College and Research Libraries MARIETTA CHICOREL Statistics and Standards for College and University Libraries Problems and discussions are reported which were experienced in the work of the ALA National Library Statistics Coordinating Project and in the preparation of the handbook on Library Statistics. Consensus was reached as to most useful statistics and as to terminology applied to them. Apparently such agreement could be used in expanding statistical reporting into other areas, especially in developing standards for university libraries. pROBLEMS IN LffiRARY STATISTICS have been with us for some time, and so have attempts at their solution. What has stood in the way in the past has been the apparent irreconcilability of the needs of various types of libraries with each other, not to speak of internal differences of measurement within each group. The ALA National Library Statistics Coordinating Project was undertaken in 1964 with the aim of standardizing the kinds of statistics to be collected na- tionally, and standardizing the measur- ing units in terms of which they will be reported. It was not the purpose of the project to recommend format or proce- dures for publication, or to set standards for libraries. There are no standards for university libraries such as exist for col- lege libraries. With the publication of Guide to Library Statistics; Handbook of Concepts, Definitions, and Terminology, such a project should now be undertaken with common national applicability as- sured. The very existence of defined terms with statistical relevance should be of considerable help in this work. The author represented college. and university libraries on the ALA National Statistics Coordinating Project; other Miss Chicorel is Assistant Chief of the Acquisitions Division, University of Wash- ington Libraries, Seattle. kinds of libraries were also represented. To obtain an accurate measure of the in- tellectual resources of academic institu- tions of the country we must have enough data to make the picture mean- ingful. Not only is agreement needed on uniform terminology in one area, such as the count of holdings, but also a deter- mination of which areas are so closely interrelated as to constitute logical com- plementary units for reporting. In addition to the ALA Statistics Ad- visory Committee to this Project, and the ALA Statistics Committees on College and University Libraries, on Public Li- braries, and on Technical Services, the Handbook is indebted to the one hun- dred and seventy people from forty states who represented the thinking of librarians across the country. They worked intensively at four regional meet- ings. The thinking of all these people, and the conclusions reached as groups are embodied in the Handbook. Far from being unanimous in ap- proaches, differences were recognized. Where they were not reconciled in the final reports of recommendations, they were at least respected. For instance, by accepting a definition of volume for all types of libraries it is now possible to arrive at a total of national resources in that category; types of libraries which I 19 20 I College & Research Libraries • January, 1966 find additional holdings statistics useful may include them in separate categories. Since microtext is being reported sep- arately, it appears in the national tabula- tion. Any library which feels it useful for its own purposes to add reels of microfilm and number of microcards to its total volume count is able to do so on the local, internal level. Wherever possible, existing measures and methods for collecting statistics have been maintained. The present attempt has been consciously aimed at clarifica- tion by combining already existing forms or by separatin'g them into new elements, rather than by discarding the old and forming a completely new system. Under- lying selection of the areas to be includ- ed in statistical measurement were the questions of purpose and of means. In the language of historical knowledge, the issues would be those of teleology and of mechanism. The common purpose of li- brarianship is to control and conserve its intellectual resources for maximum ser- vice to its public. As one means to gain insight into where we stand in respect to our activities, our manpower resources, library materials, physical facilities, and financial position, the measurable areas in libraries are presented numerically- that is, statistically. Statistical measure- ments of libraries not only show where we stand but also, over a period of time, where we have been and where we are going. They are the means by which we predict future growth and relate it sig- nificantly to future needs. The problems faced on this project were whether a par- ticular statistic added significant infor- mation to our body of knowledge, whether an item could be counted at all, whether it could be added to any other category, and what the basic unit of this , .count should be. First, it was necessary to establish a uniform concept of constituent factors in the holdings of one library. Quite apart from local administrative organization is the question of meaningful reporting. Therefore a university library which re- ports the holdings of the central campus together with those of libraries on sub- sidiary campuses increases the distortion factor in lateral comparisons with li- braries which report them separately. One diversity which has been pointed out by many is the problem of proceed- ing from a base of previously irregular accounting of library holdings, par- ticularly in the volume count. Unreport- ed or undiscovered losses over the years and changes from bibliographic to phys- . ical volume count are common to the larger libraries. This problem increases with the size and age of a library. Looking to the fu- ture, however, we can accept the fact that big libraries are big. By agreeing to a common method of reporting now, we will avoid future chaos. With the in- crease in the number of new libraries, particularly on the college level, stan- dardization of reporting is imperative. While statistics have many uses, one of them is to indicate the size and, by im- plication, the usefulness of a library's holdings. Out-of-print volumes which many new libraries are able to buy on microfilm, and which established li- braries are adding as replacements, are of some consequence to the researcher, as well as to budget and space considera- tions. The point at which a volume becomes a statistic may vary. If the figures for volumes added annually are taken from the statistics kept by the catalog depart- ment, it is essentially a cataloging count which may represent backlog of other than the current year. If the count is taken when the volumes enter as acquisi- tions, it may be increased by material not added to the collection, such as unsuit- able gifts or ephemera not to be cata- loged. To relate the number of volumes added significantly to expenditures, the count should be made at the point at which the volumes enter cataloging from acquisitions. The assumption being made Statistics and Standards for College and University Libraries I 21 is that temporary or provisional or par- tial processing is provided by most li- braries to make materials "ready for use." The areas of greatest diversity of opin- ion next to volume count are those con- cerning government documents, capital and operational expenditures, and defini- tion of the term librarian. Government documents were treated by exclusion; that is, only those which are classified according to local practice should be in- cluded in the volume count, and only those periodical titles so identified in the February issue of the U.S. Government Publications Monthly Catalog are added to the periodical count. The consensus was to exclude income as a reportable item in the budget, but to treat expenditures in a more detailed way, in order to allow flexibility of in- terpretation and to avoid the appearance of establishing standards in this area. The fact that no provisions for standards were made does not obviate their useful- ness. The need for the development of ALA standards for university libraries is great- er since the passing of the Library Ser- vices and Construction Act. The Analytic Report of Library Statistics of Colleges and Universities, 1961-62 includes ''ARe- sume of National Academic Library Re- sources." The drawbacks of such analytic reporting are various. The term "national academic library resources" in the title is misleading since the report omits all those which serve institutions beyond the four-year level. In the information based on the ALA Standards for College Li- braries and the Standards for Junior Col- lege Libraries, the analysis of the re- search library is an obvious lacuna. It would probably have been well to have had a rather complete assessment of all academic libraries in the nation available to support Edwin Castagna's effort this year in determining the country's needs in terms of possible solutions under LSCA. It would seem, therefore, that it is time that a project to develop statistics for university libraries be undertaken. The absence of standards for univer- sity libraries may be in part due to the fact that minimum standards may be in- terpreted to be maximum standards, and that increases due to the population and knowledge explosions cannot be built in. It may be feared that standards .may be a deterrent to expansion. Since growth figures are available for all related fac- tors, however, the expansion ratio of de- velopment need not be frozen in a given year. Statistics which are gathered annually should be measurable against standards; conversely, it will be useful for the fu- ture application of such standards if in developing them consideration is given to the recommendation of the chapter on "Statistics of College and University Li- braries" in the forthcoming Handbook on Library Statistics. The difference be- tween the questionnaire which is reprint- ed in the back of the book and the final form of publication of Library Statistics of Colleges and Universities is a matter of interpreting the raw material. Since all information from the questionnaires returned by libraries is transferred onto punched cards by the U.S. Office of Education, Library Services Branch, it forms a permanent record which is avail- able for research in printout form. For instance, the information on physical fa- cilities gathered by USOE in its "Survey of College and University Libraries, 1963-64" will be available in printout form in the future. This survey is a non- recurrent effort, or at least it will not be repeated for some time. The definition of space in the forthcoming Handbook is intended to measure the total space as given by architectural specifications. The questionnaire, however, phrased its def- inition of space in terms of net space, that is, space available for use measured from the inside walls only. A committee working on ALA university library stan- dards will have to make the decision on which definition to follow. It might be 22 I College & Research Libraries • January, 1966 well to contact the Library Services Branch, in order to determine the feasi- bility of the method used last year, as represented by its results. There are a number of items, such as equipment, which are treated cursorily in the ALA Standards for College Libraries and for Junior College Libraries; such items in university libraries should no doubt be spelled out in detail. Since the number of books or volumes per student and faculty only is not in- dicative of the strength of library service in university libraries, the amounts spent for library materials should be made an integral part of their standards. While prices change and the emphasis on re- search in various areas is a variant deter- mining factor in expenditures, the ratios may be assumed to remain the same. It is estimated that good library service to graduate students costs about ten times that needed for undergraduate college students annually. The RTSD Standards for Technical Services Staffs Committee (ad hoc) will add another important fac- tor when its findings are made public. That there is a relationship between the personnel needed to process material and the amount of material added to a library's holdings is unquestioned, but, Parkinson's law aside, no one knows the cutoff point. Reference Service is another area for which the development of stan- dards is underway. With the successful experience of co- operation among librarians which re- sulted from the method used by the ALA National Statistics Coordinating Project, it should be encouraging to anticipate projects which will add further criteria of measurement of library service to our body of knowledge. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ALA. Library Administration Division. Li- brary Organization and Management Section. Definitions for Library Sta- tistics: a Preliminary Draft. Prepared by the ALA Statistics Coordinating Com- mittee, David C. Weber, chairman. Chi- cago, ALA, 1961. Unpaged. See also Bowker Annual of Library and Book Trade Information. New York: Bowker Co., 1963. pp. 4-10. ALA. Board on Personnel Administration. Descriptive list of professional and non- professional duties in libraries. Prelimi- nary draft, prepared by the Subcom- mittee on Analysis of Library Duties of the ALA Board on Personnel Adminis- tration. Chicago: 1948. Bentz, D. M. --college and University Li- brary Statistics, 1956-57," CRL, XIX (January 1958), 49-51. Cohan, Leonard and Kenneth Craven. Sci- ence Information Personnel. Modern Language Association of America, 1961. Crutcher, L. --uniform Method of Report- ing Statistics," Southeastern Librarian, XII (Summer 1962), 97-99, 108. Dawson, John M ... A Brief History of the Technical Services in Libraries," Library Resource$ and Technical Services, VI (Summer 1962), 197-204. Downs, Robert. --uniform Statistics for Li- brary Holdings." Library Quarterly, XVI (January 1946), 63-69. ALA Resources and Technical Services Di- vision. The Literature of Library Tech- nical Services. University of Illinois Grad- uate School of Library Science Occa- sional Papers, No. 58, rev. rUrbana, Ill.: 1963], 46p. Kuhlman, A. F ... Two ARL Approaches to Counting Holdings of Research Librar- ies," CRL, XXI (May 1960), 207-11. Lazerow, Samuel. .. The National Medical Library: Acquisition Program," Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, XLII (October 1954), 447-53. Lyle, Guy R. --counting Library Holdings." College and Research Libraries, XI (Jan- uary 1950) . Appendix I contains state- ments by ARL Committee on the Count of Library Holdings in 1949, on the method of counting. New York State Education Department. Knowledge is Power. Rev. ed. 1962. Quoted in Harold Bloomquist, .. The Status and Needs of Medical Libraries in the United States," reprinted from the I ournal of Medical Education, XXXVIII (March 1963), 145-63. (Continued on page 51) Selected Reference Books of 1964-1965 I 51 1964, the workings of international orga- nizations, and selected topics such as sports and education are covered-some quite ex- tensively. Since certain of the articles are over twenty pages long, an index should have been provided for easier access to facts and dates, even · though the arrangement is alphabetical and cross references are liberal. -C.S. Wainwright, M. D. and Matthews, Noel. A Guide to Western Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles Relating to South and South East Asia. New York, London: Oxford University Pr., 1965. 532p. $16. This is an extensive guide listing Euro- ' pean language manuscripts "bearing on the whole of Southern Asia" that are contained "in all libraries, depositories and collections, public and private, in Great Britain and Ireland" (Pre£.) with the exception of the India Office library. Subject coverage is all- embracing, including history, literature, sci- ence, social science, and humanities. The in- formation was compiled from catalogs, cal- endars, indexes (whether published or in manuscript), from information given by archivists and librarians, and from personal inspection of documents. Short descriptions are given for materials which are listed chronologically in appropriate subdivisions under the depository entry which, in turn, is found in a topographical arrangement. A full index of names and subjects draws to- gether all items pertaining to one topic.- R.K. •• STATISTICS AND STANDARDS (Continued from page 22) Oboler, E. "Library Statistics: Why, How, and Maybe." Idaho Librarian, XIV (Jan- uary 1962), 6-8. Reichmann, Felix. "Management and Op- erations." Library Trends, III (April 1955)' 462-70. Rothstein, Samuel. "The Measurement and Evaluation of Reference Service," Li- brary Trends, XII (January 1964) , 456- 72. Skipper, James E. "The Present State and Future Development of Technical Ser- vices," Library Resources and Technical Services, VI (Summer 1962), 205-9. Wilson, Louis Round and Maurice F. Tau- ber. The University Library (2d ed.) New York: Columbia University Press, 1956. p. 212. STATISTICS AND GLOSSARIES Association of Research Libraries. Academic Library Statistics, 1963/64- . Washing- ton, D. C.: The Association, 1964. Canada. Dominion Bureau of Statistics. Education Division. Survey of Libraries, Part II: Academic Libraries, 1960/ 61. Ottawa, Queens Printer, 1963. U. S. Office of Education. Library Statistics of Colleges and Universities, 1962-63. In- stitutional Data. Washington: 1964. Vocabularium Bibliothecarii. Paris: UNESCO, 1962. \. ALA Glossary of Library Terms. Chicago: American Library Association, 1943. The Bowker Annual of Library and Book Trade Information. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1963. The Bookman's Glossary. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1951. Bibliographer's Glossary of Foreign Words and Phrases. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1933. • •