College and Research Libraries


Authority. Dr. Kuhlman proposes this ex-
pedient for the North Texas group. 

He might have proposed consolidation of 
the graduate schools, but to do so would have 
been impolitic under the circumstances. In-
stead, he advocates uniting the libraries under 
a central administration for an experimental 
period of three years. He specifies only 
vaguely the powers and duties of his ad hoc 
library authority, which is to consist of a 
representative council (already formed) and 
a director of libraries. Outwardly, his plan 
resembles the Oregon and Georgia college li-
brary combinations, but he substitutes for a 
council of librarians one of deans, trustees, 
and presidents. They can, if they will, go 
much further than librarians. The director 
would supervise the cooperative devices of the 
program and advise the council on other meas-
ures. He would not govern the member li-
braries, but Dr. Kuhlman hints that he might 
in time replace their he-ad librarians. 

Dr. Kuhlman points out the direction, with-
out specifying the exact route and the rate 
of advance, leaving these tasks to the council 
and the director. Will the new vehicle move, 
without being fueled by a foundation grant? 
A great deal depends upon the leadership of 

the council and the tact of the director, if 
one is appointed. If not in North Texas, such 
a plan may be adopted elsewhere, perhaps 
in circumstances permitting the director to 
assume authority over the internal administra-
tion of the member libraries. In regions 
where library use has greater variety, the pro-
fessional, civic, and trade associations might 
be represented on the council, thereby giving 
the clientele of public and special libraries 
a voice in the planning of library resources. 
Central purchasing and cataloging of books 
might develop in some centers. 

Dr. Kuhlman has invented a mechanism 
with great possibilities, particularly in the 
West and South which need a workable plan 
for combining libraries. While not new in a 
single detail, his invention offers a novel and, 
let us hope, practicable answer to the dilemma 
of library needs versus library fealty. Its 
worst flaw on paper-a want of detail, of 
specifications-will probably become its 
greatest virtue in practice. The details will 
be filled in by people aware of local limita-
tions and potentialities. When a model has 
been set up and tried out, it will probably 
be widely copied.-] ohn Van Male, librarian, 
M adis·on College~ Harrisonburg~ Va. 

Manual for Trustees 
Manual for Trustees of Colleges and Uni-

verszttes. Raymond Hughes. Iowa State 
College Press, 1943. IX, 166p. 

To the librarian, as to the faculty at 
large, the college or university trustees are 
a group apart-certain gentlemen of promi-
nence who appear at convocation or other great 
occasions. They, according to tradition, are 
the ones who blue-pencil budget requests; 
again, and according to the same source, they 
do not approve of innovations, either aca-
demic or political. As a matter of fact, li-
brarians probably know as little about trustees 
as the latter know about librarians. 

Trustees become trustees from a variety of 
sources and are chosen for a variety of rea-
sons. They invariably come to their positions 
with a record of successful accomplishment 
in their own fields and with undoubted abili-
ties which should be turned to the lasting 
profit of the institution. Many of them, 
however, come with little knowledge of aca-
demic procedure save what they may recollect 

DECEMBER~ 1944 

from their undergraduate days. The duties 
and powers of a trustee grew in a process 
somewhat akin to the development of the , 
common law, restricted by tradition and ex-
tended by the initiative and interest of the 
individual trustee. Generally they have done 
their job well. There have been isolated 
cases in which boards of trustees might have 
been charged with neglect of duty if nothing 
more. 4t the other extreme might be placed 
the board of which it is said that it meets 
every Thursday as regularly as Rotary, 
stifling the college by too much government. 

Primarily the duty of the trustees is to 
operate the college, since they, as a body 
corporate, actually own the institution, or, 
in the case of a public institution, act, as 
it were, with a power of attorney from the 
ctttzens. General tradition and custom in-
dicate that this is best accomplished by the 
delegation of power to one or more officers, 
depending upon the size and complexity of the 
college. One would expect that the degree 

91 



of delegation would depend first upon the 
amount of confidence the trustees were willing 
to place in these officers and, second, upon 
whether the trustees were willing to admit 
that education is the business of experts in 
that field rather than of experts in business, 
banking, or law. Really it is simply a question 
as to how much detail should be referred to 
the trustees. Should these busy people who 
give their time to the college be required to 
pass on the suitability-academic, personal, or 
political-of individual faculty appointments? 
Rather, it would be expected that they would 
simply direct the president to secure the best 
faculty possible with such and such a salary 
scale. Usually this attitude holds where the 
president is concerned, for he is naturally re-
garded as having expert knowledge. But 
when it comes to the professor and his new 
laboratory building, or the librarian and his 
library, too often the specific expert knowledge 
is ignored for the broader view of the archi-
tect. All librarians can cite instances of 
buildings erected without reference to their 
functionalism within the college. 

President Hughes approaches the duties of 
the board from experience on both sides of 
the fence. As teacher, dean, president, and 
trustee he has had the opportunity to observe 
institutional operation from a variety of 
angles, and it would seem that he has re-
tained all of these viewpoints in his memory 
for use at this time. The result is a con-
sidered and objective judgment which will 
benefit most experienced and all neophyte 
trustees. 

Librarians are usually willing to leave to 
others the discussion of the management of 
college finances, athletics, teaching loads, 
fraternities, and compulsory chapel. At the 
same time few other professions are as willing 
listeners to criticism of themselves-and fre-
quently, condescending criticism-as are li-
brarians. Perhaps through lack of expressed 
opinion on the affairs of the rest of the cam-
pus we have gained a reputation as a clois-
tered group, and because of our willingness to 
listen to criticism there may have grown up 
a supposition that any competent professor 
could run the library as well as the librarian 
does. We are on safest ground, however, if 
we discuss our own field of activity and allow 
the other parts of the college to speak for 
themselves. 

Except for the general discussion of the 
faculty, President Hughes devotes practically 
as much space to the library as he does to 
any other phase of the college. No one of 
our profession is likely to quarrel with his 
division of emphasis. Indeed, it seems to be 
much more proper than is usual in discussions 
of college administration. The details of li-
brary administration and the emphasis given 
to each of the selecte_d details are the interest-
ing points for consideration. The subheading 
"The library must be in charge of a competent 
librarian," might be twisted to imply that the 
other departments did not require competence, 
if the librarian were not referred to four or 
five times with the qualification " ... if fully 
competent." 

One would not wish to be petty in dis-
cussing a book as generally excellent and 
useful as this manual. Would it not seem, 
however, that the trustees should be furnished 
a more effective and broader approach to the 
problem of an adequate library than to be 
told to consider whether the time required to 
secure a book at the delivery desk is more 
than two minutes-except perhaps where it 
may be with a view to inducing the trustees 
to allow the librarian to design a new library 
building? Trustees have little enough time 
to devote to the college library, and that time 
ordinarily could be better spent than in worry-
ing about such points as this, and about re-
served books, duplicate copies, microfilms, and 
interlibrary loans. These are administrative 
matters which should be considered by no 
higher authority than the faculty committee on 
the library. 

To most trustees the library is a definite 
entity, something in which they can interest 
themselves much more easily than in the 
teaching departments. Could not their in-
terest, therefore, be directed towards subject 
matters appropriate for their consideration? 
The budget of the library should be their 
first concern, as President Hughes would 
agree. Their consideration of the budget 
should embrace not only the number of dol-
lars but the type of budget and the authority 
of various officers, such as the librarian, the 
dean, the comptroller, and the faculty com-
mittee, over that budget. It should be in re-
lation to the future as well as to the past pro-
gram of the college. The desirable or neces-
sary size of the library and the fields of 

92 . COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



knowledge to je covered cannot be determined 
by anyone but the trustees, since the decision 
rests on the determination of a long-term 
fiscal and educational policy. It is the same 
problem on the trustee level as the question 
of the value and duties of the faculty com-
mittee on the library. The ideal is a strong 
committee and a strong librarian, both broad 
enough in their interests to work objectively. 
If there is a weak committee it becomes a rub-
ber stamp; if there is a weak librarian the 
committee tends to usurp the administration 
of the library. By their position the trustees 
are too strong for the librarian to oppose 

them, and they should be warned away from 
purely administrative matters to fields where 
their peculiar knowledge and abilities will 
be most useful. 

It is unfair to judge this much-needed 
manual by the chapter which most interests 
the library profession. If librarians are not 
too closely locked in their ivory towers they 
will realize that the general problems of the 
campus have been handled in it most ade-
quately, even though librarianship may have 
been regarded somewhat casually.-H elmer 
L. Webb, librarian, Union College, Schenec-
tady, N.Y. 

Letters in Public Relations 
How to Use Letters in College Public Re-

lations,· A Survey of Principles and Source 
Book of Effective Examples. William H. 
Butterfield. Harper and Brothers, 1944· 
182p. 

The subject of public relations is frequently 
thought of as something a bit esoteric, a semi- · 
mysterious method by which a reputation can 
be created where none existed before or a 
poor reputation made over into a good one. 
Operating upon such a notion and pursuing 
such an objective, an institution sometimes 
will hire a public relations expert at a high 
salary and hopefully await a miracle of 
accomplishment. 

It is true, of course, that public relations 
experts are frequently worth their money. 
But it is equally true that in the long run 
the public reputation of an institution can 
rise no higher than its source, that no amount 
of "experting" can substitute for administra-
tive officials who are alive to opportunities for 
improving the public impression which they 
themselves are constantly making whether 
they consciously will it or not. Such officials 
can profit from the advice of an expert, but 
much of the final result will be wasted un-
less they learn how to make the most of 
their own efforts. 

As institutions, colleges and universities can 
be especially deceptive to their own agents. 
To presidents and other administrative 
officials, they may seem-with their curricula 
and the paraphernalia of grades and records 
and degrees-wholly formalized. Left to its 
natural tendencies, it should be noted, ad-

DECEMBER, 1944 

ministration can become a creeping paralysis 
which minutely classifies and eventually ossi-
fies official operations and turns all communi-
cation into stereotypes. Yet the human and 
personal contacts of a college or university 
are remarkably many and diverse, and the 
opportunity to use them wisely occurs fre-
quently. Most parents, in the fondness of 
their parenthood, approach the college of their 
own or their child's choice in a misty-eyed 
manner which is much closer to that of a 
love affair than of the purchase of a specific 
commodity, education. Most students, at 
least in the beginning, look upon college as an 
exciting adventure. And alumni, as we have 
been reminded, often see their alma mater in 
the light of the "four happiest years of my 
life." The college or university which does 
not recognize this situation as vital for its 
public relations is missing its opportunity 
and part of its job. 

Such are the implicit conclusions of the 
author of the present little book on the 
writing of letters in college public relations. 
Explicitly, Mr. Butterfield urges the college 
official not to wait upon the formal need or 
occasion but to write "those 'extra' letters" 
which take much of their effectiveness from 
the fact that they are unexpected. Congratulate 
the student or the alumnus upon his newest 
accomplishment, he says, as soon as you learn 
of it. Welcome the parent or other lay friend 
of the college to events at your institution 
in which he may be interested, even though 
he possibly cannot attend. Make your tone 
friendly and personal. Even letters which 

93