College and Research Libraries


Socio-Psychological Research 
On College Environments 

BY D A N I E L P. B E R G E N 

THE ALA Standards for College Li-braries, adopted in 1959, are shot 
through with the reminder that the level 
of an institution's library services should 
always be determined with reference to 
its unique character. T h e third para-
graph of the Standards reads: " T h e 
standards laid down in this document 
must always be interpreted in the light 
of the aims and the needs of the institu-
tion of which the library is a part." 1 Yet, 
what do we, as college librarians, really 
know about the aims and needs of the 
institutions which we serve? T o be sure, 
in the colleges of highest academic qual-
ity there undoubtedly exists a reasonable 
student-faculty-administration consensus 
on institutional aims, but even in such 
colleges there is less likely to be any 
thorough understanding of institutional 
needs. As one moves to the colleges at 
the rear of what is euphemistically called 
the "academic procession," what agree-
ment prevails on aims and needs, cata-
log statements notwithstanding, must 
certainly take on a more nebulous qual-
ity. In the vast majority of colleges, 
therefore, there is probably little sense 
of what W . H. Cowley has called the 
"historical continuum" of an institution. 
T h e components of this continuum—sets 
of value, attitudes, beliefs, ideals, and in-
stitutional intellectual levels—give each 
college, studied over time, an identity 
of its own.2 College librarians, it seems 

1 ALA Standards for College Libraries: Adopted by 
ACRL, A Division of the American Library Association 
( C h i c a g o : T h e Association of College and Research 
L i b r a r i e s , 1 9 5 9 ) , p. 1. 

2 W . H . Cowley, " A n Appraisal of A m e r i c a n Higher 
E d u c a t i o n " ( A n Unpublished Manuscript, S t a n f o r d Uni-
versity Department of Education, 1 9 5 6 ) as discussed 
by E . D . Duryea, " I n s t i t u t i o n a l P e r s o n a l i t y : Some Re-
flections Upon I t s Implications for A d m i n i s t r a t o r s , " 
Educational Record, X L I I (October, 1 9 6 1 ) , 330-31. 

N O V E M B E R 1 9 6 2 

Mr. Bergen has been Associate Librarian 
of the Abbey Library, St. Benedict's College, 
Atchison, Kansas, since January 1962. 

to me, have a positive obligation to seek 
means for more accurately describing the 
ecology of the library, that is, the wider 
collegiate setting of which the college 
library represents only a part. 

T h e ways of assessing institutional 
character or environment are now mani-
fold. All of them are more scientific and 
"refined" than those used by J. D. Sal-
i n g e r i n Franny and Zooey a n d Catcher 
in the Rye. Since the mid-1950's, some 
of the more progressive members of the 
College Entrance Examination Board 
have been sending to secondary school 
counselors statements of their freshman 
class characteristics. These statements, 
while ordinarily including mean scores 
on the verbal, mathematical, and achieve-
ment test portions of the College Board 
examinations, seldom contain informa-
tion which could not readily be obtained 
from the American Council on Educa-
tion's monumental American Universi-
ties and Colleges (1960). They do not 
usually provide, furthermore, any indi-
cators of what Philip E. Jacob termed 
the "institutional thrust," i.e. its per-
sonality in terms of the values commonly 
held by its students, faculty, and admin-
istration.3 

For the beginnings of systematic at-
tempts to describe institutional charac-
ter, one must refer to a study by William 

3 Philip E . J a c o b , Changing Values in College: An 
Exploratory Study of the Impact of College Teaching 
( N e w Y o r k : H a r p e r , 1 9 5 7 ) , p. 114. 

473 



S. Learned and Ben D. Wood of secon-
dary and higher education in Pennsyl-
vania during the late 1920's and early 
1930's. T h e i r work was directed to "fix-
ing attention primarily on the nature, 
the apparent needs, and the actual 
achievements of the individual student 
in his successive contacts witli existing 
institutional forms. . . . " 4 Subsequent 
studies have sought to define the college 
culture by centering upon institutional 
productivity, or the proportion of a col-
lege's graduates that eventually goes on 
to earn the Ph.D. T h e interpretation of 
a college's productivity has necessarily 
involved a further assessment of insti-
tutional characteristics as conditioned by 
the intelligence level of the student body, 
the personal values and perceptions of 
the students, faculty, and administration, 
as well as those elements in the ecology 
of the college itself which have decisive 
impact upon the institution. 

In 1953, Robert H. Knapp and Joseph 
J. Greenbaum, sociologists at Wesleyan 
University, defined the productivity of 
any undergraduate college as the per-
centage (per one thousand graduates over 
the period 1946-1951) which ultimately 
obtained the Ph.D. By their reckoning, 
the ten institutions with the highest 
over-all productivity in the natural sci-
ences, social sciences, and humanities 
were, in order: Swarthmore, Reed, the 
College of the University of Chicago, 
Oberlin, Haverford, the California In-
stitute of Technology, Carleton, Prince-
ton, Antioch, and Harvard College.5 A 
somewhat less sophisticated but nonethe-
less useful attempt to measure college 
productivity was subsequently made by 
the National Research Council of the 
National Academy of Sciences. T h i s 
study, reported in a 1958 publication, 
Doctorate Production in United States 

4 W i l l i a m S . Learned and B e n D . Wood, The Stu-
dent and His Knowledge: A Report to the Carnegie 
Foundation on the Results of the High School and 
College Examinations of 1928, 1930, and 1932 ( N e w 
Y o r k : T h e Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement 
of T e a c h i n g , 1 9 3 8 ) , p. x v i . 

5 Robert H . Knapp and Joseph J . Greenbaum, The 
Younger American Scholar: His Collegiate Origins 
( C h i c a g o : U n i v e r s i t y of Chicago P r . , 1 9 5 3 ) , p. 16. 

Universities: 1936-1956: With Baccalau-
reate Origins of Doctorates in the Sci-
ences, Arts, and Humanities, c o n t a i n e d 
a raw, unweighted ranking of under-
graduate colleges, based on the total 
numbers of their graduates which took 
the Ph.D. during the period under con-
sideration. T h i s survey did not, unfor-
tunately, take into account the relative 
size of the colleges' respective graduating 
classes. A mean measure of the size of 
the institutions' graduating classes for 
the period, 1936-1956, would have ren-
dered the N R C calculations much more 
meaningful. T h e ten leading undergrad-
uate colleges in that study were, in order: 
California (Berkeley); the City College 
of New York (CCNY); Illinois; Chicago; 
Wisconsin; Harvard; Minnesota; Colum-
bia; Michigan; and New York Univer-
sity (NYU).6 Even more recent studies of 
that kind are William Manuel's The 
Baccalaureate Origins of Medical Stu-
dents which, because it deals with a pro-
fessional degree, is beyond the scope of 
our present considerations,7 and the val-
uable survey of the Association of Ameri-
can Colleges entitled, A Report on the 
Baccalaureate Origins of College Facul-
ties. T h a t report, based on work done 
during the academic year, 1955-1956, took 
into consideration the relative size of 
the surveyed institutions' undergraduate 
enrollments for that base year.8 T h e top 
ten, determined by a calculus of college 
teachers produced per one thousand full-
time undergraduate enrollment in 1955, 
were, in order: Woodstock (a Jesuit col-
lege and seminary in Maryland whose 
graduates staff Catholic institutions); the 
College of the University of Chicago; 
George Peabody College for Teachers; 
Oberlin College; Reed College; Wesleyan 
University; Greenville College (Illinois); 
Swarthmore College; Bowdoin College; 

6 Doctorate Production in United States Universi-
ties: 1936-1956: With Baccalaureate Origins of Doctor-
ates in the Sciences, Arts, and Humanities ( W a s h i n g -
ton,: National Academy of S c i e n c e s — N a t i o n a l Research 
Council, 1 9 5 8 ) , pp. 62-63. 

7 W i l l i a m Manuel, The Baccalaureate Origins of 
Medical Students ( W a s h i n g t o n : Gov. P r i n t . Off., 1 9 6 1 ) . 

8 Allan O. Pfinster, A Report on the Baccalaureate 
Origins of College Faculities ( W a s h i n g t o n : T h e Associ-
ation of American Colleges, 1 9 6 1 ) , p. 3. 

474 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 



and Southwestern University (Texas).9 
A third study, which purported to use 
the Knapp and Greenbaum indices, data 
on graduate fellowships and undergrad-
uate scholarships, N R C statistics, distri-
bution patterns for National Merit Schol-
ars, and interviews, was Chesly Manly's 
somewhat random and unscientific at-
tempt to rate the nation's best univer-
sities, coeducational colleges, men's col-
leges, and women's colleges. His five best 
in each category were, in rank-order: 
(1) Universities (Harvard, Yale, Cali-
fornia, Chicago, and Columbia); (2) Co-
educational colleges (Oberlin, Swarth-
more, Carleton, Reed, and Pomona); (3) 
Men's colleges (Haverford, Amherst, 
Kenyon, Wesleyan, and Hamilton); and 
(4) Women's colleges (Bryn Mawr, Rad-
cliffe, Barnard, Vassar, and Mount Hol-
yoke).10 T h e Manly study has been 
widely criticized, though few knowledge-
able educators have been at great odds 
with his invidious (at least for alumni) 
ratings. Perhaps the most incisive criti-
cism of his study was simply that it did 
not employ the best available rating pro-
cedures.11 

Of the disciplines outside professional 
education, psychology and sociology have 
been most actively concerned with the 
problems of assessing college environ-
ments. Part of the psychologists' concern 
may be traced to their conviction that 
"the complexity of relationship between 
person and environment is inevitably 
obscured by the simplified and often in-
appropriate symbolism of correlation be-
tween scholastic aptitude test and grade-
point average. . . . " 1 2 Efforts to find a 
more appropriate symbolism have re-
sulted in at least two devices, one of 
which is the College Characteristics In-
dex (CCI). T h e CCI, a three hundred 

9 Ibid., pp. 30-31. 
10 See The Chicago Tribune (April 21, 1 9 5 7 ) . F o r 

Manly's views on the 20 best liberal arts colleges in the 
Midwest, see The Chicago Tribune (February 11, 1961). 

11 Dewey B . Stuit, "Evaluations of Institutions and 
P r o g r a m s , " Review of Educational Research, X X X 
(October, 1 9 6 0 ) , 375. 

12 C. Robert Pace and George G. Stern, " A n Ap-
proach to the Measurement of Psychological Character-
istics of College Environments," Journal of Educational 
Psychology, X L I X (October, 1 9 5 8 ) , 276. 

N O V E M B E R 1 9 6 2 

item "True-False" questionnaire organ-
ized into thirty distinct ten-item "press" 
scales, has been administered to faculty 
and students at a large number of col-
leges and universities. Underlying the 
construction of that instrument was the 
assumption that the "press" of a college 
environment is best reflected in the per-
ceptions which students and faculty 
members have of it. "Press," for George 
Stern and C. Robert Pace, devisers of 
the CCI, is "reflected in the character-
istic pressures, stresses, rewards, and 
conformity-demanding influences of the 
college culture." 1 3 In two diverse institu-
tions where Stern and Pace applied the 
CCI in May 1957, there were the follow-
ing outcomes: 

C O L L E G E A 
T h e m a j o r press . . . was toward orderli-
ness a n d friendly helpfulness, with over-
tones o f spirited social activity. . . . stu-
dents have assigned seats in some classes, 
professors o f t e n take a t t e n d a n c e , papers 
and reports must be neat, buildings are 
clearly marked, students plan t h e i r pro-
grams with an adviser a n d select their 
courses b e f o r e registration, courses pro-
ceed systematically, it is easy to take clear 
notes, student activities are organized and 
p l a n n e d ahead. W i t h i n this orderliness, 
student life is spirited and a c e n t e r o f in-
terest. F o r e x a m p l e , big college events 
draw lots o f enthusiasm, parties are color-
ful and lively, there is lots to do besides 
going to class and studying, students spend 
a lot of time in snack bars and in o n e an-
other's rooms, and when students r u n a 
p r o j e c t everyone knows a b o u t it. A t the 
same time, a m i d this student-oriented cul-
ture, there is a stress on idealism and serv-
ice. Students are e x p e c t e d to develop an 
awareness o f t h e i r role in social a n d polit-
ical life, be effective citizens, understand 
the p r o b l e m s o f less privileged people, 
be interested in charities, etc. 

C O L L E G E B 
H e r e the d o m i n a n t press o f the environ-
m e n t falls in the theoretical-intellectual 
category. . . . there are e x c e l l e n t library 
resources in n a t u r a l science and social 
science, a lecture by an o u t s t a n d i n g phi-

13 Ibid., p. 270. 

475 



losopher o r scientist would draw a ca-
pacity audience, m a n y students a r e plan-
n i n g graduate work o r careers in science 
o r social science, there are m a n y op-
p o r t u n i t i e s f o r students to see a n d h e a r 
a n d criticize m o d e r n art a n d music, rea-
soning a n d logic are valued highly in stu-
d e n t reports a n d discussions, students who 
spend a lot o f t i m e in a science l a b o r a t o r y 
o r in trying to analyze o r classify art a n d 
music o r in seeking to develop a personal 
system of values are n o t regarded as odd, 
scholarship a n d i n t e l l e c t u a l skills are re-
garded as m o r e i m p o r t a n t than social 
poise a n d a d j u s t m e n t , there is t i m e f o r 
private t h o u g h t a n d reflection, o n e n e e d 
n o t be afraid o f expressing e x t r e m e views, 
the faculty a n d a d m i n i s t r a t i o n are t o l e r a n t 
in i n t e r p r e t i n g regulations. . . . students 
. . . do n o t have assigned seats in class, pro-
fessors do n o t take a t t e n d a n c e , students are 
likely to study over t h e weekend, big col-
lege events draw n o great enthusiasm, a n d 
the place is n o t described as o n e where 
'everyone has a lot of f u n . ' M o r e o v e r , stu-
d e n t leaders have n o special privileges, 
family status is n o t i m p o r t a n t , students 
are n o t m u c h c o n c e r n e d a b o u t personal 
a p p e a r a n c e a n d g r o o m i n g , a n d an intel-
lectual is n o t an 'egghead.' A n d finally, 
e x a m s are n o t based on f a c t u a l m a t e r i a l 
from a t e x t b o o k , classes are n o t character-
ized by r e c i t a t i o n and drills, grade lists 
are n o t publicly posted, students are n o t 
p u b l i c l y r e p r i m a n d e d for mistakes, stu-
d e n t organizations are n o t closely super-
vised, students t e n d to stay u p late at 
night, work all the h a r d e r if they have 
received a low grade, a n d if c o n f r o n t e d 
with a r e g u l a t i o n they d o n o t like they 
will try to get it c h a n g e d . 1 4 

T h e current norm group for the CCI 
consists of an extremely heterogeneous 
bunch of colleges and universities spread 
geographically from one end of the na-
tion to the other, with idealogies as va-
ried as their geography. T h e existence 
of this norm group permits researchers 
to apply the CCI to an ever-increasing 
number of institutions and to classify 
them under one of four major groupings: 
(1) an intellectual-humanistic-esthetic 

14 Ibid., pp. 273-74. 

476 

cluster or emphasis; (2) a cluster which 
suggests an emphasis on independence, 
change, and science; (3) an emphasis on 
personal and interpersonal status, cou-
pled with a practical or vocational orien-
tation; and (4) an emphasis upon group 
welfare, social responsibility, and well-
mannered community.15 Despite its state 
of refinement, the CCI is not without its 
obvious limitations. David Riesman, 
Harvard's imaginative critic of society, 
sees these as its failure to measure any-
thing but student and faculty "ideology" 
about a particular institution and its lack 
of sufficient flexibility for application to 
colleges where the outlook of students 
and faculty is overly heterogeneous.10 

Still another psychological device is the 
Environmental Assessment Technique 
( E A T ) developed at the National Merit 
Scholarship Corporation by J o h n L. Hol-
land and his associates. Like the CCI, it 
operates on the assumption that a col-
lege's culture or environmental force is 
transmitted through people. T o use Hol-
land's reasoning: " I f , then, we know the 
character of the people in a group, we 
should know the climate that group cre-
ates."17 Basically, the E A T is a weighted 
mixture of eight components: size of the 
undergraduate student body; intelligence 
level (as indicated by mean scores for the 
National Merit Scholarship Qualifying 
Test or the Scholastic Aptitude portion 
of the College Board examinations); and 
six typologies of personal characteristics 
as they relate to the student's selected 
major (realistic, intellectual, social, con-
ventional, enterprising, and artistic). T h e 
E A T is particularly adapted to measure 
what psychologists call the degree of 
congruence between the college and the 
individual student.18 

T h e sociologists, particularly Allen 
15 C. Robert P a c e , " M e t h o d s of Describing College 

C u l t u r e s , " Teachers College Record, L X I I I ( J a n u a r y , 
1 9 6 2 ) , 269. 

16 David R i e s m a n , " T h e ' J a c o b R e p o r t ' , " American 
Sociological Review, X X I I I (December, 1 9 5 8 ) , 733. 

i t Alexander W . Astin and John L . Holland, 
" T h e Environmental Assessment T e c h n i q u e : A W a y 
T o M e a s u r e College E n v i r o n m e n t s , " Jounal of Educa-
tional Psychology, L I I (December, 1 9 6 1 ) , 308. 

18 Ibid., p. 31$. 

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 



Barton and Martin Trow, like, on the 
other hand, to view the college as " a 
social system with emphasis upon peer 
groups, role behavior, communications 
networks, and other organizational char-
acteristics."19 Barton's "College Organi-
zation Variables" comprehend measures 
of a college's input (student, faculty, ad-
ministration, financial, and physical), 
output (student knowledge, values, and 
interests, along with faculty research and 
publication); environmental variables 
(external to the college); social structure; 
attitudes; and activities.20 His instru-
ment, as a design for measurement, has 
the very important virtue of being able 
to assess the affect of extracollegiate en-
vironmental forces, a deficiency of here-
tofore devised psychological techniques. 

In addition to the scientific measures 
of college environment, there are the 
more literary, but highly perceptive, styl-
ings of David Boroff and David Ries-
man. Boroff, whose colorful profiles of 
Harvard, Brooklyn College, Swarthmore, 
Birmingham-Southern, Wisconsin, and 
the Associated Colleges of Claremont 
(California) first appeared in Harpers 
magazine, is basically a social commenta-
tor.21 It is to Riesman, the lawyer-turned-
sociologist, that we owe the working con-
cept of the "academic procession" and 
the prestige-ranking of colleges.22 He and 
Christopher Jencks, one of his graduate 
students and former associates at Har-
vard, have recently produced a brilliant 
vignette on San Francisco State College 
described by the authors as an "ethnog-
raphy." 2 3 T h e description is quite ap-
propriate because of their heavy use of 
anthropological insight and analogy. 
T h e y describe the effect which student 

19 C . R o b e r t P a c e , loc. cit., p. 2 7 6 . 
20 Ibid., pp. 2 7 4 - 7 5 . 
21 R e p r i n t e d in D a v i d B o r o f f , Campus USA ( N e w 

Y o r k : H a r p e r , 1 9 6 1 ) . F o r a r e c e n t s k e t c h , s e e " A l -
b a n y S t a t e : A T e a c h e r s College in T r a n s i t i o n , " Satur-
day Review, X L V ( 2 0 J a n u a r y 1 9 6 2 ) , 4 2 - 4 3 . 

22 D a v i d R i e s m a n , Constraint and Variety in Ameri-
can Education ( G a r d e n C i t y , N . Y . : D o u b l e d a y , 1 9 5 8 ) , 
pp. 3 5 - 6 5 . 

23 D a v i d R i e s m a n and C h r i s t o p h e r J e n c k s , " A C a s e 
S t u d y in V i g n e t t e : S a n F r a n c i s c o S t a t e C o l l e g e , " Teach-
ers College Record, L X I I I ( J a n u a r y , 1 9 6 2 ) , 2 3 4 . R e -
p r i n t e d in N e v i t t S a n f o r d ( e d . ) , The American College 
( N e w Y o r k : W i l e y , 1 9 6 2 ) . 

N O V E M B E R 1 9 6 2 

rootlessness in a commuter college has 
upon the provision of institutional serv-
ices.24 T h e y maintain, some external evi-
dence to the contrary, that the majority 
of freshmen at SF State "come from homes 
in which neither books nor conversation 
(as opposed to talk) are available. . . . " 2 5 
And they learned that the most severe 
threat to institutional intellectuality is 
not "collegiate" (i.e. fraternity-sorority) 
culture, but rather a culture created by 
students who regard any kind of in-
tellectuality as a positive threat to their 
preformed values and self-images,26 

One of the best conceptual tools yet 
developed for differentiating colleges on 
planes of intelligence and values is called 
the "level of expectancy."2 7 It has been 
found that the level of expectancy, "as 
the intellectual, cultural, and moral cli-
mate of a college," takes on peculiarly 
atypical configurations in institutions 
like Bennington, Reed, Sarah Lawrence, 
Antioch, and the College of the Univer-
sity of Chicago (where the liberal orien-
tation is uniformly strong relative to 
other colleges), and Harvard, Wesleyan, 
and Haverford (where the respective ori-
entations are toward personal autonomy, 
community, and leadership).28 In a letter 
to the author, Paul Heist, now associate 
research psychologist in the Center for 
the Study of Higher Education at the 
University of California (Berkeley), fur-
ther differentiated Antioch and Reed in 
this manner: ". . . from the standpoint 
of student background and the number 
of subcultures represented, Antioch 
would be the most diverse. Reed is per-
haps made up of the greatest number 
who are somewhat alike in their free-
thinking, their unconventionality, their 

24 Ibid., pp. 2 4 4 - 4 5 . 
25 Ibid., p. 2 4 1 . 
26 D a v i d R i e s m a n , " T h e I n f l u e n c e o f S t u d e n t C u l t u r e 

and F a c u l t y V a l u e s in the A m e r i c a n C o l l e g e , " Higher 
Education, Y e a r b o o k o f E d u c a t i o n , 1 9 5 9 , eds. George 
Z. F . B e r e d a y and J o s e p h A . L a u w e r y s ( Y o n k e r s - o n -
H u d s o n , N . Y . : W o r l d B o o k , 1 9 5 9 ) , p. 3 9 9 . 

27 E d w a r d D . E d d y , J r . , The College Influence on 
Student Character: An Exploratory Study in Selected 
Colleges and Universities Made for the Committee for 
the Study of Character Development in Education 
( W a s h i n g t o n : A m e r i c a n Council on E d u c a t i o n , 1 9 5 9 ) , 
p. 13. 

28 P h i l i p E . J a c o b , op. cit., pp. 1 0 0 - 1 0 6 . 

All 



devotion to liberal causes, and their 
'need' to criticize the culture." 2 9 In all 
of the forementioned colleges, the level 
of expectancy probably exercises such a 
potent influence that it can induce, in 
the occasional unreconstructed student, 
a complete redirection of values. Beyond 
value to the realm of academics, Riesman 
has pointed out that in institutions like 
these faculty members seem most willing 
to introduce their most brilliant proteges 
to the higher forms of research and schol-
arship.30 

Adopting a little different course, an 
interdisciplinary team at Cornell Uni-
versity improvised a strategy for deter-
mining "what college students think" at 
institutions as disparate, yet influentially 
representative, as Cornell, California at 
Los Angeles (UCLA), Wesleyan, Texas, 
Harvard, Yale, North Carolina, Dart-
mouth, Wayne State, Fisk, and Michi-
gan. T h a t study revealed that the per-
centage of students which strongly identi-
fied itself with the respective colleges 
varied from a high of 77 per cent at Dart-
mouth to a low of 38 per cent at Fisk.31 
In their desire for a basic general educa-
tion and a heightened appreciation of 
ideas, student affirmative replies varied 
from a 90 per cent peak at Wesleyan to 
a low of 59 per cent at Fisk.32 

T h e question must now be raised: 
What is the import of this kind of so-
cio-psychological research for the college 
librarian? T h e answer is not easy to pro-
vide for, in my judgment, the implica-
tions could be quite broad-ranging. For 
example, it is possible to hypothesize that 
the college library is often not an essen-

29 L e t t e r from P a u l H e i s t to the Author ( J a n u a r y 2 7 , 
1 9 5 9 ) , p. 1. 

30 David Riesman, " T h e ' J a c o b R e p o r t ' , " p. 738. 
31 R o s e K . Goldsen, M o r r i s Rosenberg, Robbin M . 

W i l l i a m s , J r . , and E d w a r d A . Suchman, What College 
Students Think ( P r i n c e t o n , N. J . : V a n Nostrand, 1 9 6 0 ) , 
p. 206. Other percentages were 63 per cent at H a r v a r d 
and W e s l e y a n , 58 per cent at Y a l e , 57 per cent at North 
Carolina, 54 per cent among Cornell men, 52 per cent at 
Michigan, 45 per cent at W a y n e S t a t e , 44 per cent among 
Cornell women, 42 per cent at T e x a s , and 40 per cent 
at U C L A . 

32 Ibid., p. 208. O t h e r percentages were 88 per cent at 
Y a l e , 85 per cent at H a r v a r d . 84 per cent for Cornell 
men, 74 per cent at North Carolina, 70 per cent at U C L A , 
69 per cent at Michigan, 65 per cent at T e x a s , and 64 
per cent at W a y n e S t a t e . 

478 

tial element in the education of college 
students,33 not only because of differing 
conceptions of the library's function held 
by faculty and librarians as Patricia B. 
Knapp has suggested,34 but rather be-
cause of an almost total lack of congru-
ence between the library and its services 
and its milieu—human values, intelli-
gence levels, students and faculty atti-
tudes and ideals, informal structures of 
influence, and networks of communica-
tion, to mention only a few of the eco-
logical factors involved. As a case in 
point, a better understanding of insti-
tutional personality might have rendered 
library surveyors at Leeds University in 
England somewhat less struck by "the 
extent of private borrowing and of book 
buying" 3 5 in that university. At other 
colleges, where the implications of insti-
tutional ethos are well understood by 
librarians, statistical surveys of library 
use may have small function but to cor-
roborate what is already fairly accurately 
known. At all events, if a decision is 
made to use quantitative measures in 
such institutions, one may be reasonably 
certain that the correct questions will be 
asked. T o quote Archibald MacLeish: 
" W e know the answers, all the answers. 
It is the questions that we do not 
know." 3 6 

A good knowledge of institutional 
character may lead us moreover to a 
more realistic evaluation of the library's 
specific contribution to the educational 
process. In 1959, Donald Thistlethwaite, 
presently on the staff of Vanderbilt Uni-
versity, sought, on a generalized level, to 
make just such an evaluation. He equated 
the Ph.D. output in various colleges with 
their input, in terms of the intelligence 
level of the student supply, by adjusting 

33 P a t r i c i a B . K n a p p , College Teaching and the Col-
lege Library ( A C R L Monograph # 2 3 ) ( C h i c a g o : A L A , 
1 9 5 9 ) , p. 1. See also L e s t e r Asheim, " A S u r v e y of 
Recen t R e s e a r c h , " Reading for Life: Developing the 
College Student's Lifetime Reading Interest, ed. J a c o b 
M . P r i c e ( A n n A r b o r : U n i v e r s i t y of Michigan P r . , 
1 9 5 9 ) , p . , 1 3 . 

34 P a t r i c i a B . Knapp, op. cit., pp. 93 and 95. 
35 P . E . T u c k e r , " T h e Sources of Books for Under-

g r a d u a t e s : A S u r v e y o f the Leeds U n i v e r s i t y L i b r a r y , " 
Journal of Documentation, X V I I ( J u n e , 1 9 6 1 ) , 9 5 . 

36 Quoted in C. Robert P a c e , loc. cit., p. 2 7 1 . 

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 



each college's Ph.D. productivity rate in 
terms of intelligence input or the aca-
demic ability of the student body. An 
important result of that study was the 
realization that there is a significant 
correlation between the number of vol-
umes in an institution's library and the 
proportion of its graduates that eventu-
ally take doctorates in the arts and hu-
manities, social sciences, and natural 
sciences. Thistlethwaite's own interpre-
tation of this finding was that colleges 
with large libraries are the ones most 
likely to be endowed with other kinds 
of institutional wealth37—gifted stu-
dents, research funds, and highly quali-
fied faculty are a few of the possibilities 
which come immediately to mind. T h e 
study clearly raises the further question 
of what specific quantitative and quali-
tative aspects of a college library, beyond 
mere size, contribute to an institution's 
Ph.D. productivity. It is my guess that a 
substantial portion of the factors affect-
ing what Maurice F. T a u b e r has defined 
as "the correlation between libraries and 
educational effectiveness"38 may in the 
long run be identified by a thorough ex-
amination of library-institutional con-
gruence. 

Adding to those already expressed, one 
might advance the further supposition 
that in the most productive colleges the 
degree of harmony between the function-
ing library and the wider institutional 
environment is much greater than in 
those institutions which, by any measure, 
are academically middling or feeble. In 
the best colleges, one may surmise that 
staffs devote themselves more fully to 
functions which are uniquely those of 
the library, namely, the provision of ref-
erence and bibliographical services39 as 
keys to quality collections. T h e evidence 
at Dartmouth and Knox colleges per-

37 Donald L . Thistlethwaite, " C o l l e g e E n v i r o n m e n t s 
and the Development of T a l e n t : Characteristics of Col-
leges as Related to the P e r c e n t a g e of Graduates W h o 
A t t a i n the P h . D . , " Science, C X X X ( 1 0 J u l y 1 9 5 9 ) , 
73. Reprinted in Nevitt S a n f o r d ( e d . ) , The American 
College ( N e w Y o r k : W i l e y , 1 9 6 2 ) . 

38 M a u r i c e F . T a u b e r , " T h e L i b r a r y , " Journal of 
Higher Education, X X X I I I ( A p r i l , 1 9 6 2 ) , 227. 

39 S e e P a t r i c i a B . Knapp, op. cit.. pp. 93-94. 

N O V E M B E R 1 9 6 2 

haps somewhat to the contrary,40 it is, 
nevertheless, my instinctive belief that a 
congruence of expectation and perform-
ance between the library, on one hand, 
and faculty, students, and administra-
tion, on the other, is an absolutely criti-
cal element in an institution's rate of 
productivity. It seems to me almost in-
evitable that, where tutorials, seminars, 
colloquia, independent study, and simi-
lar pedagogical devices are employed and 
where the average student's sophistica-
tion in library use is relatively high, 
there too will the fruitful identification 
of the library with its institutional set-
ting occur most naturally. Such institu-
tions, in all likelihood, do not require a 
systematic plan for library-instructional 
integration such as that proposed by Dr. 
Knapp some six years ago.41 In superior 
colleges, the library is apparently con-
ceived of as a laboratory for independent 
study42 by both students and faculty. As 
early as 1936, Douglas Waples used data 
gathered by the North Central Associa-
tion of Colleges and Secondary Schools 
to show that the closest correlate of li-
brary loans per student (of those options 
then considered) was per capita loans of 
books to faculty members.43 

Unquestionably the most imaginative 
current attempt to artificially induce 
congruence between a library possessing 
unique organization and a somewhat re-
calcitrant student-faculty clientele is that 
currently ongoing in Monteith College 
of Wayne State University under the di-
rection of Mrs. Knapp. By way of brief 
background, Monteith College is the 
half-time environment of an undifferen-
tiated (at least up to the present) group 

40 S e e " W h a t is a L i b r a r y ? , " Dartmouth College Li-
brary Bulletin, I ( A p r i l , 1 9 5 8 ) , 46, and P a t r i c i a B . 
Knapp, op. cit., pp. 92-93. 

41 S e e P a t r i c i a B . Knapp, " A Suggested Program of 
College Instruction in the U s e of the L i b r a r y , " Li-
brary Quarterly, XXVI ( J u l y , 1 9 5 6 ) , 224-31. 

42 Guy R . L y l e , The Administration of the College 
Library, 3d ed. ( N e w Y o r k : H . W . W i l s o n , 1 9 6 1 ) , p. 
145. 

43 Douglas W a p l e s and others, The Library, V o l . 4 
of T h e Evaluation of H i g h e r Institutions, A S e r i e s of 
Monographs Based on the Investigation Conducted f o r 
the Committee on Review of Standards, Commission on 
H i g h e r Institutions of the North Central Association of 
Colleges and Secondary Schools ( C h i c a g o : U n i v e r s i t y 
of Chicago P r e s s , 1 9 3 6 ) , pp. 54-56. 

479 



of teachers and students. T h e enrollment 
at Monteith includes high, average, and 
low ability Wayne State registrants. T o 
this heterogeneous group, it offers a pro-
gram consuming approximately one-half 
of the students' time, of general educa-
tion with emphasis on the social sciences. 
As things now stand, the Monteith cur-
riculum parallels the more vocationally-
oriented curriculum of the university-at-
large.44 As an experimental college, 
Monteith, through the provision of what 
Riesman calls "locales" 4 5 for faculty-
student interaction, hopes to create an 
atmosphere uniquely its own. Through 
a process of "internal decentralization," 
those who guide Monteith's destiny have 
determined, to borrow again from Ries-
man's description, "to create a splinter 
culture within a big state university, and 
then to make this culture at once attrac-
tive to the untutored adolescent and to 
the scholarly professor, and then ulti-
mately to breed alumni, who, if they do 
not become scholars, as some hopefully 
will, may at least be intellectuals."46 In 
the current embryonic atmosphere of the 
college, Dr. Knapp and her associates are 
attempting to persuade a somewhat hesi-
tant faculty and student body that a li-
brary is most properly "a system of bib-
liographical organization."4 7 In a sense, 
the situation at Monteith represents the 
reverse of what has been described. Here 
the library, already reflecting the pro-
jected elan vital of the college, is trying, 
through planning, to create consensus 
with a faculty and student body whose 
current perspective on the library is any-
thing but congruent with that of the li-
brarians themselves. These librarians, op-
erating in an atmosphere which naturally 
resist change and innovation,48 deserve 

4 4 Riesman and J e n c k s , op. cit., p. 2 5 6 . 
45 Ibid., p. 246. 
46 Ibid., p. 257. 
47 P a t r i c i a B . Knapp, " T h e Monteith L i b r a r y P r o j e c t : 

An E x p e r i m e n t in Library-College R e l a t i o n s h i p , " Col-
lege and Research Libraries, X X I I ( J u l y , 1 9 6 1 ) , 262-63. 

48 F o r a straightforward description of faculty inertia, 
see Donald H . Morrison, "Achievement of the P o s s i b l e " 
in Beardsley Ruml and Donald H . Morrison, Memo to 
a College Trustee: A Report on Financial and Structural 
Problems of the Liberal College (New Y o r k : McGraw-
H i l l . 1 9 5 9 ) , p. 61. 

480 

nothing but the highest admiration. I 
strongly suspect that their work will have 
profound implications for the college 
library world. I also suspect that once 
the "institutional thrust" has been firmly 
established at Monteith, and their efforts 
have reached fruition, then and only 
then will the great merits of their plan 
be apparent to the library world-at-
large.49 

Studies currently being conducted at 
the National Merit Scholarship Corpora-
tion, which combine the perspectives of 
both sociology and psychology, promise 
to further delineate the role of the li-
brary in the production of graduates ca-
pable of doing top-drawer work in high-
prestige graduate universities like Har-
vard, California (Berkeley), Columbia, 
Yale, Michigan, Chicago, Princeton, 
and Wisconsin.50 T h e studies also aim 
to provide more reliable models for 
characterizing colleges. One attempt will 
involve the application of thirty-three 
different psychological and sociological 
measures of college characteristics to a 
large sample of institutions. Another 
project will weigh the actual Ph.D. out-
put of a college's graduates against the 
output which statistically might be ex-
pected from the intelligence level of its 
student input. Criteria such as financial 
resources, library size, faculty-student 
ratio, and college climate will be ex-
plored in an effort to explain differences 
in institutional productivity.51 

Perhaps the most singularly important 
implication for the college librarian in 
an understanding of his library's ecology 
is its possible effect upon the decision-
making process, or the part played by 
the librarian in what J o h n J . Corson 
calls the "governance" of a college. Need-
less to say, library decisions which affect 

49 F o r the contrary view, based on a critique of the 
practicality of such a scheme, see Guy R . L y l e , op. 
cit., p. 153. 

50 F o r a subjective comparison of graduate school 
prestige, see Hayward Keniston, Graduate Study and 
Research in the Arts and Sciences at the University of 
Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: U n i v e r s i t y of Pennsylvania 
P r . , 1 9 5 9 ) , p. 119. 

51 Talent: Our Prime National Resource (National 
M e r i t Scholarship Corporation Annual R e j o r t for 1961) 
( E v a n s t o n , 111.: T h e National M e r i t Scholarship Cor-
poration, 1 9 6 1 ) , pp. 26-27. 

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 



an entire campus might be perfected 
through the information derived from a 
scientific understanding of college en-
vironment. When library decisions are 
not thus informed, there is always a pos-
sibility that the library, as an intracol-
legiate institution, will alienate itself 
from the wider college culture.52 Recall-
ing our undergraduate days, almost all 
of us, I am sure, can cite at least one 
imprudent action by an administration 
which had divorced itself from the pre-
vailing climate on campus. In a place 
like Antioch, where the culture is at 
once liberal and communal, one wonders 
about the consequence of an overabund-
ance of formal library rules too rigidly 
applied or of a denial to the student-
faculty community of the kind of book 
accessibility it has come to expect. T h e 
feedback would most assuredly be un-
pleasant. T h e character of the institu-
tion, then, defines the area within which 
the librarian can expect to effectively 
exercise his decision-making power. Ad-
ditionally, a knowledge of environment 
can often condition the means selected 
by a librarian for the implementation of 
decisions. A librarian in a commuter col-
lege with little intellectual vitality and a 
low social metabolism would undoubt-
edly use different tactics on the problem 
of library-instructional integration than 
his colleague on a highly homogenous, 
intellectually-oriented residential cam-
pus. One might even venture that insti-
tutional understanding could become a 
bench mark upon which predictions of 
campus reactions to library decisions 
might be regularly based. Given addi-
tional funds for library materials, the 
librarian in a college with a strong artis-
tic orientation, like Sarah Lawrence, 
might know that the best way to curry 
campus disfavor would be to skimp on 
the procurement of audio-visual materi-
als, particularly reproductions of great 
art, films, tapes, and records. Such an 
understanding could conceivably influ-
ence (in an era of less shortage) a head 

52 Edward D . Eddy, J r . , op. cit., p. 133. 

librarian's hiring patterns. Even now, in 
a place like Reed College, a librarian 
with the political persuasion of a "Gold-
water" conservative might become not 
only a curiosity, but rather ineffective as 
a librarian as well. Finally, a good esti-
mate of institutional character could 
prove invaluable in the design of new 
physical facilities or in the internal ar-
rangement of an existing library build-
ing. If valid analogy may be drawn from 
a classroom experiment conducted by 
Lauren Wispe at Harvard in 1950, stu-
dents in an examination-oriented college 
may prefer a high degree of efficiency in 
library services to warmth of surround-
ings, while those in a permissive college, 
less concerned with economy of action, 
might have reverse preferences.53 

With the progressive refinement of 
scientific measures of environmental as-
sessment, it is entirely possible that the 
ALA Standards for College Libraries, 
instead of functioning as a set of goals, 
could evolve into sliding scales of quanti-
tative and qualitative minima which 
can be applied differentially to each col-
lege in the light of its peculiar institu-
tional character. It seems that only in such 
form could library standards be meaning-
fully applied as, for different reasons, 
Professor Ed Wight has recently urged.54 

T h e argument herein that college li-
brarians can profit is from an awareness 
and application of socio-psychological 
research on the college environment, in-
deed that they ignore such inquiry to the 
possible detriment of their own libraries, 
T h e implications of such research for 
academic librarianship are only now be-
ginning to manifest themselves. T h e r e 
seems little question, at any rate, that 
the college library, governed by those 
who are accurately informed of its ecol-
ogy, cannot miss playing an increasingly 
vital role in the process of educating col-
lege students. 

53 Lauren G. W i s p e , " E v a l u a t i o n Section T e a c h i n g 
Methods in the Introductory C o u r s e , " Journal of 
Educational Research, X L V (November, 1 9 6 1 ) , 163-
64 and 169. 

54 Edward A . W i g h t , " S t a n d a r d s and the S t a t u r e of 
L i b r a r i a n s h i p , " ALA Bulletin, L V (November, 1 9 6 1 ) , 
873. 

N O V E M B E R 1 9 6 2 481