College and Research Libraries


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