College and Research Libraries


The Technical Information Service 
In the Stanford University Libraries 

BY JACK POOLER and DAVID C. WEBER 

A UNIVERSITY is created to advance and 
disseminate knowledge, primarily through 
formal instruction, but also through such 
activities as public lectures, conferences, 
advanced institutes, and publication pro-
grams. Library service to local industrial 
firms may be considered part of this sup-
port to the community at large. A uni-
versity library is a local and often a na-
tional resource of great significance. In-
formation is a valued asset, and a basic 
tenet of the democratic faith is the free 
availability of knowledge f~r the public 
welfare. 

Even when privately financed a univer-
sity has by its nature and mission a heavy 
obligation to the society which has cre-
ated it, and the library's share in these 
obligations often becomes unusually bur-
densome and costly as a result of local 
circumstances. Thus, at least a half -dozen 
American university libraries have found 
requ<?sts from outside organizations to 
be intruding on primary obligations to stu-
dents and faculty, and they have there-
fore set up financial charges to reimburse 
added expenditures, or have established 
rules restricting use to prevent exploita-
tion. 

As pointed out in September 1957 by 
E. M. Grieder, associate director of the 
Stanford University libraries, in his pro-
posal for A Business and Industrial Ref-
erence Service at Stanford, "The very 
rapid growth of industry, business, and 
other research activities in the Stanford 
area has created pressures and demands 
for which the olq outside loan regulations 
are quite inadequate. The most pressing 
problems now are the immensely in-
creased demand for books and journals, 
which results in the absence of important 

SEPTEMBER 1964 

Mr. Pooler is Director, Technical Infor-
mation Service, and Mr. Weber is Assistant 
Director of Libraries, Stanford University. 
This paper was read to the Congresso ln-
ternazionale sulla Documentazione e l'ln-
formazione Scientifico Tecnica in Rome in 
February 1964. 

material from the Stanford libraries; and 
the considerable hidden cost of locating 
materials, processing loans, negotiating 
interlibrary loans, and other operations. 
Some departments of the university have 
expressed a strong dissatisfaction with 
the present practice for these reasons." 

Stanford University met this situation 
by establishing in 1958 a separate library 
department, the technical information 
service (TIS), to handle the load from 
neighboring industrial and business firms. 
Until this time such requests and o.thers 
from off -campus were handled either by 
interlibrary loan without charge or by 
photocopy services. 

Before the TIS is described, an expla-
nation of the typical industrial situation 
will serve to outline the needs met by 
this special library division. A typical 
business or industrial firm will have a 
library collection of journals, standard 
texts, technical reports, and reprints cov-
ering the firm's specific work, and the 
most relevant indexing and abstracting 
services. Some of the larger and older 
firms may have sizeable collections, but 
most have very small libraries varying 
markedly, depending on the corporation's 
conception of its own needs, especially as 
regards peripheral and older materials. 

Speaking generally, an industrial library 
must be kept lean and of limited size be-
cause of the high cost of maintaining a 

393 



large research collection with attendant 
staff salaries and expenses for housing 
the collection. Because of its apparent 
lack of profit-making ability, investors 
may criticize corporate policy which 
builds a major library as a long term in-
vestment. In many newer firms there is 
also a substantial hesitation due to the 
transitory nature of research projects. 
Firms like General Motors Corporation 
or Dow Chemical Company can have 
first-class libraries, because the size of 
the literature in relation to a compara-
tively stable product market can permit 
the library to be maintained on a small 
proportion of research and development 
funds. On the other hand, firms such as 
Lockheed Missiles and Space Company 
or International Business Machines Cor-
poration, which are working in booming 
fields with a very high spread in the 
pertinent literature, would find it almost 
impossible to maintain a collection to 
satisfy all reasonable needs. 

Beyond this there is increasing inter-
disciplinary growth, since as traditional 
problems are solved in physics, for ex-
ample, new scientific approaches link 
physics with biology, chemistry, astrono-
my, and so forth and create new special-
ties with an exceedingly large growth in 
the literature. "To the historian looking 
backward from future time, this century 
will be memorable for . . . the reunifica-
tion of the sciences .... "1 

Since a university close to an industrial 
firm can offer its faculty as consultants, its 
public events as an enticement to research 
workers, and its library as an available 
support, many firms seek to locate near 
it. President Clark Kerr of the University 
of California at Berkeley has said that 
universities have become "bait" to be 
dangled in front of industry, with draw-
ing power greater than low taxes or cheap 
power. Where Stanford University has 
property to lease, it has encouraged com-
mercial, light industrial, and research 

1 Joshua Leder berg, "Life Beyond the Earth," Stan-
ford Today, Series 1, Numlier 7 (Winter 1963) , r3J. 

groups to locate on it, with spectacular 
success. Such proximity increases the 
probability of outside requests on the uni-
versity library. 

As the volume of research grows un-
der these circumstances, the university 
library may find these requests excessively 
burdensome. Some libraries have set up 
membership plans or substantial fees as 
a protective measure. In tum, industry 
may regard library access as a "right" for 
local residents, or it may claim discrimi-
nation when a firm is placed in a special 
category while private individuals are giv-
en free service or charged a nominal fee. 
Most industries accept substantial fees 
as proper payment for services rendered, 
however; they are used to paying for con-
sultant services and are familiar with cost 
studies, overhead charges, and inventory 
expenses. Often their library services are 
kept deliberately at a minimum level, 
with plans to buy supplementary service. 

The particular situation at Stanford is 
not unique. Rather it is typical of uni-
versities in several industrial areas, e.g., 
Boston, Cleveland, Houston, and Los An-
geles. As a consequence of various local 
factors, special plans have been or are 
being established at institutions such as 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 
Princeton University, Western Reserve 
University, University of Houston, Rice 
University, Southern Methodist Univer-
sity, and California Institute of Technolo-
gy. 

Stanford University is located about 
halfway down a narrow peninsula at the 
north end of which is San Francisco. This 
area is densely settled and during and 
shortly after World War II there was an 
accelerated development of "clean in-
dustries," such as electronics and aero-
space, and of government research 
throughout the peninsula, especially in 
the Stanford area. These firms, some long 
established and many newly created, were 
highly specialized, and their products re-
quired extensive research prior to pro-
duction. 

394 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



In October 1958, the Stanford Univer-
sity libraries established the technical in-
formation service as a new department to 
fill specialized information needs of the 
three thousand research and development 
people in the industrial and government-
related organizations of the peninsula. Its 
general objective was to coordinate and 
develop the technical and scientific li-
brary resources and services of the re-
search community in such a manner as 
best to serve the long-term interests of 
both industry and Stanford University. In 
the case of the latter, it was important 
also to minimize inconvenience to the 
faculty and student body by assuring that 
necessary materials be either on hand or 
retrievable on short notice. 

Thus TIS became a research liaison 
point for industry located near Stanford 
University, proyiding access to library 
collections in the fields of economics, 
physical sciences, engineering, political 
science, life sciences, mathematics, earth 
sciences, and the many other subject 
fields which are essential ingredients of 
today's complex research needs. 

Membership was restricted to an area 
within a fifty-mile radius of Stanford Uni-
versity on the theory that principal infor-
mation sources outside this area should 
supply more distant industrial needs. Any 
local business or industrial organization 
needing research facilities qualified for 
membership. Membership was divided in-
to two categories: regular members pay-
ing regular fees; and courtesy members, 
occasional users receiving introductory 
service at no charge for a period not to 
exceed six months or the completion of 
twenty-five library transactions. 

Cost estimates for information retrieval 
are difficult to calculate, and as yet no 
entirely satisfactory means of determina-
tion had been established. In setting the 
charge for use of TIS, a combination of 
factors had to be considered. 

First among these factors was direct 
operating cost. This is the cost of search-
ing, paging, charging, record keeping, 

SEPTEMBER 1964 

. 

shelving, photocopying, mailing, etc., and 
can be estimated fairly well from an-
ticipated operating expenses for salaries, 
equipment, and supp.lies. 

Second-and far more difficult to as-
sess-was the standby cost. This is the 
past and present cost of selecting, ac-
quiring, cataloging, binding, housing, and 
otherwise maintaining the Stanford Uni-
versity libraries as an organized research 
facility, and of guaranteeing the mainte-
nance of a collection capable of meeting 
outside research needs. 

Also elusive was the determination of 
the cost needed to cover indirect TIS ex-
penses for such items as quarters and 
administrative oversight and to prepare 
for future expansion. How rapidly would 
the membership list and the need for 
more varied service grow? 

In view of these factors, a fee system 
seemed best adapted to the situation. The 
basic fee was established at five dollars 
per individual citation delivered as re-
quested, either in the form of the book 
itself, or up to forty pages in photocopy. 
This amount was calculated to cover the 
direct cost of operating TIS, to contribute 
a fair amount toward the larger standby 
cost of maintaining and developing the 
Stanford University libraries (particularly 
the scientific and technical collections), 
and to allow for the future expansion of 
TIS. 

Members could choose to be billed on 
a monthly or quarterly basis, or could de-
posit a credit account to be drawn against 
for TIS transactions. In all cases itemized 
accounting of charges was available. 

A staff was organized which consisted 
of the part-time director, three library 
assistants (one responsible for searching 
out and retrieving library materials; an-
other for taking telephone and mail or-
ders, handling office files and billing; and 
the third for photocopying) , and hourly 
student help for general assistance. Quar-
ters were allocated in the centrally-located 
main library for the performance of office 
routines and photocopying procedures. 

395 



Among services offered were the fol-
lowing: 

Reading room use: Library privilege 
cards in the number needed were issued 
to company librarians who were in turn 
responsible for issuing them to authorized 
research personnel in their firms who 
needed to consult library materials in 
the reference collections, main stack, or 
branch libraries of the Stanford University 
libraries. Reference service was offered 
free of charge to TIS members. 

Loans: Company librarians, or their 
authorized representatives, could arrange 
for the loan of .library materia,ls by tele-
phone, mail, or in person. When possible, 
photocopies of requested material were 
supplied in order to retain the original on 
campus. Records of loans were to be 
maintained in the TIS office for recall 
follow-up, for billing purposes, and for 
statistics. 

Reference service: Questions regarding 
bibliographical citations, serials, addresses, 
and other matters not involving extensive 
searching were to be answered free of 
charge by the TIS staff, as well as ques-
tions about availability of specific books 
and serials in the Stanford University li-
braries. 

Interlibrary loan: Requests for library 
materials not in the Stanford University 
libraries could be channelled through TIS, 
which would obtain requested materials, 
if not contrary to lending regulations of 
the library holding the material. Upon de-
livery to requester the standard fee was 
charged. 

Augmentation of resources: Company 
librarians were encouraged to make sug-
gestions for the acquisition of library ma-
terials not in the Stanford University li-
braries. If related to teaching and re-
search objectives, they could be purchased 
with TIS funds. 

Special services: TIS was to explore the 
possibilities of obtaining for its members, 
on a cost basis, abstracting, translating, 
literature searching, compilation of bibli-

ographies, extensive searching for infor-
mation, and other special services. 

The growth of TIS since its inception 
indicates that its original program was 
basically sound, although furnishing spe-
cific items by loan or photocopy has been 
the service most requested. During 1962/ 
63, nine firms has one hundred or more 
transactions each, accounting for all but 
about seventeen hundred of the total of 
13,3 71 transactions. 

To support this growth, TIS increased 
its staff, improved its equipment, and en-
larged its quarters. The staff was strength-
ened by the addition of two professional 
librarians, relieving the director for plan-
ning and public relations work by pro-
viding supervision of operating proce-
dures. 

Equal emphasis was placed upon the 
improvement of" equipment, since two 
major difficulties had been discovered. 
These were the means of photocopying 
and the means of transporting library ma-
terials from branches in the Stanford li-
brary system. 

Photocopying was originally done by a 
Copease, a wet process machine which 
turned out good reproductions, but at a 
high cost in staff time, in machine main-
tenance, and in materials; and it was slow 
in processing. To improve this situation, 
a Xerox 914 Copier was added, although 
the Copease is still used for material con-
taining tone illustrations. Use of the Xerox 
914 suggests future possibilities for im-
proving TIS service by offering a remote 
printout system, such as by use of Xerox 
LDX if bound volumes could be handled 
economically. 

As for the problem of transporting li-
brary materials from the Stanford branch 
libraries for reproduction or mailing from 
the TIS office, the difficulty lay mainly in 
the size of the Stanford campus (thirty-
four branches widely distributed), and 
the number of volumes which need to be 
carried (currently, over thirteen thousand 
per year) . At first this was handled by 
student help, but as the volume of ac-

396 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



tivity grew, more skilled personnel was 
pressed into service, detracting from pro-
ductive use of their specialized ability. As 
a partial solution to this problem a three-
wheeled delivery cycle, equipped with an 
enclosed detachable book truck, was de-
signed and constructed. This has im-
proved the service by increasing the speed 
and capacity of student help and by re-
lieving trained personnel of the task of 
obtaining library materials for rush or-
ders. However, future growth in volume 
may require the use of a motorized cart. 

TIS now occupies three rooms on the 
third floor of the main library building. 
One room houses two librarians, the sec-
retary-receptionist, and the bibliographic 
searcher. An adjacent room houses copy-
ing equipment and the operator. Across 
the hall is the office of the director, who 
spends four-fifths of his time serving as 
chief librarian of the science division of 
the university libraries. 

Membership rules have been changed 
by the elimination of courtesy member-
ships. This was felt to be necessary be-
cause bibliographic work and record 
keeping for courtesy members assumed 
proportions which hindered rapid service 
to regular members, who recognized their 
responsibility in aiding the university fi-
nancially toward the support of TIS. Fur-
ther, TIS had become well known in the 
Stanford area and needed less introduc-
tion. 

Effective September 1963, the original 
fee of five dollars per transaction was 
raised to six dollars, because of the in-
crease during the past five years in direct 
operating costs. 

TIS's service area has been enlarged to 
include the handling of interlibrary loan 
requests from all profit-making organiza-
tions outside the original area. Such re-
quests, formerly handled by the interli-
brary loan department, had become a 
serious burden, and the original fifty-mile 
limitation for TIS service was always an 
arbitrary b_oundary. Requests for library 
materials from profit-making organiza-

SEPTEMBER 1964 

tions are filled at the standard six dollar 
fee unless the need for photocopying ex-
ceeds the normal, in which case the pub-
lished rates of the university's photo-
graphic department apply. 

Lending to industries outside of the 
United States is handled under a new pol-
icy stating that, in lieu of sending origi-
nals, microfilms will be sent of lengthy 
items and full-size prints of shorter ones. 

TIS recently cooperated in the com-
pilation of The Union List of Serials Cur-
rently Received in the Science Libraries 
at Stanford. This list appeared in January 
1964 with plans for subsequent annual 
revisions and will constitute a highly use-
ful library tool for TIS members to whom 
copies are available at fifteen dollars per 
copy. Plans for the future include estab-
lishing certain services which were pro-
posed in 1958 and which will be avail-
able on a cost basis to TIS members. 
These are abstracting, translating, lit-
erature searching, extensive information 
searching, and the compilation of bibli-
ographies. 

In retrospect, some minor difficulties 
exist as the TIS has been organized. In a 
library complex which has six major au-
tonomous libraries outside its centralized 
administrative system, there is the possi-
bility that one, because of local condi-
tions, may establish different borrowing 
regulations. In Stanford's case, autono-
mous libraries have their own rules which 
TIS must observe. For example, they 
might even set up a separate service for 
industry. While not an impossible situa-
tion, this would not be economical use of 
staff or equipment. Thus industrial service 
with centralized facilities within the uni-
versity seems distinctly preferable. 

A difficulty then arises as to how to 
reimburse an autonomous library for use 
by TIS. Where the quantity is small, the 
financial adjustment is not worth the ef-
fort. When the quantity is considerable, 
it is desirable for TIS to return to each 
autonomous library the difference be-
tween its direct costs and the transaction 

397 



charge in order that each library receive 
its stand-by portion. As yet the volume of 
TIS loans has not warranted such adjust-
ments. 

There is the possibility of an industrial 
representative presenting himself to a 
public service division of the library as 
an unattached researcher so as to obtain 
a library card for the nominal fee charged 
such individuals. No reputable firm would 
circumvent its obligation in this fashion, 
however, and an individual's corporate 
affiliation would be checked whenever the 
library staff had occasion to wonder about 
the purpose of his research. Innocent er-
rors have occasionally occurred and have 
been corrected. 

Since TIS is serving industry from with-
in the academic environment, a dilemma 
may be said to exist where academic sal-
aries for comparable positions are sub-
stantially below those in industry. This is 
more a theoretical than a real difficulty 
since the academic benefits of association 
and environment seem at least to balance 
the higher salaries. In point of fact, the 
balance is considerably in the university's 
favor in both quantity and quality of per-
sonnel. 

In a general sense, TIS could not in the 
past respond or grow in measure with in-
creased industrial requests. While the uni-
versity library does not wish either the ad-
ministrative burden or space problems of 
a mammoth TIS, such liabilities are small 
in comparison to the fair cost returns, to 
the protection against undue circulation 
loads, and to industrial good will and 
general public benefit resulting from TIS. 
Much of local industrial research is gov-
ernmentally supported, so that as citizens 
interested in the economy of the country, 
librarians can be pleased with the eco-
nomically beneficial information service 
offered to industries. 

Because of these several points, a 
budgeting process which permits staff ex-
pansion and program growth based upon 
demand seems reasonable and desirable 
to both the university and to TIS mem-

bers. Extensive literature searches, trans-
lations, and -abstracting service may be be-
gun or dropped in accordance with the 
demand for them by paying subscribers. 
This flexibility has no disadvantage to the 
university; rather it is advantageous be-
cause of its controlled nature. Control of 
staff, hours, conformance to procedures, 
etc., is a major benefit for the library and 
gives indirect · protection against incon-
venience to studeil.ts and faculty. 

In the past twenty years there· has de-
veloped an industrial dependence on in-
formation sources which has affected uni-
versity libraries to such a degree that sev-
eral have made special provisions for it. 
Stanford's response was to create TIS. 
This industrial condition does not affect 
all universities, since their environments 
vary too greatly in both the quantity and 
type of industry. It seems certain that 
smaller libraries will not have heavy 
enough industrial loads for it to be worth 
creating a formal TIS, because they can-
not furnish the information needed by 
industry in sufficient volume. Larger li-
braries wip -find it worthwhile only if in 
their vicinity there are one or more firms 
with active research programs. 

These larger university libraries may 
indeed find the establishment of a TIS 
program in some form to be a necessity. 
It seems doubtful that these libraries can 
or will refuse service to industry entirely. 
It also seems dubious that an incorpo-
rated information service set up as an in-
dependent business venture could match 
a university TIS, since it would merely 
add the cost of a middleman in the infor-
mation cycle. Finally, a central govern-
mental library for service to science and 
industry seems impractical. This possi-
bility deserves some comment however, 
especially since the British government 
has chosen this alternative. 

A governmental library for science and 
industry in the United States would dup-
licate many reference and photocopy ser-
vices now existing in the Library of Con-
gress (for instance, its National Referral 

398 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



Center for Science and Technology), N a-
tiona! Agricultural Library, National Li-
brary of Medicine, Department of De-
fense's Documentation Center, National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration's 
Office of Scientific and Technical Infor-
mation, Atomic Energy Commission's Di-
vision of Technical Information Exten-
sion, and other information services. 

But ,if universities fail to organize TIS 
or similar services on a scale sufficient to 
meet the information needs of all regions, 
industry may have to urge the federal 
government to create a super information 
agency, at least in the fields of science 
and technology. In contrast to-the expense 
of a new centralized government-spon-
sored service with a dozen or more re-
gional offices, there is the simplicity of 
the rapid and inexpensive TIS that would 
be possible from some fifty or more uni-
versities which are already strategically 
located in the United States. 

A more realistic approach has recently 
been proposed in the_ Weinberg Report. 2 
It found "the specialized information cen-
ter as a major key to the nationalization 
of our information system." Although 
some four hundred such centers in fields 
like nuclear spectroscopy or permafrost 
are said to exist in the United States, it 
was recommended "that more and better 
specialized centers be established . . . at 
public and private technical institutions." 
The committee felt that this means for 
transferring technical information might 
well become "dominant." 

Such centers in highly specific fields 
can carry a great burde·n of technical in-
formation needs. There remain the needs 
that fall between such fields, that are 
more general in nature, or historical in 
emphasis. In these and other instances a 
university research library is in a unique 
position to facilitate the local flow of in-
formation. 

2 U.S. President's Science Advisory Committee. 
Science, Government, and Information: The Respon-
sibilities of the Technical Community and the Gov-
ernment in the Transfer of Information; a Report. 
(Washington: G.P.O., 1963), pp. 3, 32-33. 

SEPTEMBER 1964 

This very point has awakened the in-
terest of the National Science Foundation 
in developments at Stanford University 
and in studies at Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity and Southern Methodist University. 
It has also prompted the Council on Li-
brary Resources to finance a study by the 
Honnold library of a possible science in-
formation center in Claremont, California, 
an investigation which will include repre-
sentatives of local industry. 

Raynard C. Swank, director of the 
Stanford University libraries at the time 
that its TIS was created, has believed that 
local cooperative library services are a 
desirable pattern for the future. He com-
mented three years ago that: 

There can probably be no significant "in-
formation" service that is not based upon 
a major research library facility. On the 
peninsula, this means the Stanford library. 
This library can and should be changed and 
improved, but it cannot be bypassed except 
at the tremendous cost of duplicating its 
resources and services, whether by conven-
tional or unconventional methods. 

Second, any regional information system 
should take into account the needs of uni-
versity research as well as of industrial and 
governmental research. Many "blue-sky" 
[i.e., unrealistic] proposals have thus far been 
oriented almost exclusively toward the lat-
ter; the university faculties have been ig-
nored-and indeed have been little inter-
ested. The university ought to benefit sub-
stantially from any cooperative information 
program.3 

The Stanford library is certain that the 
. technical information service is distinctly 
beneficial to the university and to the lo-
cal scientific and technological firms. It 
preserves the effectiveness of the library 
as a major mstrument of academic teach-:-. 
ing and research, and it extends the avail-
ability of information so as to strengthen 
productivity and facilitate new product 
research in American industry. • • 

8 R. C. Swank, letter to Provost F. E. Terman, 
November 8, 1961, p. 3. 

399