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, Wa hington, DC. 20202.

As you can probably guess, a barrage of letters is coming to Congressmen, Senators, O.E. Commissioner Marland, and even to HEW Secretary Richardson about the inability of many libraries to receive college library resources grants this year under Title II-A of the Higher Education Act of 1965. It was a surprise to us to receive 2,165 applications for basic and supplemental grants because we thought it was pretty plain in the instructions attached to the applications that only those institutions with very small library collections and very large numbers of disadvantaged students could score high enough to compete successfully for grants from such a limited appropriation as $9,900,000. We had anticipated that an eighteen-point score might be the cutoff level for funding, but the money was all used at the twenty-one-point level.

More letters are coming in from presidents than from librarians, so we know thatmost of you did read the Title II-A Instructions and understood what might happen. Evidently your presidents were surprised, however, and are feeling that a basic grant is a statutory mandate. The cut in the basic grant from $5,000 to $2,500 in 1970 seemed to go unnoticed, probably because the small supplemental amounts brought some of the totals close to $5,000.

In order to give those small 1970 grants to 2,201 institutions, special purpose grants were eliminated. Consequently, there were no special projects to enable us to support special needs and on which to make interesting reports to Congress and the Administration. Basic and supplemental grants have always more or less gone into your regular budgets and that doesn’t make very glamorous reading to compete for scarce federal money. The amounts that went to 231 community colleges and sixtyfour technical institutes among the 532 recipients of basics and supplemental this year will really make a difference in their library resources which are generally very inadequate. It’s in these institutions that most economically disadvantaged students enroll, and perhaps their libraries will now get a boost toward something approaching the good libraries in four-year colleges, many of which have been built up since 1966 with annual Title II-A awards to supplement their regular budgets and keep their administrators striving to meet the maintenance of effort requirement for a grant. It should also be noted that, for the first time since the inception of Title II-A, the Office of Education has been able to provide a larger than usual measure of support to a great many struggling and needy black institutions.

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