ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

From Inside the DLP

By KatharineM. 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.

Many of you who submitted applications in February for basic and supplemental grants for college library resources under Title ITA of the Higher Education Act must have been disappointed in mid–June when the grants were announced. Four hundred and ninety-four institutions with special needs received the combined grant and ten other institutions enrolling students for the first time this fall received a $5,000 basic grant. All the combined basic and supplemental grants were above $5,000 except one for a southern institution which could match only $3,133 for a basic grant. Its supplemental grant of $1,408 gave it a total award of $4,541. The largest award was $117,492 to Wayne State University, Detroit. Among the 494 libraries which received basic and supplemental grants were 228 which also received Title III (HEA) grants because they qualified as Developing Institutions under the criteria of the Division of College Support of the Bureau of Higher Education.

Twenty Type A Special Purpose grants, ranging from $82,000 to $2,500 were awarded to twenty-six institutions where large numbers of graduate students were enrolled from minority groups. One more was given to the Bronx Community College in New York City which is training many minority group students for leadership roles in disadvantaged urban areas.

Special Purpose Type B grants were made to ten institutions enrolling large numbers of graduate students from minority groups. They range in amounts from $7,500 to $34,970.

Twenty-one consortiums of institutions received Type C Special Purpose awards of $16,000 to $100,000. Only one of them had no institutions enrolling graduate students among its members, but it was in a situation where leadership training for minority group students was especially necessary, yet no large numbers could be expected to qualify for graduate work. The twenty-one consortiums included 219 institutions which had not received basic and supplemental grants, bringing the total of the institutions being assisted by some type of grant to 723.

The Special Purpose Type A grants amounted to a total of $649,630, the Type B totaled $179,970 and the Type C, $820,400. All but nineteen states participated in the Special Purpose awards with seven of the others receiving more than $50,000, usually for two types of grants.

Every state received at least one basic and supplemental grant from the total amount of $9,343,000. Although California received the largest total of basic, supplemental, and special purpose grants, with New York second, two thirds of the eighteen states receiving over $200,000 as a total for all categories were in the South. The other states receiving more than $200,000 for all categories were Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Ohio.

If you have been following the progress of the amendments of 1972 to extend the Higher Education Act of 1965, you will realize that the Title II–A program will probably be considerably changed next year to make possible the participation of the many small colleges that have not been able to qualify for grants in 1971 and 1972. Your letters to the administration about the importance of even a small grant to bolster your dwindling budgets in the face of higher prices for books and state budget restraints have demonstrated that there are many other needy institutions in addition to those that have been identified as the neediest these last two years. ■ ■