ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

From Inside the DLSEF

By Dr. Katharine M. Stokes

College and University Library Specialist, Library Planning and Development Branch, Division of Library Services and Educational Facilities, U.S. Office of Education, Washington, D.C. 20202.

You are probably anxiously waiting now to hear about your applications for Title II-A grants (College Library Resources) under the Higher Education Act of 1965. Another $25,000,000 worth of materials to be bought by June 30, 1969, and their attendant processing will be a challenge to your order and catalog librarians, and a blessing to your patrons, the faculty, whose demands for old and new titles seem never to be satisfied, and the students for whose increasing hordes you need more copies and replacements. For those of you whose libraries have not yet reached minimum ALA standards we hope your grants will be a welcome boost.

There’s a way to share your blessings and benefit from those of your colleagues, not just the academic ones. Are you aware of your state plan to use the allotment from Title III funds under the Library Services and Construction Act for cooperative library activity? If you’ve been asked to meetings at your state library to discuss possible ways of sharing reference and research resources among all types of libraries, have you taken time from your crowded schedule to attend and contribute your ideas? Each state has $40,000 plus an added amount related to its population for funding this title in fiscal ’68. This money can be used for feasibility studies or experiments concerned with centralized cataloging, for “hot line” telephone connections between the state library and research libraries to facilitate interlibrary loans, for extra personnel in libraries with major resources to ease the cost of their lending books to other libraries, for transportation of books or researchers among a network of libraries, or for many other sorts of programs involving different types of libraries. Let your imagination roam! Each state’s allotment may not sound very large, but when it funds a project which links the resources of a number of libraries around the state it can benefit a lot of users from business, industry, and the professions as well as students at all levels. And isn’t that the mission of higher education today—to benefit the society of which the campus is a part?