ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

From Inside the DLP

No. 2, February 1970

By Dr. KathaRine M. Stokes

College and University Library Specialist, Library Planning and Development Branch, Division of Library Programs, Bureau of Adult, Vocational, and Library Programs, U.S. Office of Education, Washington, D.C. 20202.

At the program session and membership meeting of the Information Science and Automation Division of ALA in Atlantic City last June, Stanley McElderry, Dean of the Graduate School of Library Science of the University of Texas, described a theoretical total information system for a small liberal arts college. The basis for his paper was a Title II-B, Higher Education Act, research project entitled “A Study of the Implications of Modem Technology for Small College Libraries.”

Dr. Edward F. Turner, Jr., a physicist on the faculty of Washington and Lee University at Lexington, Virginia, was project director; Dean McElderry and William Kurth, associate director of libraries at Washington University, St. Louis, were collaborators. When Dean McElderry joined the project he was librarian of San Fernando Valley State College and coordinator of library services for the California State College system.

In the preface of hisreport, Dr. Turner says that one solid accomplishment came from the study—“the education of a physicist in some of the complexities of library science, an education which has perhaps left him a wiser and less-assured person.” He also says that the report attempts to provide, in nontechnical terms, “the background material on which informed judgments can be based” by college administrators, faculty members, and librarians who are concerned about the flood of information which even small college libraries must now accumulate and service. “The study focused on the ‘core collection,’ a concept which suggests there is a basic set of library resources which any college library ought to have in order to perform its objectives effectively,” according to Dr. Turner. The February 1970 issue of Research in Education will list the study and its ERIC number—as yet no number has been assigned.

When I read the Autumn 1969 issue of College Library Notes recently, I was glad to see that its editor, Basil Mitchell, had used the whole of its four pages for an article by Gregory N. Bullard, Head of Technical Services, SUNY at Binghamton, on “Computerized Circulation Control in College and University Libraries: a first step toward library automation.” If your college is one of the 900 paying members of the Association of American Colleges, you should have received a copy, for Mr. Mitchell says a package of three copies goes to each member institution One is headed “Copy for the President”; another, Copy for the Librarian”; and a third, Copy for the Chairman, Library Committee.” In case you haven’t seen a copy, let me whet your appetite for this issue by quoting the first paragraph of Mr. Bullard’s article:

A frequently voiced concern of librarians today is the uncomfortable sense that unless their libraries are “computerized” they have somehow missed the boat. This pressure, if I may call it that, seems to emanate in part from a segment of the library profession which delights in the acronyms and buzz words of the computer community. The pressure also comes from college and university administrators who want their institutions to be numbered among those prestigious few that can boast a computerized approach to the 21st century. In academic pride there too often can be very little real concern for, or knowledge of, whether a computer application is appropriate or economically feasible.