College and Research Libraries


eral dropping off of foundation grants to 
build collections. He briefly covers exchange 
and cooperative agreements as valuable 
sources of support. 

One could wish that this lecture had more 
detail on the prospects for university li-
brary support through what must always be 
its principal source—direct university sup-
port by appropriation. T e n years ago Keyes 
Metcalf pronounced, at the dedication of 
the Midwest Interlibrary Center, the the-
sis that "in our libraries we have a section of 
our universities that tends . . . to increase in 
size and cost geometrically, while the rest 
of the institution grows arithmetically. It is 
obvious that this cannot go on without the 
library taking an increasing percentage of 
our total resources."1 T h a t same year the 
reviewer appeared before the Sixteenth An-
nual Conference of the Graduate Library 
School of the University of Chicago to pre-
sent evidence that the situation was exactly 
the opposite. This states, in part: "As uni-
versity income has grown enormously in dol-
lars and far less rapidly in purchasing power, 
the increases have been shared with the li-
braries but not shared proportionately. W e 
may argue that libraries should be receiving 
a larger increase than other academic depart-
ments, but university administrations have 
not operated in accordance with that argu-
ment." 2 Now that ten years have elapsed an 
examination of library support from uni-
versity appropriation would be a great serv-
ice to the profession. 

Dr. Louis Shores in " T h e Undergraduate 
and His Library" develops the main thesis 
that "the primary reason for the failure of 
much of our college education today can 
be found in the current approach." As this 
would indicate, the writer swings a heavy 
axe on teaching methods in a manner that 
most librarians would applaud. But we 
might question that "the current Under-
graduate Library trend is but another mile-
stone along the road to educational revolu-
tion" or that "the Undergraduate Library 
is simply another evidence that reading 
room and classroom are about to exchange 
relationships." T h e subject of the lecture 
was undoubtedly dictated by the establish-

1 Keyes D. Metcalf. "University Libraries F a c e the 
F u t u r e , " Library Quarterly 2 2 : 5 - 1 2 (January 1 9 5 2 ) . 

2 Arthur T . Hamlin. " T h e Financial and Economic 
Status of Research Libraries," Library Quarterly 2 3 : 
190-198 (July 1 9 5 3 ) . 

ment of an undergraduate library at die 
University of Tennessee and the author per-
formed a worthy service in presenting the 
potential for the undergraduate library. 

T h e principal contribution to our profes-
sional literature comes in Archie L. McNeal's 
1960 lecture on "Divisional Organization in 
the University Library." He shrewdly points 
out that while "In theory, the subject divi-
sion is staffed by a professional librarian 
with qualifications also in the subject matter 
of the division. In practice, the subject spe-
cialist is many times the professional librar-
ian available." He then presents evidence 
to show that "the provision of subject spe-
cialists . . . is limited approximately half 
the time the libraries are open for service." 
Finally he challenges the theory that the 
specialist in a field provides better service in 
a divisional library than "the good general 
reference librarian." Other advantages of the 
divisional plan are placed under the micro-
scope and found deficient so as to build up 
a strong case for the general, upper division 
research library with central reference serv-
ice.—Arthur T. Hamlin, University of Cin-
cinnati. 

Academic Administration 
Government of Colleges and Universities. 

By John J. Corson. New York: McGraw-
Hill Book Company, Inc., 1960. 209p. 
$5.50. 

This study was undertaken at the sug-
gestion of John W. Gardner, President, and 
James A. Perkins, Vice President, of the 
Carnegie Corporation, supported by grants 
of the Corporation, and published as one 
of the books in the Carnegie Series in 
American Education. It is interesting that a 
professional management consultant was 
chosen to conduct the inquiry, and his find-
ings and conclusions should not be particu-
larly surprising to presidents, academic of-
ficers, faculty members, and trustees who 
have been concerned with the question of 
governance. 

T w o private, two urban, two denomina-
tional, and two state universities and two 
liberal arts colleges were selected for ob-

S E P T E M B E R 1 9 6 1 403 



servance at first hand of their processes, and 
Mr. Corson apparently read extensively in 
the literature of college and university ad-
ministration. T h e eight chapters cover the 
nature and significance of governing, the 
university as an administrative enterprise, 
the rofe of university-wide officers, academic 
officers, and facufties in governance, the uni-
versity as a contrast in administrative proc-
ess, the ecology of governance, and the effect 
of institutional character and leadership on 
governance. T w o appendices deal with the 
character of the institutions observed and the 
author's comments on his readings. 

In the opinion of Mr. Corson there is a 
"disturbing lack of sophisticated analysis of 
the functioning of our colleges and univer-
sities." H e attempts in the several chapters 
to "identify the distinctive nature of the 
problems of coffege and university govern-
ance that cry out for analysis." Most of the 
questions he suggests as being profitabfe 
areas for further study are not new. A ma-
jority of them, for example, were consid-
ered by Algo D. Henderson, an experienced 
academic administrator, in his book, "Poli-
cies and Practices in Higher Education," 
published at about the same time as the Cor-
son study. 

If Mr. Corson is correct in his finding of 
a lack of orderly and sophisticated analysis 
in this area, it is a challenge to academic 
administrators to go to work on these prob-
lems in the proper fashion. Perhaps they 
should seek foundation support for man-
agement consultants to attack what Mr. 
Corson considers to be major weaknesses in 
the governance of colleges and universities. 
There is the precedent of large sums of 
foundation money being made available to 
study internal and particularly business ad-
ministration of these institutions.—Eugene 
H. Wilson, University of Colorado. 

Developing a Specialist 
Science Information Personnel: The New 

Profession of Information Combining Sci-
ence, Librarianship and Foreign Language. 
By Leonard Cohan and Kenneth Craven. 
New York: Modern Language Association 
of America, 1961. 74p. $1.50. 

T h e Modern Language Association's im-

print on this report is quite incidental to its 
contents. T h e importance of languages in 
science information work has received only 
a minor emphasis as a part of the total ed-
ucational and training requirements of the 
profession. Undoubtedly the study will be 
of more interest to librarians that to lin-
guists. 

T h e authors first set out to describe this 
"new" professional, the science information 
specialist, and define the elements which 
comprise his work. Twelve of these elements 
represent current tasks; another five indicate 
recent trends in the profession. Although 
little criticism can be made of the enumera-
tion, it is difficuft to identify any unique ac-
tivities. All have in some degree been a part 
of special librarianship for a considerable 
period of time. Only when measured against 
a passive, archival brand of librarianship do 
the elements of science information work ap-
pear "new." T h e authors make this distinc-
tion: " T h e role of the librarian has been to 
keep a facility complete, up-to-date and ac-
cessible. T h e information specialist has been 
concerned more with promoting information, 
anticipating user requirements, and setting 
up special information services to meet 
them." 

Whether this distinction is altogether justi-
fiabte remains an academic question if the 
administrators of research organizations, in-
dustries, and government agencies, who are 
instrumentaf in staffing information centers, 
consider it valid. Even more important is its 
acceptance by the potential recruit, in this 
case the science major, who consequently 
turns to the laboratory, not the library, for 
a career. T h e increasing shortage of trained 
information specialists demands the services 
of those with science backgrounds. If this 
shortage is to be filled by design and not by 
improvisation, librarianship, so labeled or 
not, must appear as a challenging and at-
tractive career, and library training must 
seem pertinent and meaningful. T h e ques-
tion is whether there has been a failure in 
public relations or in education. 

Since the major portion of the report 
concerns itself with constructing a curriculum 
for the science information specialist, it is 
obvious that the authors consider present li-
brary education inadequate. In this cast the 
concept of librarianship held by the tech-
nically-oriented public is of more than 

404 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