College and Research Libraries


Southern Libraries · and Research 

Library Resources· and Graduate Work: The 
Development of Library Resources and 
Graduate Work in the Cooperative Uni­
versity Centers of the South: Proceedings 
of a Conference of Graduate Deans and 
Librarians Held at the Joint University 
Libraries, Nashville, Tennessee, July 12­
14, 1944. Edited by Philip G. Davidson 
and A. F. Kuhlman. Nashville, Joint Uni­
versity Libraries, 1944. viii, 81p. 

All too frequently, in years past, college 
and university librarians have been accus­
tomed to meet and discuss among themselves 
-without benefit of others in the hierarchy 
of learning-the problems, practices, and poli­
cies of modern librarianship in its relation to 
education. That such single-barreled con­
ferences fell short of desired goals or oft­
times failed completely to modify established 
principles of educational procedures might 
conceivably be attributed to the absence of two 
most important catalyzing forces, the adminis­
trator and the teacher. Without them the 
librarian is in no better position to lift the 
level of learning than they are, let us say, 
without him. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine 
any one of the triumvirate accomplishing his 
objective without the supporting cooperation 
of his associates. In other words, the sooner 
librarians, school, college, or university, de­
cide to invite their educational colleagues to 
serve with them in the solving of the per­
plexities of their profession, the more nearly 
successful they are likely ' to be. 

The shoe also fits the other foot. Almost 
any librarian could offhand cite several in­
stances in which courses were added to the 
college curriculum without his knowledge or 
advice. And there have bee~, amazingly 
enough, occasions within recent years when 
"complete" studies or surveys of educational 
institutions were undertaken without much 
or any consideration of library facilities. Only 
recently ( 1944) one Southern state, appoint­
ing a board of some fifteen or sixteen nation­
ally-known consultants in various fields, 
undertook a "comprehensive" survey of all 
its institutions of higher learning. But there 
was no library consultant appointed. Not 
until a month or more had gone by and the 
omission had become embarrassingly obvious 

JUNE, 1945 

was a: librarian invited to participate. In 
another instance a group of Southern college 
librarians were asked by their administrators 
to analyze their libraries in preparation for 
future coordinate expansion, but the feasi­
bility· of integrating curriculums as a pre.:. 
requisite for wise purchasing was given no 
serious consideration. 

· Surely the time is now come for the tri­
umvirate of higher education-the teacher, 
the librarian, and the administrator-to real­
ize that their progress is m~tually depende-nt 
one upon the other. Alone none can get far 
enough. Together, so long as there is under­
standing and a recognition of the fact that 
no one doubts the common goal, they can get 
far. 

One evidence of cooperation among college 
and university administrators, instructors, and 
librarians was the week-long Conference on 
Higher Education sponsored by the Southern 
Association at Sewanee, Ten~., in June 1942.1 
There representatives of almost every branch 
of the educational family met to try to work 
out the common problems of all. Significant 
decisions we.re reached. A common denomi­
nator · of effort was firmly established. And 
as a valuable by-product came a mutual 
appreciation of the many-fingered tasks that 
confront all who strive to improve the higher 
educational status of the region. 2 

Another conference, and the one which 
prompts these remarks, was the Conferencr 
of Graduate Deans and Librarians, held at 
the Joint University Libraries, Nashville, 
Tenn., July 12-14, 1944. Although primarily 
concerned with graduate resources in the 
four cooperative university centers of Georgia, 
Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee3­
those representing "the emergence of a new 
pattern in higher education and library de­
velopment which is the product of cooperation 

1 The Southern Association Quarterly 6:457-546, 
November 1942. 

2 Hoole, W. Stanley. "The Place of the College 
Library." Jou rnal of Higher Education 14:370·73, 
October 1943. 

a The "centers" include (I) Agnes Scott College 
Emo!y University, Georgia School of Technology, and 
the University of Georgia; (2) Louisiana State Uni­
versity, Loyola University, Tulane University1 and the 
New Orleans Public Library; (3) Duke University
and the University of North Carolina; and (4) George 
Peabody College, Scarritt College, and Vanderbilt Uni­
versity. 

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among institutions strategically located to 
render a significant regional service"......:...the 
agenda of this meeting were prepared jointly 
by librarians, teachers, and deans, and bore 
the endorsement of the Conference on Co­
operative Opportunities in Higher Education 
of the Southern University Conference. 
Membership of the conference also included 
representatives from five individual university 
libraries in the Southeast (Alabama, Arkan­
sas, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Tennes­
see) and, as consultants, five authorities 
possessing ''extraordinary experience in fields 
of concern to the conference." 

Working on the premise of the necessity 
of basic principles of coordination\ the con­
ference adopted as its purpose the exploration 
and definition of "the opportunities f<;>r the 
development of library resources for research 
and the improvement of advanced instruction 
and research in these university centers 
through cooperative effort." 

Quite naturally, one approach to the many 
problems confronting ·the group was historical. 
Brief reviews of the establishment and mean­
ing of the university centers led quickly to 
discussions of research work done in the 
South, the relative strength of supporting 
university libraries, the wasteful duplication 
of acquisitions and unwise competition, and, 
ultimately, the inadequate financial support 
of college and university libraries within the 
region. Here, it was frankly admitted, the 
South is "confronted with most baffling prob­
lems." In July 1943, for instance, Duke 
University Library (the largest in the ·South­
east) ranked sixteenth in size among uni­
versity libraries in the United States. North 
Carolina, Joint University, and Virginia 
ranked thirty-third, thirty-fourth, and thirty­
sixth, respectively; and, excluding Duke, the 
fifteen largest university libraries in the South­
east combined had fewer volumes than Harv­
ard University. Furthermore, only one 
(again, Duke) of twenty-seven American li­
braries holding more than a half million 
books is in the region. 

Baffling though this situation may seem, 
there is evidence enough to explain it. In the 
words of North Carolina's ]. Gordon Coog­
ler: 
Alas for the South; her books have grown 

fewer-
She never was much given to literature. 

Doubtless the poet had in mind the writing 
of books, while here the discussion concerns 
the buying of books. During 1938/ 39- 1940/ ip 
the University of Chicago averaged expendi­
tures of $75,890 annually for books alone. 
In 1942-43 America's fifteen largest universi­
ties (none of which is in the Southeast) 
averaged $275,101 for books and services as 
compared to an average of only $90,700 for 
nineteen Southern universities, including 
Duke's high of $218,109 and Mississippi's low 
of $24,249. 

That such comparatively inadequate uni­
versity libraries exist in the South is a well­
known fact. That their impoverishment is 
always to be balanced finally with the eco­
nomic and social level of the region is another 
matter, one deserving careful consideration 
in any analysis. The South has been rightly 
described as America's economic problem 
child. With the lowest per capita income 
of the nation, the region strives conscienti­
ously and not without some success to main­
tain dual public library systems, as well as 
dual educational systems, including, of course, 
dual college and university library systems. 
Briefly put, the South's nickel must go twice 
as far as the North's or West's dime. And 
that mathematical problem, a century old, is 
still incapable of solution. 

If the South is to build and maintain ade­
quate university libraries for advanced in­
struction and research, it must, as Library 
Resources and Graduate W or_k recommends, 
make use of every opportunity "for concerted 
library action," especially on the upper levels. 
This would include coordination of acquisi­
tions , proper division of labor, logical disposi­
tion of gift _collections, a study of deposit 
libraries, cooperation in document and news­
paper programs, and a careful analysis of the 
problems presented by bibliographical centers·, 
microphotography, joint purchasing, duplica­
tion, and interlibrary loans. It also includes­
and this is of utmost importance-a careful 
coordination of curriculums for advanced in­
struction and research "in order to avoid 
needless and wasteful duplication and competi­
tion and to assure better coverage, superior 
graduate instruction and research, and more 
competent special subject collections." · More­
over, basic cooperation is dependent upon 
clearly drawn lines of curricular demarca­
tions and generous financial support of li­

28t COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 

' 



· braries. For these, as the book indicates, 
there is no substitute. 

Library Resources and Graduate Work is 
without doubt one of the most important 
documents concerning librarianship to come 
out of the South in recent years. It has done 
much to focus attention on a problem so 
pressing and so gigantic as to be almost over­
whelming-yet the way it was conjointly at­
tacked by administrators, teachers, and 
librarians alike lends high hopes for the fu­
ture. 

For their significant contribution to higher 
education in the South, Philip G. Davidson; 
dean · of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt 
University, and A. F. Kuhlman, director, · 
Joint University Libraries, deserve the sin­
cere thanks of educators throughout the na­
tion. Their accomplishments, reflected as 
they are in Library Resources and Graduate 
W orkJ should do much toward charting a 
proper course for future Southern scholarship 
and research.-W. Stanley Hoole, director 
of librariesJ University of Alabama. 

Wisconsin Manuscripts 

Guide to the Manuscripts of the Wisconsin 
Historical Society. Edited by Alice E. 
Smith. Madison, State Historical Society 
of Wisconsin, 1944. 290p. 

This guide is the work of the curator of 
the Wisconsin Historical Society's manuscript 
division, assisted by the members of the staff 
of the Historical Records Survey of Wis­
consin. In the preface the editor says the 
collection contains over 720,000 pieces and 
2,500 volumes of manuscripts, a vast accumu­
lation for any society. Certainly it is one of 
the largest and richest in the United States 
in the character of its materials. The guide 
makes no attempt to list individual items, 
and packages containing ten or fewer items 
are not listed. But, as it is, any student may 
obtain a clear idea whether there is any 
major amount of material for his researches 
at Madison. 

No one conversant with the history of 
American manuscript collections will be sur­
prised at the richness of the library's re-· 
sources. The Wisconsin His'torical Society, 
in its nearly one hundred years of history, 
had in the formative years two of the ablest 
collectors in the· field to direct its work­
Lyman C. Draper and Reuben , Gold 
Thwaites. Either Draper's collection of 
nearly five hundred volumes of manuscripts 
relating to the first great West or Thwaites's 
on the French in the Northwest and on the 
records of his own state, would make any 
society famous. The John R. Commons col­
lection on the history of labor and the papers 
of the economist, Richard T. Ely, also are 
of more than local significance. 

JUNE~ 1945 

The Wisconsin Historical Society has as­
sumed as its primary task the gathering of 
material for the history of its own environ­
ment. But in common with the practice 
among other historical societies, the collection 
has become national in scope. Whatever 
source material will help the citizens of 
Wisconsin to better understand the nation's 
past has become grist for zealous assembling 
and arrangement for use. A study of the 
guide, with its record of correspondence , 
diaries, minutes of meetings, reminiscences, 
personal papers, addresses, and public docu­
ments, should serve similar agencies and 
individuals everywhere in knowing what to 
save. 

There are more than eight hundred his­
torical societies , large and small, some very 
small, in the United States. That means one 
for every I50,ooo people. The ambition of 
the American people to secure for all time 
the materials for their own history has be­
come a major industry. The Handbook of 
Historical Societies in the U.nited States and 
Canada, published by the American Associa­
tion for State and Local History, Washing­
ton, 1944, and the Wisconsin · guide are 
manuals greatly needed by those who would 
be intelligent leaders in an important field 
of modern social activities. 

The United States may not have the monu­
ments of the Old World, but it can have, if 
it does not already have, the best basis for 
an understanding of its own past. There is 
a growing list of similar . guides available for 
scholars. Most notable among the recent 
ones are Howa~d H. Peckham's GuMe to the 

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