College and Research Libraries


The Duality of Demand on 
University Libraries 

T HE FOLLOWING three papers and comments were presented at the meeting of the University Libraries Section, A.C.R.L., at San Francisco, July I, I947· 
By M.A. STEWART 

Educational Trends 

T HE most obvious current educational trend at the college and university level 
is that of enormously increased numbers of 
students. This increase is by no means a 
postwar phenomenon, although it has been 
greatly augmented since the close of the 
recent war. The per cent of the population 
in the United States between eighteen and 
twenty-four years of age attending college 
has steadily increased from about 2 per cent 
in I9IO to approximately 8 per cent in I940. 
In certain sections of the country, the in-
crease has been even more spectacular. In 
California, for example, the increase in col-
lege attendance in the same population 
segment during the same three decades was 
from approximately 3 per cent to about I 5 
per cent. Since I940 college and university 
enrolment has been characterized by a great 
slump consequent upon the draft and en-
listment of young men of college age during 
the war years and th~ subsequent unprece-
dented high enrolments resulting from the 
backlog of students whose education had 
been interrupted by a period of service in 
the armed forces and from financial en-
couragement afforded by the so-called G.I. 
Bill of Rights. The Veterans Administra-
tion predicts that the peak veteran load will 
be reached in the academic year I 949-50. 

It is difficult to predict college student 
populations of the future. The trend of 

the past three and a half decades is signifi-
cant. The current increase presents the 
same significance. It is reasonable to as-
sume that college attendance engenders col-
lege attendance and, therefore, that an 
increasing number, up to a heretofore un-
attained level, of young men and women 
will seek a college education. The increas-
ing number of undergraduates and the 
modern demands of employers of_ college 
trained people will surely result in pro-
portionate increase in graduate students. 
The most perplexing factor to be considered 
in predicting college attendance in the not-
distant future is the economic depression so 
confidently anticipated by many competent 
economists. The precise nature and mag-
nitude of such a depression and the tech-
niques employed in combating it will 
determine to a large degree college enrol-
ment during the period of economic distress. 
The writer does not pretend to possess the 
wisdom n~cessary to predict with any degree 
of accuracy the impact upon colleges and 
universities of this probable depression. 
However, it seems certain that there will be 
an impact which will either appreciably in-
crease or decrease, temporarily, college at-
tendance. 

Another educational trend is to be seen in 
the recent establishment of auxiliary cam-
puses, or even separate institutions, to ac-

396 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 

--} 



commodate the greater number of students 
and the tendency, in some parts of the 
country, at least, for junior colleges to add 
to their two-year terminal curricula pro-
visions for more advanced education leading 
even to the bachelor's degree. 

Some years ago Robert M. Hutchins, of 
the University of Chicago, postulated in an 
article written for The Saturday Evening 
Post that -many of the small, privately en-
dowed colleges and universities might have 
to consolidate or might disappear. His 
opinion was based upon the increased eco-
nomic support and facilities given to state-
supported institutions of higher learning, 
the changed economic structure which 
inhibits great gifts of money from indi-
viduals to privately-supported institutions, 
and modern transportation facilities which 
permit students to travel more widely and 
easily and thereby to select more freely the 
colleges they attend. Chancellor Hutchins' 
ideas are still valid, despite the currently 
inadequate educational facilities at the col-
lege level. 

Development of General Education 

Still another educational trend of great 
import is the current interest in the de-
velopment of general education for all col-
lege students, regardless of their individual 
goals of specialization. This movement was 
greatly stimulated by the Harvard study 
leading to the publication of the book en-
titled General Education in a Free Society. 
It has received continued impetus by the 
spreading recognition that the needs and 
demands of society and state must be met 
by the institutions of higher education by 
providing not only highly trained young 
men and women but well-educated ones as 
well. Currently, the University of Cali-
fornia is studying a proposal to establish a 
general college for all freshmen and sopho-
mores in the university and to permit them 

OCTOBER~ 1947 

\ 

to enter more specialized curricula only as 
upper classmen. 

A fourth educational trend of particular 
concern to college and university librarians 
is the disproportionate increase in numbers 
of students specializing in the social sciences, 
particularly economics and business adminis-
tration, political science, and sociology. 
This is occt~rring, despite the current inter-
est in chemistry, engineering, and physics. 

In interpreting the educational trends 
presented above with reference to library 
service demands and needs, it is obvious that 
the increase in numbers of students, the 
possible im:rease in numbers of institutions 
of higher learning or geographically distri-
buted subdivisions thereof, and the potential 
expansion of junior college curricula give 
rise to urgent problems of greatly increased 
library space and personnel and augmented 
volumes or substitutes therefor, such as 
microfilms. Widespread adoption of cur-
ricula in general education will further in-
crease these needs, consequent upon more 
use by more students of the general uni-
versity library in conformance with require-
ments of a more liberal education. The 
increase of specialization in the social 
sciences will result in more students using 
more different kinds of publications. 

Consideration of the impacts of current 
educational trends upon libraries and li-
brary services involves not only increments 
of space, personnel, and volumes, but 'also 
such fundamental administrative concepts as 
segregation or integration of services for 

.- undergraduates in different curricula and 
the separation of library functions for 
undergraduate and graduate students. 
Questions arising from such problems can 
better be asked than answered by one with 
no training or experience in librarianship. 
The acceptability of proposed procedures is 
determined by the feasibility of the recom-
mendations. It can be argued strongly that 

397 



the responsibilities of educational institu-
tions to society demand fairly early segrega-
tion of students in accordance with their 
intellectual capacities and their professed 
goals. Thus, one may readily accept the 
concept of segregation of certain students 
into the junior college system with its so-
called terminal curricula and of others into 
exclusively technical curricula without 
implications of broader appreciations and 
scholarly pursuits. This, however, does not 
connote segregation of library services, but 
different libraries. The trend in the larger 
universities, as well as in the smaller liberal 
arts colleges, toward general education dur-
ing the freshman and sophomore years and 
the acknowledged responsibilities of such 
institutions to produce educated leaders 
emphasize integration, not segregation. No 
one will deny that colleges and universities 
have failed largely to acquaint their stud ents 
with the great esthetic and utilitarian re-
sources of libraries. Most college graduates 
are deplorably ignorant of the real functions 
of libraries and of how to avail themselves 
of their services. This means that adequate 
library environments have not been pro-
vided. Therefore, one of the urgent chal-
lenges to the university library is to provide 
such an environment. It would appear that 
this need can be met better by integration 
than by segregation. 

Different Library Needs 

The separation of library functions for 
undergraduate and graduate students is very 
different from the integration or segregation 
of library services for undergraduates. 

Graduate students have library needs which 
are different from those of the undergradu-
ate, and their approaches to library utiliza-
tion are different. Certain separation is 
inevitable and its extent seems to be largely 
a matter of expediency. 

A discussion such as this merely presents 
the question as to how the university library 
can afford the greatest service of permanent 
value to the student. If we may agree that 
the first step in this direction is the pro-
·vision of an adequate library environment, 
we must then ask ourselves whether or not 
universities can provide an introduction to 
the knowledge of libraries and indoctrina-
tion into their use, as is done in the best 
liberal arts colleges. If not, is this need to 
be ignored or can we devise some new tech-
nique that will provide for it? It is the 
opinion of the writer that we can rely but 
little, if at all, upon the secondary schools 
for assistance and that faculties must be 
indoctrinated by librarians and be expected 
to cooperate subsequently with them in 
meeting the need at hand. Probably there 
is widespread general agreement among li-
brarians and faculty members as to what 
the ideal university library would be but 
great disagreement as to procedure for at-
taining it and particularly with reference to 
acceptable substitutes for the ideal. It is 
appropriate, therefore, to urge that the 
experimental method, based upon sound 
analysis and speculation, be employed in 

. finding a way to meet the legitimate de-
mands placed upon university libraries and 
in seeking the adjustments consequent upon 
current educational trends. 

398 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



By KEYES D. METCALF 

To What Extent Must We Segregate? 

T HE "must" in this title was placed there by your chairman and not by your 
speaker. The argument would be clearer 
if it were replaced by "should." 

If I had to answer the question in one 
sentence, I would say it depends on local 
conditions. But that is dodging the ques-
tion, so I will go on· and summarize the rest 
<?f my paper by saying that in a large uni-
versity library, such as we have at Harvard, 
we should segregate to a great enough extent 
to make it possible to give the undergradu-
ate students reasonably good library service, 
service such as an undergraduate can now 
have at Oberlin, Williams, Wellesley, 
Wesleyan, or almost any good college. I 
must go on to say that such a service is 
available in few, if any, of our great uni-
versity libraries today, in spite of the 
tremendous sums spent on them. An ex-
planation of the cause of this state of affairs 
should be given. When the two groups, 
graduate students and faculty-you might 
call them research - workers-and under-
graduate students, compete for services in 
the same building, with the same collections 
and catalogs, the undergraduates are almost 
always the ones who suffer. To this should 
be added the fact that the undergraduate 
in the university library does not have 
readily at his disposal, with open access, a 
good general collection of considerable size 
and that he must use the great confusing 
collections of the library with the help of a 
very complicated, unwieldy, labyrinthian 
catalog which has been made with .the ad-
vanced student in mind and which fre-
quently is almost unintelligible to the 
graduate student and to the faculty as well. 
Let me interpolate at this point that Prince-
ton, with a great library but catering to a 

OCTOBERJ 1947 

. larger extent than most university libraries 
to undergraduates, is trying to combine in 
its new building, library facilities for the 
two groups. It will be interesting to see 
how successful the results will be, but it 
should be noted that Princeton has a much 
simpler problem on its hands than a uni-
versity with three to ten times as many 
students. 

I might rest my case at this point, but 
having summarized my argument I shall 
begin again and try to steal some of the 
next speaker's thunder by two more general 
statements. 

1. Of course we must integrate the services, 
he will tell us, because the needs of the two 
groups overlap and cannot be segregated. 

2. Also, of course we must segregate or at 
least decentralize. Don't we have reserved 
book shelves ? 

But I must go on and state: 

1. If we segregate, the undergraduates 
must be allowed and encouraged to use the 
research library facilities when they need 
them and, if they are going to do graduate 
work, they must be made, if that is possible, 
to do so. 

2. Even if we integrate, we must have 
separate rooms for rare books and certain 
other collections. 

Before going on and arguing for segre-
gation, let us consider just what it is that a 
.library tries to do. It tries to give as good 
service as it can afford. Then let me add, 
it should not afford more than can be justi-
fied. A library can become so expensive as 
to handicap the other parts of a university 
program and thus become, among other 
things, unpopular enough with the uni-
versity family as a whole to handicap seri-
ously its own work. A new central 
university library building at Harvard, at 

399 



present-day prices, would cost somewhere 
between fifteen and twenty million dollars. 
The interest at 4 per cent on the lower 
figure would be $6oo,ooo a year. The 
physical upkeep for the building would be 
at least $r5o,ooo more. I would be un-
willing to claim that under present con-
ditions that would be the best way for 
Harvard to spend $7 50,000 in new money 

· each year, even if it had it to spare, which 
it does not. 

Service to Undergraduates 

But to go back to our statement, a uni-
. versity library tries to give as good service 

as it can afford. What should good library 
service to undergraduates provide? Three 
things among others: a library as conven-
iently located as possible; centralized so that 
undergraduates who work, as most of them 
do, in different fields can find material under 
one roof in all of the subjects in which they 
are interested; a library easy to use, which 
involves simple catalog, classification, and 
charging systems, and rapid service. All 
this should be under attractive, you might 
say tempting, conditions. 

If my argument for segregation of serv-
ice to undergraduates is valid, it means that 
the service to undergraduates just outlined 
can be given more satisfactorily and for less 
money when it is segregated from service 
to graduate students than when it is inte-
grated with it. Let us consider this from 
two points of view: the cost of the service 
and the quality of the service. 

I contend that the cost will be less with 
segregation because: 

I. This logical separation of the units of 
the library enables the university to add to its 
building plant in small units and so make less 
necessary over-expansion when a new build-
ing is erected. 

2. The division of the book stock into two 
fairly distinct groups, one for the under-
graduates which is made up largely of re-

placeable and what might be called expend-
able books, and the other for research ma-
terial, makes it possible to be more efficient 
and less wasteful in both groups. 

3· The segregation permits cheaper and 
simpler cataloging and classification proced-
ures for the undergraduates books, and also 
I think it will apply to the research collec-
tion. When you catalog books for two differ-
ent groups who use them for entirely different 
purposes, it must be done in more detail and 
it therefore costs more. 

4· The service required by the two groups 
differs enough so that if the total public serv-
ice staff is fairly large, it is cheaper to divide 
it into two. 

The savings made possible by segregating 
in a university library the service to under-
graduates from that for graduates students, 
is in my opinion important, but the improve-
ment in the service that results from the 
segregation is of equal and probably of 
greater importance. It seems self-evident 
that if a building is designed especially for 
undergraduate service, it will be more effec-
tive than if it is designed to do all things 
for all men. It can, for instance, among 
other things, give completely free access to 
the book collection, if the books are segre-
gated from the research library. If .the book 
stock is a separate unit and is chosen by a 
person specially trained in that phase of 
book selection, it should be better fitted for 
undergraduate use. If the catalog is simple, 
as is possible with a separate collection, the 
results are again better, and the same should 
hold true with the reference and circulation 
part of the work. The service demanded 
by the two groups differs considerably, and 
that planned for one of the groups should 
be better than that planned to cover both .. 

Better and Cheaper Service 

I end where I began. No great uni-
versity library today gives good service to 
its undergraduates. The two types of serv-
ice do not fit together and one or the other 

400 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



of them gets the better of it. In my opinion, 
it is almost inevitable that it is the under-
graduate who gets the worst of the deal. 
By separating the groups, better and cheaper 
service is obtained. 

Two final comments: just where the di-
vision should come, that is, in what stage 

of the student's development, is a matter of 
importance but not first importance; and, 
finally, as I said to start with, if segregation 
is carried out, arrangements must be made 
so that the undergraduate ·will still have at 
his disposal if he wants it the larger collec-
tion and catalog. 

By RALPH E. ELLSWORTH 

To What Extent Can We Integrate? 

I
F THE TERMS "undergraduate" and 

"graduate" must be defined traditionally, 
I can see no possible basis for establishing 
two separate library collections which would 
serve undergraduates as such and graduates 
as such. . There is no such thing anymore 
as a graduate student or a graduate curricu-
lum that can be characterized by singleness 
of ac'tivity. Examine the transcripts of 
graduate students or the class rolls of the 
group of courses commonly labeled the 
Ioo's, and you will find in this twilight zone 
an equal mixture. Where are the books 
for these courses to go in a library which 
splits between graduate and undergraduate~ 

Actually, the graduate school is moving in 
two directions. In the traditional disci-
plines and even in some of the newer fields, 
there is a growing distinction between the 
research and nonresearch degree for gradu-
ate students. What this means, of course, 
is that many students need graduate train-
ing and graduate degrees for a wide variety 
of reasons but that all do not need training 
in pure or even applied research. Some 
need more courses, others need supervised 
experience, and some need merely to age. 
Those who at the graduate level are to 
spend their time on nonresearch activities 
such as taking courses or coordinating the 
results of research will inevitably work in 

OCTOBER .. 1947 

the same literature that is being used in the 
advanced undergraduate courses. There is 
no logical basis for separating this material. 

Or, to look at the same fact from another 
direction, it is possible to argue that the 
American graduate college is primarily 
though not exclusively a teacher-training 
institution. Certainly a very large per cent 
of its graduates go into teaching at the 
various levels. Some who go into teaching 
will continue to do productive research; 
most will not. But all should know how 
to interpret the research of others. We 
have been pretending that all will continue 
their research careers. There are signs that 
we are ready to stop some of this pretense 
and begin to approach directly the problem 
of developing graduate training for non-
researchers. If we do, then the latter group 
will surely increase its use of secondary 
material, which is the same as that used in 
the advanced undergraduate courses. 

Thus, my first argument is that graduate 
education is moving in a direction which 
will complicate any attempt to separate its 
literature from that of lower instructional 
units. 

My second is that the undergraduate col-
lege is no longer a single unified curriculum 
demanding a single library facility. 

For years (in fact it dates from the in-

401 



flux of students into colleges following 
World War I) it has been true that a large 
per cent ( 40 to 6o) of entering freshmen 
have dropped out of college before the end 
of their four-year term. Those who drop 
out find that a segment of liberal arts cur-
riculum by itself is likely to be pretty mean-
ingless. Thus, as a corrective measure, 
what the colleges have been trying to do is 
to devise a small curriculum of required 
courses which would be equally useful to 
those who drop out early and others who 
stay on for the A.B. When you strip the 
term of its pretense, jargon, rationalizing, 
double talk, and verbiage, that is what is 
meant by general education. 

Whether we like it or not I think we , 
shall find Gresham's Law operating, with 
the result that the traditional concept of a 
four-year liberal education will be driven 
out by the two-year idea of general educa-
tion, with upper divisional studies in con-
trol of the graduate school or the profes-
sional schools. 

You can see that general education is 
splitting our educational pyramid at a new 
level-in the middle of the arts college, not 
at its end. Symbolic of this trend is the 
fact that the office of arts college dean is 
disintegrating in many universities, and in 
its place influence is passing both down-
ward to directors of general education and 
upwards to graduate deans or, in some 
cases, to chairmen of divisions which over-
lap the last two years of the arts college 
and the graduate school. 

In the general education courses that 
have emerged one can see a desire to teach 
an irreducible minimum to all students, 
some common body of information that 
somehow will supply a cohesive element in 
our population of adults-something that 
in the province of democratic living would 
be as useful as is the dogma of the Roman 
Catholic Church to Catholics. 

Difference of Opinion 

Opinion differs as to what shall consti 
tute the contents of general education, wit 
Chancellor Hutchins' idea about the Grea 
Books at one end of the scale and a numbe 
of programs based on ptactical problems o 
everyday life at the other. 

If the question were simply one of sup 
plying the materials for these courses, j 
would be difficult to argue that separat 
facilities are necessary, but the materials are 
only a small part of the problem. 

Entering students in liberal arts in all 
but a few Eastern seaboard universities 
whose students come from highly cultured 
homes and from prep schools that stand for 
no nonsense, have some deficiencies that are 
pretty common and that can be corrected 

· most efficiently if the students work at least 
part of the time as an identifiable group. 
These deficiencies have been discussed in 
print sufficiently, and I need not labor the 
point. Briefly, they are as follows: lack of 
knowledge of study habits at die university 
level, lack of ~nowledge of the literature of 
scholarship and its bibliographic apparatus, 
lack of the ability to sit still and study in a · 
sustained manner, and reluctance to ask for 
help on the above points. 

If a separate study center can be estab-
lished which will base its contents, staff 
organization, and bibliographic tools at the 
level at which general education students 
are, it is in a favorable position to accom-
plish something that doesn't get done in a 
library where all undergraduates are 
thrown together. What I have in mind is 
something like the college library at the 
University of Chicago, which used to be 
located in the midst of the instructional 
office of the men who were teaching college 
courses. 

If general education should begin to 
shift away from the idea of a common sub-

402 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



~ect matter for all to the idea that it is only 
he student as an individual-his interests, 

personality, attitudes, working habits, vo-
cational desires, etc.-that is common, with 
subject matter patterns varying among the 
individuals, then the need for a separate 
study center would still exist, but it would 
be more of an advisory or counseling serv-
ice than it would be a collection of ma-
terials. 

If . I am right in claiming that general 
education represents a retreat from the old 
idea of liberal education (as, for example, 
Mr. Metcalf and I knew it at Oberlin), 
a further encroachment of specialized and 
professional education, then it should follow 
that in the junior and senior ye~rs there 
will be an increased emphasis upon special-
ized and professional studies, and that is 
exactly what happens. 

Indicative of the trend is the statement 
made recently by the chairman of one of 
Chicago's most illustrious departments to 
the effect that his department was in favor 
of the Chicago college plan because it 
enabled them to organize a three-year 
major that really meant something. And 
by that, he meant a solid, comprehensive, 
and advanced preparation extending up 
through the master's degree. Would such 
a program be . satisfied by a library that tried 
to divide the advanced literature of the 
field into graduate and undergraduate? 
I think not. 

Obviously, as the relationship between 
advanced undergraduate studies and grad-
uate work increases, it will be increasingly 
difficult to divide the. literature between 
the two. Both groups draw heavily on the 
Journal files, the government documents, 
rhe maps, and the ordinary books at least in 
the social sciences and the humanities. 

Segregation 

So, I have argued that segregation should 

OCTOBER~ 1947 

be made for general education studies, but 
it cannot be made above that level. This 
does not mean that we can now build a big 
stack well and place in it all but a few 
thousand titles which are kept out for the 
general education study center. We shall 
have to divide the advanced materials as 
we have in the past into departmental, 
divisional, and perhaps other kinds of units. 
But the point is that whatever we do will 
have to be done for both graduates and 
advanced undergraduates as a single group. 

Special courses established on a civiliza-
tion or geographic area basis· are only two 
examples of the new pressures that will 
continue to exist for vertical segregation of 
library material. 

Likewise, it seems to me that the problem 
of . supplying library catalogs, bibliographic 
tools, and literature guides is an impossible 
one if it has to be approached in terms of 
graduate versus undergraduate facilities. 
But it becomes rational when considered in 
terms of general education versus advanced 
studies. Our present card catalogs are 
about as relevant to the needs and abilities 
of entering college students as would be the 
radar equipment found in a B-29 for a Piper 
Cub. 

Young students need catalogs and guides 
which will draw them to the kind of print 
they are capable of using and which the 
faculty wish them to read. They should, 
of course, begin to learn to use the more 
complicated guides as soon as possible, but 
as a separate activity. Conversely, the 
catalogs and guides for advanced students, 
the middle man, and the researcher, should 
omit the elementary references that are 
irrelevant to their work. I am talking 
about subject catalogs, not identification 
catalogs, which are another matter. 

I can see no logical basis for" developing 
catalogs and bibliographies that would dis-
tinguish between the literature needed by 

403 



advanced undergraduate and graduate 
students. 

Special Kind of Librarian 

The same principles govern the kind of 
library staff that a university library should 
have. It takes a very special kind of li-
brarian to understand and know how to 
cultivate young college students' reading 
habits so that they are consistent with the 
objectives of the instructors. Such a li-
brarian must know the techniques of 
remedial reading and much else in addition 

to his knowledge of the books in his collec 
tion. He must like the young student wit 
all his annoying but lovable traits. 

But the research librarian should be 
quite different sort of person, and, as yo 
well know, has to deal with other kinds o 
problems. 

In summary, I have argued that we ca 
and must integrate the collections, bibliog 
raphies, and staff services for advanced wor 
but that we should segregate the facilities 
at present used by young students in our 
colleges. 

By ROBERT A. MILLER 

Comments 

I T IS DIFFICULT to find matter for critical comment in these three sensible papers. 
In each there is a willingness to consider 
segregation of library materials for the con-
venience of undergraduates. Only with 
respect to when to segregate is there a dif-
ference in the positions taken by Mr. Met-
calf and Dr. Ellsworth. The latter 
maintains that segregation is defensible only 
through the second year of coll.ege, whereas 
Mr. Metcalf believes that segregation is 
defensible for a four-year program of under-
graduate study always with the provision 
that the central or research collection 
should be available to the undergraduate. 

It seems to me that the difference in the 
positions taken by Mr. Metcalf and Dr. 
Ellsworth arises, not out of different inter-
pretations of educational philosophy or 
trends, but because of local needs and solu-
tions. Specifically, Harvard is committed 
to a tutorial plan for the four-year ~nder­
graduate program. The reasonable and 
logical libniry solution is an undergraduate 
library. The programs of general or basic 
education under way in many institutions, 

with some manner of break at the end of 
the second year, suggest to Mr. Ellsworth 
segr·egation through the second year only. 
There are several university libraries in the 
country which have found a local solution 
in junior or lower division libraries and 
reading rooms. 

If local needs and solutions, therefore, 
seem to suggest the answer to segregation, 
how does Dean Stewart contribute? He 
has emphasized the recent trend of growth 
and the problems that accompany growth. 
It is size that forces the university library to 
segregation-size of library collection or size 
of student body. 

If we can visualize a student body of 
7 5 freshmen, 6o· sophomores, 50 juniors, 
40 seniors, and 20 graduate students, and 
the library materia~s needed by these stu-
dents during one year, it is clear that segre-
gation is not needed. One library can 
serve all. This .reasoning must prevail at 
Princeton for an appreciably larger student 
body than in my example. 

The question of integration and segrega-

(Continued on page 421) 

404 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES