standards Committee, under the chairmanship of Norman Tanis, has continued work during the year on the revision of the ALA Standards for Junior College Libraries. The Committee met with representatives of the Association of Research Libraries during the New Orleans meeting to explore the feasibility of developing standards for university libraries. Further consideration will be given to the matter at the San Francisco Conference. “Guidelines for Library Service to Extension Students,” published in the January 1967 ALA Bulletin, were subsequently (April 25) endorsed by the National University Extension Association.

CHOICEcontinues to fulfill its stated function: “to provide a reference and advisory guide to inform librarians, faculty, students, scholars, and the general public of the more important current publications on any subject and to assist in achieving balance in building library collections.” CHOICE completed its third year (the first with new editor, Peter Doiron) with circulation of approximately four thousand three hundred reviews of 5,461 titles during 1966-67, and with some two thousand one hundred subject specialists on the reviewing list. A continued subsidy of $108,855 was granted by the Council on Library Resources with the understanding that by the end of the next three years CHOICE’S budget would, through increased subscriptions and advertising, enable it to be self-supporting. CHOICE plans twoor three-year compilations to supplement the new ALA publication, Books for College Libraries, edited by Melvin J. Voigt and J. H. Treyz and issued during the year. Heavy demand for copies of CHOICE’S “Opening Day Collection” led to the reprinting of the list as a separate publication.

College and Research Libraries,under the editorship of David Kaser, continues to provide a high-quality publication of scholarly articles of interest to the academic library community, while at the same time an expanded coverage of news and official material appears in CRL News supplements.

A volume on library surveys, prepared by Maurice Tauber and the Committee on Library Surveys, is now at Columbia University Press. It consists of papers of the 1965 conference held at Columbia, together with questionnaires used in a number of library surveys. The Committee is also preparing a bibliography of college and university surveys, to be ready for publication soon.

The Committee on Liaison with Accrediting Agencies, headed by James Jones, continues to serve as an important channel of communications with officials of regional accrediting agencies. Meetings with regional accrediting officials are held during Midwinter and annual conferences. In San Francisco, invitations have been extended to representatives from the Western Association and the Northwest Association.

Continued liaison of ACRL with the Association of American Colleges has brought forth a proposal from the college association representatives that ACRL provide their association with a newsletter (possibly two or three times a year) covering important items of library development, that would be of interest to college presidents. The proposal will be discussed further at the San Francisco conference.

One of the fruitful contacts made by the Advisory Committee on Cooperation with Educational and Professional Organizations was with the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators who sought advice from ACRL on library service to students. Mr. Bailey attended their Cincinnati convention and discussed problems of mutual interest.

Recognizing the increased involvement of college and university librarians in international library affairs, the ACRL Board of Directors at the New Orleans meeting established an International Relations Committee. The Committee will be advisory to ACRL in ways in which the Association may be usefully involved in international library affairs and will serve as a subcommittee of the ALA International Relations Committee.

A program of Intern Committee Membership was created by the ACRL Board of Directors in December on an experimental basis by authorizing the president-elect to appoint one junior member of the ACRL to standing committees for a one-year term. The candidates are to be chosen, if desired, from a panel of nominees supplied by the president of the Junior Members Round Table. The experiment is intended to draw promising young persons into the affairs of the Association.

Your President is grateful for the opportunity of serving the Association during the year and expresses sincere appreciation to the officers of the Association and to the chairmen and members of committees who are largely responsible for the progress indicated in this report. Special appreciation is given to George M. Bailey, ACRL executive secretary, who provides the continuity from one administration to the next and who performs the many organizational tasks with both skill and grace.— Ralph E. McCoy, May 28, 1967. ■■

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