ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

From Inside the DLP

By Dr. Katharine M. Stokes

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

Under the terms of a sixteen-month, $92,000 contract with the Office of Education, funded by Title II-B of the Higher Education Act, a System Development Corporation team headed by Dr. Carlos Cuadra has started an intensive investigation of academic library consortia in the United States.

While Dr. Raymond S. Moore was Education Research and Program Specialist in the OE Bureau of Higher Education he prepared A Guide to Higher Education Consortiums: 1965-68 (OE-50051) identifying 123 library components among some 1,300 academic cooperative groups. His study inspired the proposal by the Division of Library Programs which resulted in the Title II-B research contract with SDC.

Working with Dr. Cuadra, head of the Corporation’s Library and Documentation Systems Department, will be Dr. Robert Katter, Donald Black, Mrs. Ann Luke, and Neil Sherman. One team operating out of Falls Church, Virginia, will study library consortia in the eastern states, and another in Santa Monica, California, will cover the western states. SDC will also draw on the knowledge and experience of persons in the library community who are experts on consortia arrangements and activities.

Two major products will result from this study: a directory of existing academic library consortia and a step-by-step guide to help libraries plan, develop, and operate academic library services functioning in a cooperative mode. The directory will identify all known library consortia in higher education and a list of participating libraries (components) and characteristics (services). It will include statistical summary data and one or more indexes to provide convenient access points for the directory users.

The guidelines document will outline one or more basic models of library consortia in higher education and, for each of them, provide guidelines for planning, developing, operating, and evaluating library consortia. It will be based on the findings from both the survey and from in-depth analyses of fifteen selected library consortia. It is expected to provide valuable assistance not only to libraries that are planning or engaged in consortia operations but to private and public agencies that are concerned with allocating resources for library development and library services. The ultimate use of the guidelines will be to aid in the development and establishment of networks and other cooperative library arrangements whereby the user population of one member library will have direct access to the library materials of any other member library. Such arrangements are becoming increasingly important as the amount and variety of published literature soars and as new demands for service are placed on individual libraries.

Team members are currently at the stage of planning a broad-scale survey to identify and describe all information networks in higher education that include libraries as a significant component. Early next year the team will conduct in-depth analyses of selected library consortia to discover salient characteristics, similarities and differences, achievements and problems, and methods by which these variables are interrelated. This information will be used to develop the comprehensive guidelines for academic library consortia. ■ ■