ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

From Inside the DLP

By Dr. Katharine M. Stokes

College and University Library Specialist, Training and Resources Branch, Division of Library Programs, Bureau of Libraries and Educational Technology, U.S. Office of Education, Washington, D.C. 20202.

In the December 1969 issue of College & Research Libraries News I mentioned that Dr. Bronson Price was working on the “long promised Analytic Report, Fall 1968” to accompany Library Statistics of Colleges and Universities: Data for Individual Institutions, Fall 1968 and that it would probably appear “early in 1970.” The Analytic Report reached my desk on June 8 and I hope you have all received your copies by now. They were sent “Attention: Librarian” to all your institutions. Dr. Price expects Data for Individual Institutions, Fall 1969 to be published in a month or two.

As I reported earlier, the Analytic Report “is designed to enable any academic librarian to find, in the same position in every table, the data for his institution’s particular peer group, e.g., public two-year community colleges having between 1,000 and 5,000 students, or private universities with over 10,000 students.” In Table 1 on page 52 you may be surprised when you examine the columns and rows of figures to find that in 1968 there were still 358 libraries serving schools with four-year undergraduate enrollments of up to 5,000 with less than 50,000 volumes. The junior colleges with enrollments of 1,000 to 5,000 scored a little better with only 130 having less than 20,000 volumes. We’d like to think that the Title II-A (HEA) grants for college library resources have made great improvements in the size of these collections in the past two years, but, by now there are probably a hundred new junior colleges struggling to reach that minimum goal.

It’s even more amazing to find that thirty our-year colleges with graduate students and total enrollments of 1,000 to 5,000 were getting along with less than 50,000 volumes in 1968, but perhaps they were single-subject institutions, e.g., business or technical schools.

In the June 1, 1970, issue of the Library Journal two items, on pages 2057 and 2058 respectively, were pleasant reading for us in the Division of Library Programs. The first reported that $5 million in book grants for college libraries had been put into the budget of the Governor of Massachusetts for the next two years “just as Federal spending for college books under the Higher Education Act has been seriously cut back.” Perhaps, other states will follow this auspicious lead, building on the widespread assistance of the Title II-A (HEA) program these past five years.

The second item concerned the library component of a New Hampshire Consortium of developing colleges with the University of New Hampshire as a supporting institution. No mention is made, however, of the Higher Education Act, Title III, grants that have encouraged the activities of the libraries of this New Hampshire College and University Council or of the Title II-A (HEA) Special Purpose Type C grants for library resources which they received in 1967 and 1968. The appropriation for Title III of the Higher Education Act has not diminished as the Title II-A appropriation has, so college librarians might like to inquire about application materials from the Developing Institutions Branch, Division of College Support, Bureau of Higher Education. Dr. James Holley is the chief of the Branch and his address is 7th and D Streets, S.W., Room 4058, Regional Office Building 3, Washington, D.C. 20202. The Title HI awards for 1970 were announced in April. Applications for the 1971 program will probably be due in November 1970. ■ ■