College and Research Libraries


dards in the PH1 and PH4 series. Editorial 
faults are in places gravely misleading. 
Xerox Copyflo is described by reference to a 
"£gure 29," but what this £gure actually 
shows is the Electrofax method; nowhere is 
there a drawing illustrating Copyflo, nor a 
reference to an illustration of Electrofax. 
Worse, no mention is made of the essential 
fact that the paper used in the Electrofax 
process must be specially coated and that 
ordinary paper cannot be used. 

But by all means the most remarkable 
part of this unfortunate production is the 
"full bibliography." It contains nothing later 
than June 1962, and it is riddled with errors. 
An article from American Documentation is 
listed as 1957 when it was actually October 
1950, and another from the same journal is 
given as "Americ. Doc. 1, 3" when it was 
actually volume II, pages 167-70. The same 
page mentions a publication by "Rutjers" 
and cites another article negligently as "Of-
Bee, 1961." R. W. Hale's Guide to Photo-
copied Historical Materials is listed under 
"Bale," and an article by Charles G. La-
Hood is listeEI under "Hood." Included in a 
list of sixteen "Recommended Books" at the 
end is a novel by Georges Blond and a 
book by Rider, Fremont called (believe it 
or not) "Scholar of the Future Research Li-
brary." 

The £nal fillip is a one-page "Subject In-
dex" filled with useless headings such as 
"Accommodation" and "Activity" (to take 
the first two) and, to top it all off, an entry 
for "Fremount Rider" under the F's! 

Recommended only for the most compre-
hensive collections.-Stephen R. Salmon, 
Washington University. 

Prospects for Library Cooperation in New 
York City. Planning for More Effective 
Utilization of Reference and Research 
Resources. Nelson Associates, Inc. New 
York: The Firm, 1963. Unpaged. 

This study, which was prepared for "an 
ad hoc committee of leading librarians of 
New York City and State," was obviously 
designed to set the groundwork so that the 
research libraries of New York City might 
participate at the outset in any program 
of state support to research and reference 
libraries. It is, therefore, a testament to the 
foresight and acumen of the pd hoc com-
mittee and particularly to the organizers of 

Book Reviews I 65 

that committee. The sponsoring group and 
the nature of the study guarantee the im-
portance of the work, and it is disheartening 
that in such circumstances the report itself 
is so poor an achievement. 

The city study is interwoven in recent 
history of library efforts in regard to re-
search and reference libraries in the state, 
and it cannot be understood fully apart from 
that record. It is unnecessary to rehearse the 
multitudinous problems which have beset 
the larger reference and research libraries 
in recent years. However, in March 1960 
the New York State Commissioner of Edu-
cation appointed a committee to examine 
and recommend some solutions to these 
growing difficulties. In December 1961 the 
committee's findings were published in The 
Report of the Com missioner's Committee 
on Reference and Research Library Re-
sources, which soon came to be known as 
"the 3 R's"-how significantly the 3 R's 
have changed. 

The Report called for a state-supported 
system of regional library associations which 
by utilizing large libraries within each re-
gion, could provide for the reference and 
research needs of the st1,1dent and research 
personnel of that area. It recommended the 
creation of a central state board which at 
the outset would aid in the development 
of regional associations and later would 
provide the administrative corps to carry on 
the work of coordinating the seven regional 
associations into a flexible cooperative net-
work. 

In 1962 the State Education department 
hired Nelson Associates, Inc., to do a pilot 
study "to determine how the proposed legis-
lation ... could be implemented in and 

.how it would affect a specific area of the 
State." Their report of the seven-county 
area around Rochester was published as 
A Reference and Research Plan for the 
Rochester Area. The publication recom-
mended a research center at the University 
of Rochester and a reference center at the 
Rochester public library. With generous 
support from the state and with true co-
operation, not a one-way street, the plan 
was deemed practical and essential. 

An area of specialized research needs of 
the state was studied in Ralph T. Ester-
quest's Strengthening Medical Library Re-
sources in New York State (1963), and in 



66 I College & Research Libraries • January, 1965 

that same year Nelson Associates were 
called on again to analyze the requirements 
and effects of the implementation of the 3 
R's program on a statewide level (Strength-
ening and Coordinating Reference and Re-
search Library Resources in New York 
State). The statewide report focused on the 
responsibilities of the proposed state board 
and the relationship of the regional associa-
tions to that board and to the state library. 
The report stressed again the need for un-
grudging state subvention of the program 
and also recommended that the demands of 
special subject fields be met within the 3 
R's program. 

Surveys allied to the 3 R' s in nature, but 
not a part of the state study, were going for-
ward in the city. In August of 1963 Nelson 
Associates produced a study on the pros-
pects for cooperation among eight educa-
tional institutions in Brooklyn (Brooklyn-
A Center of Learning) and a month later 
the Council of Higher Educational Institu-
tions published Rice Estes' Study of Seven 
Academic Libraries in Brooklyn, which not-
ed that these small libraries, all within a 
mile and a half of their most distant neigh-
bor, could profit by planned cooperative 
measures. The Estes' study was carried 
out for $3,750, a grant from the Fund for 
the Advancement of Education. 

Legislative bills to implement the 3 R's 
have been introduced and defeated twice 
in the Legislature, but since the original 
report of 1961 the 3 R's have gained ad-
herents steadily; and as each new study 
recognizes the need for state support if 
New York is to serve its citizens and to keep 
and attract research industry, passage of the 
bill is foreseen in the near future. In this 
context, the New York City committee of 
librarians decided to have a program ready 
for implementation at the drop of a gavel, 
and Nelson Associates were hired "to exam-
ine the ways in which the proposed 3 R's 
legislation would affect library use in New 
York City." 

Working under a deadline and beginning 
their study at the end of the university and 
school year, the Nelson group decided to 
eliminate from their investigation any sur-
vey of university graduate and undergradu-
ate use of libraries, and though they do not 
mention it, also of faculty use of libraries. 
Since this college-university group probably 

constitutes the single most important seg-
ment in advanced reference and research 
use, Nelson relied on two previous studies 
on student use, Cooperative Library Service 
for Higher Education ( 1960), and A Study 
of the Use of Metropolitan New York Li-
braries by Higher Education Students, both 
by Warren Haas. They relied also for their 
statistics on the Office of Health, Education, 
and Welfare figures for 1961/ 62, and made 
no effort to update, verify, or interpret these 
figures. · 

Nelson Associates attacked the survey by 
an examination of the history of cooperative 
library efforts in New York City since World 
War II, a scrutiny of the relevant library 
literature, correspondence with other insti-
tutions which had faced similar problems, 
interviews with library staff members, and 
an analysis of the information garnered from 
forty-five hundred questionnaires complet-
ed by reference users in twelve public li-
braries in the city. The use of the plural 
terms "correspondence" and "interviews" 
indicates that more than one of each took 
place, but exactly how many is left unnoted. 
Perhaps Nelson Associates felt it was imma-
terial since the great bulk of the report is 
based on the replies to the questionnaire. 

In the introduction to the first appendix, 
Nelson Associates list some of the material 
reasons for approaching the questionnaires 
with caution, but with little else to guide 
them, their report is almost wholly an in-
flated analysis of the responses to the can-
vass. The findings are unexceptional, much 
as one would anticipate. The fact that all of 
the responses could have been foretold is 
not necessarily a fault, for documentation of 
an argument, particularly for the purpose of 
proposed legislation, is extremely important. 
In this report, however, the documentation, 
despite the charts and maps, is meager. The 
most significant replies concern the volume 
and purpose of the use the respondents 
made of the library they were then using 
and of other libraries in the city. Associated 
with these questions were such queries as 
the occupation of the respondent and sug-
gested improvements in service. 

The recommendations which then follow 
in sequence do not necessarily follow in con-
sequence. They could have resulted from 
the finding of this study, of almost any other 
study, or from no study at all. 



The recommendations in order are: 

1. The establishment of a New York library 
service authority. 

2. The construction of an undergraduate 
college-oriented reference library at 42nd 
Street. 

3. A program for interinstitutional library 
use for undergraduates and doctoral stu-
dents and faculties. 

4. A program of research into library activ-
ities in the area. 

5. Improved utilization of paperback pub-
lications in connection with reserve col-
lections at college libraries. 

6. Identification of special subject advanced 
research level holdings and their desig-
nation as the advanced research centers 
under the 3 R program. 

7. A site location study to select the opti-
mum site or sites for the establishment of 
future college-oriented reference librar--
ies. 

Of these, the hortation for the use of pa-
perbacks must be regarded as fatuous. The 
recommendation on interinstitutional use is 
idealistic but impractical and could be 
turned to use by those irresponsible admin-
istrations who have always regarded library 
cooperation as a device to let George and 
the New York public library handle their 
problems. The other recommendations are 
secondary to the prime suggestion for the 
establishment of a New York library service 
authority-on which recommendation the 
value of this report ultimately hangs. 

This recommendation, to develop a pri-
vate legal body, supported apart from any 
other institution in the city, headed by in-
fluential members of the community is the 
piece-de-resistance of the report. Such an 
organization could provide the manpower 
and the facilities to implement decisions 
and recommendations made in concert by 
the libraries of the city, an element lacking 
in the history of previous cooperative efforts 
since no one institution could afford to carry 
on the involved time-absorbing operations 
which would be required in any situation 
as large and as complex as the library prob-
lems besetting the city. Such an establish-
ment could also perform the necessary 
research and provide the leadership to de-
velop needed cooperative programs on a 
pay-as-you-go basis, and could be devised 

Book Reviews I 61 

so as to conform to the proposed 3 R legis-
lation so that city libraries would be pre-
pared to step into the state-supported pro-
gram. When the legislation is enacted, the 
authority could either dissolve into a region-
al body or help to bring such a body into 
existence and col)tinue to work alongside it, 
each with different responsibilities. This 
recommendation is naturally the one which 
has fired the interest of the New York City 
librarians. 

The Nelson Associates report was fi-
nanced by two equal grants from the Old 
Dominion Foundation and the Council on 
Library Resources, $32,000-a goodly sum. 
-Bernard Kreissman, City College, New 
York. 

Purdue University Libraries Attitude 
Survey: 1959-1960. Lafayette, Indiana: 
Purdue University Library Staff Associa-
tion, 1964. 5lp. 

The results of the Purdue survey are 
both revealing and disappointing. Under-
graduates, the group surveyed, possessed 
strongly favorable attitudes toward the Pur-
due University libraries, the university in 
general, and also toward the American li-
brary system-evidence of intellectual ger-
rymandering, or at least as the survey puts 
it "a social-culturally induced predisposition 
of the student to regard the institution 
favorably." Furthermore, the strongly favor-
able attitude toward the Purdue libraries 
was independent of frequency of use and 
scholastic achievement and class in the uni-
versity. Unfortunately, knowing a student's 
attitude score toward one institution helped 
but little in inferring his attitude toward 
another specified institution. 

On the basis of median values students 
ranked the card catalog first and the refer-
ence librarian fourth in a list of nine facili-
ties. Readers are reminded that these are 
relative rankings and do not suggest the 
intrinsic worth of the facilities. Interestingly 
enough, the rankings of the nonfrequent 
users of the libraries paralleled the ranking 
of the frequent users. 

Both the students and the Remmers-Kelly 
scale for measuring attitudes toward institu-
tions seem insensitive. That the latter is true 
might have been expected by the surveyors 
since the scale has not been altogether 
well received. It is, however, a simple and