College and Research Libraries


Review Articles 
The Survey at Cornell 

"Report of a Survey of the Libraries of Cor-
nell University for the Library Board. . . . 
October 1947-February 1948." By Louis 
R. Wilson, Robert B. Downs and Maurice 
F. Tauber. Ithaca, Cornell University, 
1948. 202p. (Lithoprinted.) 
In 1942 a pseudonymous W . Bolingbroke 

Johnson published an excellent detective story, 
The Widening Stain, in which the action cen-
ters in .a university library of fantastic archi-
tecture and atypical organization. Its ru-
mored identification with Cornell is supported 
by the survey report here reviewed. There 
are fortunately few, if any, substantial collec-
tions of research materials which can share 
with Cornell such an unenviable history of 
thoroughly decentralized control, inadequate 
and inappropriately designed space, and what 
must be characterized as irresponsibility 
toward its libraries on the part of the univer-
sity administration. The description of such 
a situation has unusual value as a statement 
of what might have resulted on many other 
campuses, had better judgment not prevailed 
years ago; and as a warning to those univer-
sities whose library situation includes some 
of the disabilities reported of Cornell by the 
surveyors. 

The Cornell library picture contains all the 
classic elements of administrative chaos. A 
collection of 1,300,000 volumes—studded with 
such gems as the Dante, Petrarch, and Ice-
landic collections—is maintained and served 
through a jerry-built organization of more 
than thirty autonomous or loosely related li-
brary agencies, of which the university library 
and the agriculture group are the largest and 
most general members. Over-all control of 
Cornell's libraries is consigned to a faculty 
group—the library board. Such expensive 
operations as the purchase of books and bind-
ing, the exploitation of university publications 
for exchange, and cataloging occur in a 
variety of ways without sensible coordination 
or unified control. It is to Cornell's credit 
that the university is willing to display, for 
the benefit of others, the results of laissez 
faire management. 

It is beyond the purpose of the survey to 
discover the source of this situation. T o do 
so would be a valuable exercise in library 
history and an illuminating chapter in̂  the 
record of university administration. It is 
easy to attribute the cause to the scholar-as-
librarian—a type which has figured more than 
once in Cornell's history—and to his pre-
occupaton with the gathering of books. It is 
more probable, however, that the dual sources 
of Cornell's support: private endowment and 
governmental appropriations and their reflec-
tion in the university's organization are the 
root of the trouble. 

The Cornell survey team represents high 
authority in the fields of library government 
and statesmanship, resources, and technical 
services. Its recommendations are consistent 
with trends in librarianship manifested during 
the last two decades. If realized in the form 
of decision and action, they will raise the 
Cornell libraries, .in time, to the level of 
libraries at comparable universities. 

The Cornell survey report is of especial 
value to the administrators of large university 
libraries because the comprehensive surveys 
which preceded it—with the exception of the 
Stanford survey, as yet unpublished—have 
dealt with small collections. In no other 
survey have the many problems of a large 
library collection operating in a complex uni-
versity been so fully examined. 

In 1939 the Wilson-Branscomb-Dunbar-
Lyle survey of the University of Georgia Li-
brary established a survey pattern for univer-
sity libraries. During the ensuing decade this 
pattern has been applied to Indiana, Florida, 
South Carolina, Stanford, and—with modifi-
cations—to Mississippi. The results have 
been, and will continue to be, useful, wholly 
apart from their value to the examined li-
braries, to students and practitioners of uni-
versity library administration. They are case 
studies of whole libraries; they reveal in de-
tail the application of the best professional 
thought to problems which confront all schol-
arly libraries. There is hazard, however, in 
repetition: the hazard of the stereotype. 

OCTOBER, 1948 
35 7 



Perhaps we approach the end of a period. 
M a n y of these surveys occurred in an admin-
istrative interregnum, laying the foundation 
for a new program. Within the decade of 
these comprehensive surveys much change in 
chief administrative positions has taken place. 
It is conceivable that this crop of vigorous 
regimes will adopt a new attack. T w o alter-
natives suggest themselves: the survey by non-
librarians, supplementing modern administra-
tive theory; and the limited, specific study of 
a single problem. 

M o s t library surveys are made by li-
brarians. Although they may add the weight 
of outside authority to locally-held views, they 
are drawn f r o m a common reservoir of wis-
d o m ; a survey by experts is next door to a 
self-survey. It would be interesting to experi-
ment with an examination of the end-products 
of library techniques and administration by 
the users, rather than the manufacturers. 

An alert administration can readily identify 
a handful of specific local problems that will 
certainly yield to determined expert study, 
without being able to supply—from stock— 
the expertness required, or the time needed. 
This calls, not for the grand, comprehensive 
survey, but f o r a concentrated attack. W h a t 
university administration will be so realistic 
as to employ a specialist in research, or a 
series of experts, to explore its community's 
needs f o r the subject cataloging of certain 
kinds of materials; the relation between 
undergraduate teaching methods and library 
services; or the analysis of the reference func-
tion in the large university library system? 
These are matters which commend themselves 
to the graduate library schools, but there is 
some doubt that libraries can await the neces-
sarily slow processes of such agencies.—Donald 
Coney, University of California Library, 
Berkeley. 

T h e Survey at Columbia 
"Report of a Survey of the Technical Services 

of the Columbia University Libraries," by 
Maurice F. T a u b e r [and] L . Quincy M u m -
ford. " A Report on Certain Problems of 
the Libraries and School of Library Serv-
ice," by Louis R. Wilson, Keyes D . Metcalf 
[and] Donald Coney, chairman, N e w Y o r k 
N . Y . , Columbia University Libraries, 1947. 
57P-. 85p. ( M i m e o g r a p h e d ) . 
These two publications, taken together, 

constitute a survey of the most important 
problems which confronted the new library 
administration at Columbia when it assumed 
responsibility f o r the libraries and the School 
of Library Service about five years ago. T h e 
release of these reports has been delayed be-
cause they were prepared in 1944 f o r the guid-
ance of the university administration and the 
library administration, and these purposes 
could be served without publication. T h e 
reports have now been made available because 
it appeared that many of the problems faced 
at Columbia are not unlike those to be found 
in other large university library systems, and 
hence the solutions proposed by the surveyors 
for Columbia might be considered to have 
applications in other institutions. Even 
where the problems of an institution's libraries 
may seem quite unlike those at Columbia, it 

is not unreasonable to expect that the recom-
mendations made for Columbia may suggest 
solutions which might be suitable. 

These survey reports may be considered as 
administrative reports, since they deal in very 
considerable part with problems which had 
been identified by the library administration, 
and for which, in at least some instances, 
tentative solutions had been proposed. T h e y 
are concerned primarily with problems that 
fall within the jurisdiction of the administra-
tive officers of the libraries and of the univer-
sity rather than with matters of interest to 
members of the faculty or to the administra-
tive officers of the various colleges and schools. 
Although this type of survey has apparently 
come into fairly common use by administrative 
officers of large libraries, the reports prepared 
as a result of these studies are seldom made 
available in published form, and are not widely 
known. These Columbia reports are the 
more welcome for this reason. 

A second feature of these survey reports is 
the method by which they were prepared. 
They are not based so much on extensive 
compilations of data and extended series of 
conferences with faculty members and gen-
eral university administrative officers as are 
some library surveys. Instead, the reports 

368 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH. LIBRARIES