College and Research Libraries The Dogma of Book Selection in University Libraries T HE PRACTICE of book selection is a basic and abiding aspect of the ad- ministration of all types of libraries. Readers and librarians come and go, but books and bibliographies of books re- main in one form or another. Book selection is universal. Even the great national libraries which enjoy ef- fective systems of copyr~ght deposit have their "selection officers." Scaling on down to the smallest libraries, selection be- comes increasingly necessary for financial and spatial reasons. In some instances book selection is easy and completely effective for the pur- pose at hand, and the librarian's work is almost nil. For example, in the small popular libraries of totalitarian coun- tries acquisitions conform strictly to standard lists from the Ministry of Edu- cation. Again, in countries with an old national culture and comparatively small total book production (e.g. ) Iceland, Den- mark, Finland), book selection is rela- tively uncomplicated for a popular li- brary with only a few hundred dollars a year to acquire the basic belletristic and social science literature in the national language. Neither is it difficult to build the collection of a special library serving a prosperous industry with a relatively small and sharply defined body of tech- nical literature, although housing and discard may be sensitive issues. In the Handbuch der Bibliothekswis- senschaft Fritz Redenbacher devotes some thirty pages to fundamentals of book se- lection for the research library. While he imparts much practical information, we may only conclude that a reasonably well By LAWRENCE S. THOMPSON Dr. Thompson is Director) University of Kentucky Libraries. paid librarian might spend several times the price of a book in the time taken to select it. Even then he may or may not have pleased a gratifying portion of readers. We can only tell readers who do not care for selections by librarians andjor professors that they can still de- pends on microforms, agencies such as the Midwest Inter-Library Center, or general interlibrary loan. A fast-talking librarian can frequently persuade his readers that these are adequate substi- tutes. The realistic facts of the problem of book selection in university libraries are: (1) no one person is competent to select individual titles on a broad general basis; (2) the volume of publication is so great that there must be some form of selection; (3) no library has the funds to acquire, the personnel to process, and the space to shelve everything that ap- pears; and (4) who can predict what may be significant for future research in the deluge of preserved information? There have always been selectors, and on them we may blame much of our lack of information about history or ideas or technical skills of the past. No Myce- naean Greek ever thought that it was more worthwhile to transcribe contem- porary ballads in permanent form than to record lists of merchant ships. On the other hand, a small sect around the Dead Sea had more insight about the preserva- tion of certain scriptural and exegetical literature than did any of the more prominent contemporaries. There is also the classic story of the Bodleian's first copy of a First Folio. To be sure, there are certain basic principles of selection in which nearly anybody with some little academic back- ground may acquire competence. For a research library with limited funds any- one knows not to select a superseded edi- tion, a juvenile, a vanity press of self- published title, or a work in a language exotic for the library concerned. Even here, however, selection is fraught with traps for the unwary. An edition may be "superseded" by a censored or bowdler- ized version. The broad category of juve- niles includes hundreds of literary clas- sics. Many a library must order vanity press books for special collections. And thousands of works in exotic languages have significant and comprehensible il- lustrations or tables or (in the case of scholarly studies) resumes in common western European languages. These are but a few examples of the multiplicity of problems involved in book selection in university libraries. If any individual, group of individuals, or system can cope adequately and eco- nomically with these issues of book se- lection, the most difficult problem of a century and a half of modern university librarianship would be solved. Yet what are we to accept and what are we to reject from the hundreds of thousands of books and pamphlets pub- lished annually all over the world in various forms of duplication? To be the last Canute, defying the volume, to say nothing of the doubtful quality, of all the world's duplicated records is ridicu- lous. There must be some method of se- lection, but it need not necessarily be selection of individual titles. We must seek a basic policy by which to separate, in general, the more urgently needed from the less urgently needed. We must deal in generalities; for if we deal in 442 specifics, the time consumed might well be equivalent to the cost of comprehen- sive coverage of fields pertinent for the particular library. We face realities. If we had funds to buy or acquire in some other manner all the duplicated records of man, we would probably not have the personnel to proc- ess them. If we had both funds and processing personnel, we would probably not have space to shelve the material. And if we had funds, personnel, and space, the sources of our financial sup- port would be likely to argue that we were eating too high off the hog. These sources-private or governmental-have a right to know our policies of selection, a right to demand that we formulate such policies if they do not already exist, and a right to ex·amine them critically. But if we have a policy consistent with available funds, if we work out a modus vivendi with the hydra of book produc- tion, if we show some intelligence about acceptance or rejection of individual titles, who can be sure that we are pro- viding adequately for the future, that we are filling the specific needs of schol- ars a generation hence? This question is unanswerable, but it cannot be dis- missed. Few university librarians have not seen collections which were the hall- marks of late nineteenth century genteel education but which today can be picked over only for imprints and occasional ex- ceptional nugae. Such collections often represent strong efforts to bring together all the best in the eyes of librarians and professors of the day, but they were, for the most part, failures. Our modern uni- versity libraries may be larger in volume, but there is no assurance that their quali- tative value will be any greater in the twenty-first century than that of the aver- age nineteenth century collection is for us. Book selection, as we have known it in university libraries, has resulted in highly miscellaneous collections in all but those largest university libraries COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES which approach the status of universal collections. Take, for example, the hold- ings of any European university library which existed in the eighteenth century and which has suffered no violence. In no instance can we find a comprehensive collection of what we now consider the best books of the age, and in only a few are the national literatures of the period well represented. American university li- braries which existed in the nineteenth century are paying fabulous prices for books published in the very regions in which these libraries were flourishing. These books were not necessary for the curriculum, and no selection policies were formulated to cover them. There have been noteworthy excep- tions to the policy of selectivity in col- lecting contemporary books and pam- phlets in specific fields of emphasis, and there is some evidence that this tendency is growing today. George Thomason did an unforgettable service for historical scholarship when he brought together a comprehensive collection of Civil War imprints. The Boston Athenaeum had the vision to do much the same thing for the American Civil War, or, at least, for the material printed in the old rebel states. Herbert Hoover was wise enough not to bother with details of selection in bringing together source material on World War I and related matters. In general the social sciences are likely to be the greatest headache for the se- lector of individual titles. The juvenilia of a Napoleon, a ' Lincoln, or a Hitler are materials that a contemporary selection officer is likely to reject summarily. To be sure, he who tries to show "foresight" will find himself up many a dry creek. No one can guess the turn of political fortunes, but this very circumstance is a strong reason for comprehensive collect- ing. Selection is almost as difficult in the field of belletristic literature. One might immediately reply that anyone with the "gentleman's education" for which we NOVEMBER 1960 aspire for all librarians should be able to draw the line at some point between dog- gerel and poetry, melodrama and drama. But is the Sweet Singer of Michigan a literary phenomenon we may ignore? Should our colonial colleagues have re- jected Michael Wigglesworth and Anne Bradstreet? And I ·will not mention here the price that one library paid for an ex- library copy of the first edition of East Lynne adorned with a few scribblings of Ellen Wood. The grand old melodrama wasn't proper company for the middle to highbrow writers on our academic li- brary bookshelves a century ago. In the biological and physical sciences and in many professional fields selection is not so troublesome. All scientists know the respectable journals. Yet even here who is to recognize an obscure disserta- tion from Dorpat or a PTogrammschrift from a country gymnasium in Styria that may contain a basic new statement of a scientific principle. Still, the bulk of printed scientific literature can be identi- fied from a qualitative standpoint. The sub~literature (processed and in micro- form) is another problem. Since most of it is not evaluated, it must be collected comprehensively if we are not to miss that hundredth title likely to be of su- preme importance. The university librarian has two alter- natives when he faces the problem of building collections in the social sciences and the humanities: (I) To allocate all funds to departments and allow the fac- ulty to choose what is needed for the mo- ment, forgetting possible future needs, and depending heavily on interlibrary loan, microfacsimiles, and . agencies such as MILC; or (2) to retain in the general fund a substantial portion of his appro- priation and allocate l~rge segments for exhaustive coverage of fields of special emphasis, with no regard to selection of individual titles. With the latter alterna- tive he has the possibility of placing se- lection on a major policy-making level, by separating those fields of rna jor im- 443 portance to the institution from fields represented by service departments. Wherever we identify strength, we should aim at comprehensiveness, but always with due consideration to regional and national cooperative acquisition pro- grams. The cheap and less significant lit- erature, after all, costs but a fraction of the truly important pieces; and, within the library, there may be a secondary se- lection process by which the minor pieces are cataloged and shelved at less expense than the more important titles. Vertical comprehensive collecting (by subject) is likely to be the only practical application of this principle. Horizontal comprehensiveness, e.g.~ standing orders with individual publishers or with cate- gories of publishers such as university presses, can bring in a messy batch of miscellaneous titles, some useful, some junk. Let us assume that a library, rather a university, has decided to give special emphasis to some field. Take, for ex- ample, modern Spanish belletristic lit- erature, a not unimportant subject. All non-serial titles in this field can be de- livered by a dealer (name available on application) for around $400-$500 an- nually. Again, let us assume that a li- brary wants to cover all problems under current consideration by legislative bod- ies in the fifty states. Falls City Micro- cards offers everything in this field, fully cataloged, for about $500-$600 a year (de- pending on the volume of publication). In certain other fields it is possible to use the international bibliographies, sep- arating the serials and separates. For over a decade I have followed carefully the annual Hirsch-Heaney checklists of bib- liographical scholarship in Studies in Bibliography and attempted to acquire virtually everything listed here. It would not be difficult to defend an argument that any respectable university library emphasizing humanistic scholarship should strive to be as complete as pos- sible in this material. With the exception 444 of the occasional very expensive item such as Marinis' great work on the Nea- politan royal library, the non-serial items in this bibliography cost an average of about $750 a year, a cheap price for bib- liographical soundness in a library. But what decision might we make in the case of bibliographies such as the Handbook of Latin American Studies or Library Literature? There is patently a much larger proportion of less important material in these bibliographies than in the Hirsch-Heaney checklists. If one ex- amines the acquisition lists of certain large or special libraries in these fields, it is apparent that they are trying to get everything, with no regard to the quality of individual titles. It seems to be gen- erally recognized that if a library is to be a research library in the best sense, it must be comprehensive in its fields of emphasis, including good, bad, and in- different. The librarian, except perhaps the special librarian, is no more compe- tent to exercise critical judgment in deal- ing with individual titles out of great masses of literature than is any other mortal. Final critical evaluation is the job of individual scholars. Still, mass acquisition is not possible without a few bird-dogs in the biblio- graphical kennel to sniff out the excep- tional. For twelve years I have made strong efforts to build the University of Kentucky Library's holdings of Euro- pean books that are privately printed, privately distributed, or otherwise Iim- i ted in edition. The· purpose is to strengthen the graphic arts collections, since most of these books are significant examples of printing and illustration. Titles must be excavated from review sections of obscure journals, bulletins of bibliophilic societies, and personal cor- respondence and conversation. The books are generally free, but the cost is high in terms of man-hours spent. However, the result is more than rewarding. In I 957 from this source came sixteen titles not held by Library A with the Farmington COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES Plan responsibility for them; four titles not held by Library B; and three not held by Library C, both with this respon- sibility in other areas. What about those fields in which are- search library does not wish, for one rea- son or another, to acquire en masse? What about those libraries which should acquire en masse but lack the funds? The answer to the first question is simple: Give the teaching staff and the readers what they want for current use. If the long-term results are less than satisfactory for building a research collection, these libraries won't be much worse off than all but a half dozen or so American uni- versity li-braries of the sixties. The an- swer to the second question requires toughness, perhaps unrealistic toughness in terms of what a librarian can say to a president: If a library is to be a research library in the true sense in those fields it selects for emphasis, it must have funds for purchasing, processing, and housing. For the hundred or so American univer- sities which grant a respectable doctor- ate, this means that serious consideration should be given to comprehensive col- lecting in one or more fields. If the uni- versity cannot provide the necessary funds for the library, it is doubtful whether it can provide the necessary funds for teaching and research; and it is further doubtful whether it should try to offer advanced work at all. The results of comprehensive collect- ing are not immediately apparent. A gen- eration or so is necessary before the col- lections begin to take shape. But how re- markable these results can be! The Uni- versity of Helsingfors Library enjoyed the privilege of imperial copyright de- posit for a little over a century prior to 1917, and it will forever be a precious collection of nineteenth century Russian literature. The Deutsche Biicherei is barely a half a century old, but it is rivalled on_ly by the far older collections of Berlin and Munich as a depository of German cultural tradition. The Biblio- NOVEMBER 1960 theque Nordique of the Ste.-Genevieve enjoys the good will of nearly all Scandi- navian publishers as a depository, and there is no more useful collection of Scandinaviq1 south of Copenhagen. Beyond the small college library, the problem of selecting individual titles from today's mass of publication is an unrewarding, well-nigh hopeless task for academic librarians. In universities the librarian should attempt to get away from the concept of selection of individ- ual titles in most cases. In fields where there must be selection of individual titles, the teaching staff can handle the job and satisfy itself as best it may. If the teaching staff fails, it can stew in its own bibliological juice; and it is a bitter juice of failure, whether concocted by profes- sors or librarians. The librarian will be best advised to confine his selecting to policy-making. In conference with colleagues and the teach- ing staff, he should decide where and when to attempt mass collecting. Such a policy does not prohibit him from so- liciting gifts, cultivating angels, develop- ing exchanges, selecting items to fill ob- vious lacunae in fields he knows well, and otherwise enriching collections. It does prohibit him from attempting, by himself or with fellow librarians, to se- lect piecemeal the five or ten per cent of the world's annual book production that the average American university library can afford. The dogma of book selection by indi- vidual titles has yielded no significant results in university libraries. In fact, our growth seems to be the more haphazard on account of it. We cannot abolish se- lection by individual titles, for there will always be situations in which the tradi- tional principles of selection must be fol- lowed. However, the major acquisition policy should be concerned with whole fields, and the key decisions should re- volve around the intensity with which acquisition in these various fields should be pursued. 445