College and Research Libraries


T h e Subject Division Organization 
In a Liberal Arts College Library: 
A Commentary 

By A N T O I N E T T E C I O L L 1 

FO R R E A S O N S other than the obvious 
ones, the opening of the extension to 

the Brooklyn College Library on Septem-
ber 21, 1959, was an important occasion. 
It provided the library the opportunity 
to reorganize its public services and enter 
into a new level of development. T h e old 
arrangement of materials by form (with 
conventional departments: circulation, 
periodicals, documents, reserve, and ref-
erence) was supplanted by subject divi-
sions. 

How did this reorganization, which set 
up humanities, social science, education, 
and science divisions, affect the role of 
the librarians? I t in no way changed their 
role—their role remains the same: to 
further the educational and cultural 
aims of the college. However, the ex-
perience of a year and a half has made 
it obvious that the reorganization has 
enabled them the better to play their 
role in instruction. T h e reason is im-
plicit in the nature of the subject divi-
sion arrangement. In each of the four 
divisions, all books (except reserve books), 
all periodicals, all government documents 
(except social science), and all education 
pamphlets are brought together on open 
shelves. An author-title catalog is made 
available in each division except humani-
ties (which is close to the subject catalog). 
A shelf list is provided in each area. A 
small core of reference books and all 
pamphlets except those on education are 
in each division kept behind the desk. 
Because a central circulation division is 
responsible for shelving and charging, li-
brarians in each of the divisions are free 
to be resource specialists in their areas, 

Miss Ciolli is Chief Science Librarian, 
Brooklyn College Library. 

the better to help students and faculty. 
As resource specialists, the subject divi-

sion librarians perform their unique 
campus function in three ways. First, they 
select the best books for their subject 
areas. It is important that the student 
who is inspired in the classroom should 
be able to find in the library the material 
with which to realize his inspiration. It 
is the prime function of the instructor to 
influence the reading of the student; it 
is the function of the librarian to do it 
less directly by booklists, exhibits, and, 
most important, by the titles he makes 
available in his division. 

"Nothing on the hydra is on the 
shelves!" "You need more material on 
the spiny dogfish." "You have very little 
on marine biology." " W h y don't you 
have more books on obstetrics?" "Every-
thing is out on parasitical diseases in 
Africa!" 

Plaintive cries such as these, from stu-
dents who assumed that a perfect book 
collection would automatically rise from 
the newly installed shelves, could not 
help but evoke an immediate response in 
book orders. Whereas recommendations 
from the faculty increased by 20.7 per 
cent, those from librarians increased by 
92.8 per cent.1 T h e chief science librar-
ian, alone, requested 572 titles for the 
science division as against 428 titles rec-

1 Brooklyn College Library, Annual Report of the Li-
brarian, 1959-60. (Brooklyn, 1 9 6 0 ) , p. 3. 

282 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S 



ommended by eighty-eight faculty mem-
bers making recommendations. T h e dis-
tribution of book orders by subject 
inevitably paralleled that of student re-
quests for reference assistance. It was 
precisely while working with students in 
the areas of their greatest bibliographical 
interest that a first-hand knowledge was 
acquired of the gaps in the collection and 
steps taken to remedy the situation. 
Thus, one of the great advantages of the 
new library organization by subject area 
—that the librarians in charge can be 
more effectively responsive to student and 
faculty needs,—was experienced. 

When the open shelves and his own 
devices have failed him, the student ex-
pects the subject division librarians to 
perform their second unique function: 
providing reference assistance. It is at 
this point that the division librarians in 
a liberal arts college library acutely 
realize that they are expected to be, at 
one and the same time, general reference 
librarians and subject literature special-
ists. T h e freshman writing his first term 
paper for English, the upper classman 
preparing a speech for her examination 
in pedagogy, the graduate student in bi-
ology—all of these seek material on such 
topics as the effects of radiation on food, 
the relation between smoking and lung 
cancer, or the connection between viruses 
and diseases, and all expect the subject 
division librarians to use their best pro-
fessional judgment in recommending ap-
propriate sources. 

T h e chief science librarian, in delineat-
ing the pattern of student use from a 
year's sampling of the questions asked 
and recorded at the science desk, found 
that the number of requests for assistance 
which involved the use of general science 
or non-science resources was the third 
largest single item in the distribution by 
"type of references used in answer."2 
T h i s attests the liberal arts orientation 
of the student users of even such a library 

2 Brooklyn College Library, Science Division First 
Annual Report, 1959/60. (Brooklyn, 1 9 6 0 ) . p. 2. 

division as science. A substantial body of 
requests required that the librarians re-
fer the student to abstracts, bibliogra-
phies, and indexes outside the science di-
vision. Prominent in the latter category 
were the Education Index, the Child De-
velopment Abstracts, the Readers' Guide, 
the International Index, the Biography 
Index, and the Sociological Abstracts. At 
Brooklyn College, the speech area pro-
vides a particularly fruitful source of ex-
amples of term papers topics which take 
the student to several divisions of the 
Library. "Psychogenic deafness," "malin-
gering," "the speech of the brain-injured 
child"—such topics as these involve pri-
marily the use of the Psychological Ab-
stracts, the Index Medicus, and the Cur-
rent List of Medical Literature, all of 
which are part of science, and, in addi-
tion, the use of the Education Index and 
the table of contents of the Quarterly 
Journal of Speech and Speech Mono-
graphs3 in humanities! 

Although there is no instruction quite 
so successful as the individual guidance 
which the subject division librarians give 
when students request assistance, organ-
ized class instruction is essential where 
large numbers of students are involved. 
T h e subject division librarians are, 
ideally, ultimately responsible for provid-
ing systematic instruction in the catalogs, 
indexes, and bibliographies within their 
areas. At Brooklyn College, because of 
limited staff, it was possible to undertake 
only occasional class instruction in the 
subject bibliography of education, social 
science, and physical education. There 
were great differences in the quantitative 
and qualitative use of library by students 
and in their knowledge of basic reference 
books. In chemistry, the literature is so 
well organized that the individual guid-

3 It is characteristic of the research literature of the 
field of speech that it divides into two categories: bib-
liographic listings on general speech come from the areas 
of social science and humanities; those on speech science 
and correction draw upon medicine and physiology. 
Robert N. Broadus, " T h e Research Literature of the 
Field of Speech" ACRL Monographs, No. 5-7 ( 1 9 5 3 ) , 
22-31. 

J U L Y 1 9 6 1 283 



ance which the librarian gave in answer-
ing reference questions obviated much 
of the need for group instruction. In 
physics, mathematics, geology, health ed-
ucation, and home economics, little in-
structional demand presented itself. 
However, in biology, psychology, and 
speech, a good deal of individual instruc-
tion in the use of bibliographies, ab-
stracts, and indexes was required. In 
these areas, it would seem more efficient 
to give group rather than individual in-
struction. 

If, then, the reorganization of the li-
brary has associated librarians more 
closely with subject areas and, thus, more 
closely with instruction, it is by no means 
without its limitations. T h e r e is, first, 
the obvious danger inherent in special-
ization. T h e subject division librarians 
can easily, in attempting to cope with 
the pressures in their own areas, lose 
touch with resources in areas other than 
their own. In an undergraduate organiza-
tion, where students expect each librar-
ian to continue to give general as well 
as specialized reference service, this may 
become a serious handicap. (An effective 
preventive is a regular turn at the gen-
eral information desk. Service at this 
point is one of several necessary means 

to keep one alive to the whole library 
picture and not merely to one of its 
segments.) 

A second limitation to the subject divi-
sion organization is the confusion ex-
perienced by students who find it neces-
sary to go to several divisions for material 
for one term paper. On the whole, partly 
because the new building is much larger 
than the old, becoming oriented seems 
more complicated in the reorganization 
than in the traditional arrangement. 

Finally, the subject division organiza-
tion requires more librarians and is thus 
more costly. T h e Brooklyn College Li-
brary staff, with the addition of two new 
professional positions, is still, after a year 
and a half, performing in an emergency 
atmosphere in an endeavor to cope with 
the greater surge of student demand. It 
is mainly the enthusiasm and elation in 
finally moving into a new modern build-
ing which is carrying it through. 

Only the future will tell whether the 
advantages of the subject division ar-
rangement outweigh the disadvantages. 
It can at present be said with certainty, 
however, that the reorganization in the 
Brooklyn College Library provides one 
the experience of practicing librarianship 
with intensity. 

T h e Monteith Library Project 
(Continued from page 265) 

achievement next to impossible. We have 
purposely postponed facing the problem 
of evaluating the contribution of library 
competence to learning, but we cannot 
avoid recognizing that individualized 
library assignments add another major 
variable—the variation among subjects 
in the amount and organization of ma-
terials dealing with them—to a situation 

already complicated by the individual 
differences among the students. We hope 
eventually to be able to make some gen-
eral statements about what Monteith 
students have learned as a result of the 
library's part in their courses. W e are 
certain that we will never be able to say 
that they might not have learned as 
much in any of a number of other ways. 

284 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S