College and Research Libraries


By ELMER M; GRIEDER 

State University Libraries and 
Regional Education 

Mr. Grieder is librarian, West Virginia 
University. 

I. The Proposal for Regional Education 

T HE current discussions regarding the establishment of regional centers for 
postgraduate higher education involve a 
radical departure in American university 
organization. If the proposals on which 
this discussion is based materialize in action, 
the private, municipal, and individual state 
universities will be joined by a fourth 
type, the cooperative enterprise jointly ad-
ministered and supported by several states, 
for the specific purpose of supplying facili-
ties for graduate and professional education 
which no one state can provide adequately. 

This idea 0riginated in the South. A 
strong motivating influence was undoubtedly 
exercised by the desire to fulfill the require-
ments laid down by the courts in such cases 
as that of Ada Sipuel, a Negro student who 
attempted to enroll in the University of 
Oklahoma law school, without breaking 
down the existing segregation of white and 
Negro students. The law school created 
by the state of Oklahoma in response to the 
demand that it provide equal facilities for 
Negroes has been declared inferior to the 
school at the University. This general 
problem, which faces the South in many 
fields of instruction, was complicated by the 
fact that the administration of Meharry 
Medical College at Nashville recently an-
nounced that unless help on a large scale 

JANUARY., 1949 

were obtained the school could no longer 
operate, since its private endowment and 
other income were insufficient to meet ex-
penses. Meharry is the only medical school, 
other than that of Howard University, 
which offers extensive opportunities to 
Negroes, and its closing was at once recog-
nized as a threat to the well-being of the 
South. The long-range problem of equal 
educational opportunity took on the char-
acter of an immediate crisis. 

The first concrete measure toward its 
solution was the signing of a compact drawn 
up at a conference called by Governor 
Caldwell of Florida. Fifteen states partici-
pated: Alabama, Arkansas, Sou~h Carolina, 
Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, 
Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, 
North Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana, and 
Oklahoma. This compact is printed in the 
hearings of a Subcommittee of the Com-
mittee on the Judiciary of the United States 
Senate, Eightieth Congress, Second Session. 
The hearings, held on March 12 and 13, 
1948, were called to consider S.J. Res. 191, 
which provided for approval of the compact, 
a step which such interstate action requires. 
Included in the transcript is a brief history 
of the proposal embodied in the compact, 
from which the information in the following 
paragraphs is taken. 

Briefly, the compact itself provides for the 
creation of a Board of Control for Southern 
Regional Education, "the members of which 
board shall consist of the governor of each 

41 



state, ex-officio, and two additional citizens 
of each state to be appointed by the governor 
thereof, at least one of whom shall be 
selected from the field of education." The 
duties of the board are "to submit plans 
and recommendations to the states from 
time to time for their approval and adoption 
by appropriate legislative action for the de-
velopment, establishment, acquisition, op-
eration, and maintenance of educational 
sch<?ols and institutions within the geo-
graphical limits of the regional area of the 
states, of such character and type and for 
such educational purposes, professional, 
technological, scientific, literary, or other-
wise, as they may deem and determine to 
be proper, necessary, or advisable." Title 
to such institutions would be vested in the 
board, and they would be supported jointly 
by the participating states in proportion to 
the populations as determined by the Bureau 
of Census, or on some other mutually satis-
factory basis. Separate agreements between 
two or more states are permissible under 
the terms of the compact. There is, · of 
course, much more to it than this; regula-
tions are laid down for the adherence or 
withdrawal of states and the terms of office 
of board members are stated. The essence 
of the plan, however, lies in the provisions 
given above. 

The racial problem is neither stated nor 
implied in the agreement. It naturally arose 
at the hearings, and tended somewhat to 
becloud consideration of the broader merits 
of the idea, as Governor Caldwell observed. 
On March 4 a conference at Gainesville 
was occupied with lengthy discussions re-
garding the general value of interstate co-
operation in higher education. Owen D. 
Young, Dr. Oliver Carmichael, and Dr. 
Fred McCuistion strongly advocated it as 
a means of overcoming recognized deficien-
cies without reference to race. At the 
hearings Governor Caldwell spoke of the 

shortage of mining schools in the South, 
Dr. Raymond Paty of the lack of facilities 
for dental training, and Senator Johnston 
of the general need for technical institutions. 
All these men expressed the belief that co-
operation offered much more than an ex-
pedient for continuing segregation. The 
following section is based on the opinion 
that the idea must be taken in the broadest 
application as a method of overcoming a 
serious lack of facilities for high-level re-
search and professional training in many 
areas of the country. 

II. State University Libraries tn Regional 
Groupings 

The exact effect of a regional develop-
ment on existing state universities depends 
on the scope and character of new institu-
tions. It is possibJe that some will find 
themselves resembling good undergraduate 
colleges, although a certain amount of grad-
uate work will probably always have to be 
carried on in local schools, if only because 
many students and faculty members will 
continue to have local interests, such as the 
history or geology of particular states. It 
can scarcely be denied that regional uni-
versities will tend to minimize the growth 
of state universities in certain directions, 
a limitation which will be shared by li-
braries. In those areas of learning which 
are already well developed locally there is 
less likely to be a serious restriction; it will 
be felt more acutely in fields which are 
comparatively undeveloped. 

Regional cooperation will exert its great-
est appeal in those geographical areas which 
are most deficient in facilities for advanced 
postgraduate study; and between individual 
states the appeal will vary with the situ-
ation of the university. If the latter has 
several good schools in operation, the fields 
in which it will wish to cooperate will be 
fewer than if it has few or no graduate 

42 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



schools, in which case it will probably have 
also a library inadequate to support ex-
tensive graduate work. There are no exact 
quantitative or qualitative standards for a 
good research library, and it seems that 
an appraisal must always depend on what 
the university is attempting to do. The 
standards, in short, are relative rather than 
exact. It can be accepted, however, that 
the development of graduate work is limited 
by the collections available for students and 
faculty. Universities with small libraries are 
restricted in their undertakings, just as they 
are restricted by a lack of laboratories or 
other phy~ical requirements. Therefore, a 
consideration of small state university li-
braries will provide at least a clue to those 
areas in which cooperative developments 
seem most likely to occur, and will point 
out the areas which seem most likely to 
profit by them. 

As a starting point, the figures given m 
The American Library Directory, 1945, 
reveal that in I 944 the median library 
among forty-six state university collections 
possessed about 255,000 volumes. This 
figure is probably about 300,000 now, since 
Oklahoma, with 254,67I in I944, had 
280,978 in I947, and Florida had 246,u8 
and 292,396 in the same two years. 1 For 
purposes of this discussion the below-median 
libraries will be considered "small," though 
a very good case can be made for regarding 
much larger collections as inadequate for 
extensive graduate programs. The catalogs 
of eleven of these institutions, scattered in 
all parts of the country, show that six of the 
eleven offer the degree of Ph.D., and three 
that of M.D. Three universities have one 
professional graduate school, in each case a 
two-year medical school; three have two 
professional graduate schools, and two have 

1 1947 figures are taken from Statistics of Southern 
College and University Libraries, I946-47. Baton 
Rouge, Louisiana State University Library, Decem-
ber 1947. 

JANUARY, 1949 

three. Three offer no such instruction. 
Graduate study at the doctoral level is gen-
erally limited to a few fields, while masters' 
work is offered in a great many. In view 
of present enrolments it is probable that all 
these small schools are subject to a good 
deal of pressure for expansion of their 
graduate and professional programs. 

In connection with this last point, it is 
generally expected that enrolments at all 
levels will remain higher than they were 
before the war. Even though they may 
decline somewhat from present peaks, there 
is at least a short-term probability that 
demands for graduate instruction will be 
very heavy as veteran undergraduates pro-
gress in their studies. The following figures 
from West Virginia University do not prove 
a trend, but they illustrate a situation which 
one below-median library must face: 

Under- Per Upper- Per Per 
classmen Cent classmen Cent GraduateCent 

1945·46 2439 69.2 843 23·9 244 6.9 
1946-47 4524 69.9 1496 23.I 453 7.0 
1947-48 4I62 6o.o 22'67 32.6 5 I I 7·4 

The figures for I 94 7-48 show a decrease 
of 9·9 per cent in the proportion of under-
classmen, with increases of 9-5 per cent and 
·4 per cent for upperclassmen and graduate 
students respectively, as compared with 
I946-47. Considering that the total en-
rolment is about double that for I939-40, 
a greatly increased pressure for all kinds of 
reading matter can be expected in the im-
mediate future, and is already manifesting 
itself. Since the library has always been 
much better equipped for undergraduate 
than for graduate study, the emphasis of 
this demand will be on materials for ad-
vanced research. Speculation regarding 
more or less permanent levels of enrolment 
at various grades must be deferred until 
the evidence of a few more years is avail-
able. 

Of the fifteen states which subscribed to 
the compact of February, eight have uni-
versity libraries falling below the median 

43 



size, and seven have libraries lying above 
it. There remain fifteen university libraries 
below the median and not yet concerned 
in regional planning. If the entire group 
of twenty-three below-median collections is 
analyzed the possibilities of regional group-
ing are striking. The universities to which 
they belong are not located in a single 
region, and in fact the fifteen Southern 
states can hardly be called that. They 
stretch from Texas to Maryland. His-
torically, economically, culturally, and 
sociologically they vary greatly. Their 
common factor is the presence in each state 
of a large Negro population. 

Several logical groups emerge rather than 
one cohesive group. If to the twenty-three 
libraries a few lying just above the median 
are added, much strength is added to several 
groups. In the illustration below, the letter 
a indicates universities with libraries of 
below-median size; b indicates those with 
larger collections. The names of states 
which have subscribed to the compact are 
italicized. Several of these have large and 
excellent universities, and the degree to 
which they will wish to cooperate in under-
takings not connected with N egr9 education 
is perhaps doubtful. They have at least 
expressed an interest in regional cooperative 
projects, and are therefore included in the 
listing. 

A Regional Grouping of University Libraries 
I. a. Maine, New Hampshire , Vermont, 

Massachusetts , Connecticut, Rhode Is-
land (no university) 

2. a. Maryland, Delaware, W est Virgt'nia, 
Pennsylvania (no university) 

b. Virginia 
3. a. South Carolina, Georgia, Florida 

b. North Carolina 

4· a. Mis·sissippi, T enn ess ee 
b. K entucky, Alabama 

5· a. Arkansas, Oklahoma 
b. Louisiana, T exas 

6. a. North Dakota, South Dakota, 
ming, Idaho 

Wyo-

b. Montana 
7· a. Nevada, Utah , Arizona, New Mexico 

This division includes every university 
with a below-median library, and all the 
Southern states signing the compact. In 
these days of easy communication it is per-
haps unnecessary to consider convenience 
of location unless accessibility is an impor-
tant factor. This would be the case, for , 
example, if professors at a regional institu-
tion were also expected to teach at a local 
university. The larger the groupings the 
more economically first-rate facilities could 
be provided. The alignment given above 
is thus intended less as a practical proposal 
than as an illustration of the possibilities 
which accidents of location offer for group-
ing the institutions which have most to 
gain from cooperative effort. 

It is undoubtedly true that many of the 
institutions · listed above are , making efforts 
to expand their graduate programs. The 
difficulties which lie in their paths are in-
dicated by the fact that of the twenty-three 
states with submedian libraries, seventeen 
fall below the median for state general 
revenues and for public library expenditures 
from state funds; and twenty fall below 
the median for state school expenditures. 2 

Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsyl-
vania, which are high in the ranking by 
revenues, are special cases. All have fine 
private universities, and all have had until 
recently state colleges. The first two have 
lately undertaken to form universities on 
these foundations, a.nd Pennsylvania State 
College is actually a university in all but 
name. In descending the scale of libraries 
smaller state revenues are encountered. 
Universities having the smallest ten libraries 
are in states which rank from thirty down-
ward in the revenue scale, except for Massa-

2 U.S . Bureau of Census. State F inances, 19 46. 
Compendium. w ·ashington, Gove r n men t Printing Office, 
1947 · 

44 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



chusetts and Connecticut. It appears that 
the smaller the library the smaller the re-
sources which can be expected for university 
development, as well as other governmental 
services. 

Ill. Summary 

The following points emerge regarding 
interstate cooperation in higher education 
with special reference to the state university 
libraries which might be involved: 

I. The idea of regional cooperation in ad-
vanced levels of higher education, while 
strongly motivated by the desire to continue 
the practice of racial segregation, has gone 
beyond that objective. Its application to the 
general problem of providing university fa-
cilities which are not available in large areas 
of the country has been advocated and is 
permissible under the compact of February 8, 
1948, between fifteen Southern states. 

2. Figures for 1944, with estimates to 1948, 
show that about one-half the state uni-
versity libraries of the country have less than 
300,000 volumes. A considerable part of this 
group, on the basis of a sampling of eleven 
institutions, offers work up to the Ph.D. 
degree, and supports one or more graduate 

professional schools. It is obvious that for 
existing programs and for expansion these 
institutions are seriously handicapped with 
regard to library resources. 

3· Enrolments are expected to remain at 
levels substantially higher than those of pre-
war years. On a short-term basis a larger 
proportion of upperclassmen and graduate 
students can be expected; on a long-term 
basis the predictions are more doubtful, 
though the higher general enrolment levels 
will mean increased demands for all reading 
materials. This pressure will be felt with 
special force in those collecting areas which 
are, and usually have been , given less atten-
tion in smaller universities. Such areas in-
clude the high-level research literature in a 
number of subject fields. 

4· The twenty-three below-median li-
braries can be grouped into coherent regional 
divisions. The Southern states subscribing 
to the compact of February 8 fall into several 
groups rather than one. The remaining states, 
with the addition of a few possessing libraries 
just above the median size, can be similarly 
aligned. The institutions which support the 
libraries are likely to be those which also re-
quire extensive additions to their research fa-
cilities, and therefore have most to gain from 
c~operation with others in the same situation. 

Microprint Reader 
(Conti~ued from page 38) 

cost between film and paper is insignificant 
except in the case of mass reproduction. 

Whether in the end film or Microcards 
will prove more suitable for library use 
will depend not only on their relative degree 
of satisfactory performance and the rela-

tive cost of production, maintenance, and 
use, but also upon the manner of distribu-
tion of microreproductions and reading ma-
chines, and, last but not least, upon their 
acceptance by the library user as substitutes 
for the printed page. 

Oregon Statutes 
(Continued from page 40) 

are of such character that release is not prac-
ticable, in which case the same amount of time 
may be allowed at another date. Student re-
cesses in addition to the days above named 
do not constitute institutional holidays. 

Professional Activities 

Administrative Code, K- 1 9· No full-time 

JANUARY, 1949 

employee in the Oregon State System of 
Higher Education or of any of the institutions 
thereof shall engage in any outside activity 
which substantially interferes with his regular 
duties. Prior to acceptance of any employ-
ment involving time or . honorarium, the indi-
vidual concerned shall secure the approval of 
the executive head of the · institution. 

45