College and Research Libraries


FLORENCE DEHART 

The Application of Special Library 
Services and Techniques 

to the College Library 
Advanced library services, common to some special libraries, were 
applied to certain courses of study in English in five selected colleges. 
These services included: (1) answering reference questions fully 
rather than guiding patrons to the answer; (2) the preparation upon 
request of pertinent bibliographies; (3) notification of faculty mem-
bers when something appeared in print that they would likely use; 
and (4) recommendation of books for purchase. Measurement of 
library use was made among groups receiving these services and 
among groups not receiving them; no quantifiable differences were 
observed. 

INCREASING INTEREST in the development 
of services in the college library has 
found expression in the literature in re-
cent years. Various authors have recom-
mended that special library services and 
techniques be applied to the college li-
brary. In an attempt to provide objective 
measurement of the effect of their appli-
cation, a study was made in five college 
libraries. It was made in cooperation 
with their departments of English, with-
in the course of one academic year. 

The hypothesis of the study was that 
the provision of "special library" ser-
vices and techniques by a college li-
brary for a current, ongoing course will 
result in more and better library use 
by the persons being served than when 
they are not provided. "College library" 

A summary of a doctoral dissertation ac-
cepted by the faculty of the Graduate 
School of Library Service, Rutgers Univer-
sity, in 1964 (215 p.). Copies of the disserta-
tion are available from University Micro-
films, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

Miss DeHart is head, Reference Depart-
ment, Seton Hall University Library. 

130/ 

was defined as a main library in a col-
lege or university which emphasizes 
four-year undergraduate instruction and 
may or may not offer graduate programs 
leading to a master's or doctor's degree. 

The experiment was designed to de-
termine quantitatively the use made of 
the various services given to the faculty 
members served and to their students, 
and the use made of the same materials 
by control groups who were not pro-
vided special services. An attempt was 
also made to measure the value of the 
services to the faculty members and their 
students, in so far as quality can be de-
termined. 

The purpose of the first phase of the 
study was to identify those special li-
brary services and techniques worthy of 
further testing on a broader scale. The 
following services were provided for 
eight (seven after one withdrawal) fac-
ulty members in one small university in 
connection with two upper division and 
two lower division courses, considered 
by the head of the Department of Eng-
lish to have in their syllabi substantial 



· ( 

Application of Special Library Services and Techniques I 131 

potential for library use: ( 1 ) a special 
reference service giving answers to ques-
tions rather than merely indications of 
where answers might be found; ( 2) com-
piling bibliographies upon request, 
enumerative or annotated; ( 3) a current 
awareness service, in which ninety-five 
current periodicals and Abstracts of Eng-
lish Studies were searched for items per-
tinent to the courses served, with notifi-
cation to faculty members of these items 
through citations or original abstracts 
and tables of contents when appropriate; 
( 4) a book ordering service, in which 
book reviews in the ninety-five periodi-
cals were scanned and filled-out order 
blanks sent for approval to appropriate 
professors for titles relevant to their 
courses, as well as filled-out order forms 
for materials to repair deficiencies in the 
collection which hindered the provision 
of services. 

These services were not provided in 
connection with the personal study and 
research of faculty members unless their 
study and research happened to coincide 
in subject matter with the courses served. 
Neither were the services provided di-
rectly to students. The head of the de-
partment of English stated that part of 
the educational goal of the department 
was to teach students to find materials 
and information themselves; therefore, 
they should not have any part of their 
work done for them. 

Quantitative measurement of the use 
made of the services provided in the first 
phase of the study indicated that none 
was worthy of second phase testing in 
other college libraries. Use was made 
most consistently and heavily by one 
professor, bearing out the results of 
studies cited by Clark, in which in-
dividual professors, rather than the items 
being tested, appeared to be the deter-
mining factor in the outcome of the 
studies.1 

1 V~rginia Clark, "Teaching Students to Use the 
Library: Whose Responsibility?" CRL, XXI (Septem-
ber 1960), 372. 

Without a knowledge, however, of the 
underlying attitudes of the professors 
toward educational goals and teaching 
methods, and without a knowledge of 
whether the services, with their possibly 
inherent cumulative value, helped to fa-
cilitate their teaching and the learning of 
their students, the meaning of the 
quantitative statistics could not be fully 
interpreted. In addition to a know ledge 
of the attitudes of the professors served, 
it was necessary to ascertain what other 
factors, controllable or uncontrollable~ 
were instrumental in helping or hinder~ 
ing the receipt of potential benefit from 
the services. 

Responding to the questionnaires, pro~ 
fessors indicated, with respect to the 
current awareness service in particular, 
that they would have made more use of 
the library materials cited if their time 
schedule, the nature of the articles, and 
the price of photoduplication had been 
more favorable. They considered the cur~ 
rent awareness service as a potential aid 
to· themselves in providing general back-
ground from which to draw in their 
teaching. Two professors. specifically in~ 
dicated that this service offered cumula-
tive benefits to be reaped at the time of 
subsequent offerings of their courses. 

Since none of the services offered in 
the first phase of the study proved 
worthy of further testing in current, on-
going courses, two other services were 
tested in the second phase of the study, 
in the original library as well as in four 
others. Replies to one of the question-
naires sent to professors in the first-
phase of the study indicated that bib-
liographical assistance of a librarian in 
compiling course reading lists would be 
a desirable service. This service, offered 
during the second phase of the study, 
aimed to determine what, if any, of the 
intellectual parts of the compilation of 
reading lists could be done or aided by 
librarians and to measure subsequent use 
made of the lists prepared by the re, 
searcher and/ or professors. 



132 I College & Research Libraries • March, 1966 

The other service tested was sug-
gested by the head of the department of 
English of the first college studied: the 
compilation of a checklist of periodicals 
of use to students of English language 
and literature, based on the library's 
holdings, and giving information not be-
fore included in a periodical directory 
under one cover. It appeared possible 
that this information would not only aid 
the student to become familiar with the 
subject content of periodicals that would 
be useful to him, but that it would also 
aid him in using the periodicals more 
effectively through the inclusion of cer-
tain bibliographical information, such 
as the presence of an index or special 
bibliography. A number of the periodi-
cals included in the checklists were not 
indexed in any periodical indexes. 

The services described above were 
provided as follows: reading lists were 
prepared for one course at each of two 
of the colleges and for two courses at 
one college; the checklist of periodicals 
was distributed to one class of two 
courses at each of the five colleges, in-
cluding the first. The checklist was 
adapted to the holdings of each library 
at the five institutions and distributed 
in the name of each library. 

Quantitative measurement of the use 
made of the services provided in the 
second phase of the study also proved 
the hypothesis to be false. Comment by 
professors revealed factors which mili-
tated against use of the services: assign-
ments given by professors specifying 
that the use of library materials was 
either not required or was forbidden in 
the preparation of papers; assignment 
of papers requiring textual analysis of 
literary works themselves rather than 
analysis which would include critical 
material as well; and the use of ali-in-
one textbooks containing bibliography 
and readings as well as the usual text-
book material with the specification that 
no readings not given in the textbook be 
assigned. 

The services in both phases of the 

study were provided for courses cur-
rently in operation in the department 
of English; the results of the study may 
or may not apply to other fields. In re-
spect to the particular services offered, 
the quantitative and qualitative data, 
in both phases of the study, proved that 
this assumption was not justified. 

The study did show that while the 
special library services offered had no · 
impact on the content and methods of 
teaching of these ongoing courses, they 
served most of the professors in the first 
phase and one professor in the second 
phase as general preparation for the 
design of the same and other courses in 
the future. In addition, it was generally 
agreed that the current awareness ser-
vice offered in the first phase enriched 
the background of the professors. There 
was some indication, therefore, that the 
usefulness of the services may be 
broader and of more long-range value 
than is indicated by their lack of im-
mediate effect on a particular ongoing 
course. The amount of time and ma-
terial required to give the services is 
not judged to be a prohibitive factor. 

Under the conditions in which the 
study was made-providing a limited 
number of services in relation to current 
ongoing courses in the department of 
English within the period of one aca-
demic year-there is no evidence that the 
application of special library services 
and techniques to the college library 
provided more or better service to users 
than when they were not provided. Be-
cause there was some indication that the 
usefulness of the services may be broader 
and of more long-range value than their 
effect on a particular ongoing course, it 
is recommended that the same and other 
special library services be tested in the 
same and other fields over a longer 
period of time. 

In addition to providing data bearing 
on the hypothesis, the study revealed 
certain general implications for further 
investigation concerning library service 
at the undergraduate level, directly or 

. 



Application of Special Library Services and Techniques I 133 

indirectly. These implications are merely 
hypotheses and have not been proved by 
the study. 

Communications from professors in-
dicated, to varying degrees, that the na-
ture of the periodicals in the field of 
English language and literature is such 
that the undergraduate or the profes-
sor teaching undergraduate courses has 
evidently not been, generally speaking, 
those to whom the periodicals are di-
rected. The potential of the use of pe-
riodicals to aid teaching and learning in 
this field cannot be known fully unless 
a number of articles are considered by 
professors to be appropriate for use in 
undergraduate courses. 

Obviously, the provision of less ex-
pensive means of photoduplication 
would facilitate giving special library 
services. Two articles considered to be 
particularly valuable by the librarian 
giving the services would have cost 
professors $3.10 and $1.90 respective-
ly, at the relatively low cost of ten 
cents per sheet. 

Responses from professors indicated, 
to varying degrees, that they had little 
or no time to come to the library to 
follow up on notifications of appropriate 
available material. That professors' time 
is being saved by the services may not 
be apparent because th·ey would not be 
scanning periodicals for appropriate ma-
terial, etc., if the services were not of-
fered. Delivery and pick-up service to 
and from faculty offices might be ini-
tiated where this service is not already 
offered. 

Professors approved for ordering the 
majority of the filled-out order forms 
which had been sent to them. Alt}10ugh 
the department of English was covering 
current ordering (unaware that the 
forms would be sent from the library), 
these materials had been missed by the 
department of English, nor had the 
library attempted systematically to 
round out current ordering from this 
department. In two cases, where the 
bibliography in the textbook served in 

whole or in part as the course reading 
list, slightly less than half of the works 
listed in the textbook bibliography were 
held by the libraries. These instances of 
lack of control over the collection sug-
gest that librarians might assume more 
definite responsibility, in practice as well 
as in theory, for the maintenance and 
development of the collection. 

As would be expected, the use of ali-
in-one textbooks, containing readings 
and bibliography as well as the usual 
textbook material, and the specifications 
by faculty members that students not 
use materials other than those provided 
in this one source or in the literary works 
used as texts, do not foster the use of 
special library services in connection 
with these courses. 

Both phases of the study bore out the 
implication with respect to the lead time 
necessary for planned communication 
with the faculty in order to direct spe-
cial library services most specifically to 
the needs of faculty and students. That 
professors were unaccustomed to re-
ceiving and using services not before 
offered may have been a deterrent to 
their fullest use. 

The opportunity for communication 
with the faculty which the study af-
forded might be provided in the way 
most suitable to each institution as part 
of a regular, organized, and required 
routine. The study bore out the follow-
ing of Knapp's findings: 

Still the conscious analysis of the total 
curriculum in terms of the library resources, 
organization, and services appropriate for 
the several elements in it should result in 
something approaching a more rational li-
brary program than the relatively hap-
hazard one in operation at present. 2 

.. In another connection, she states fur-
ther: 

But granted that the contribution of the 

2 Patricia B. Knapp, College Teaching and the Col-
lege Library (Chicago, ALA, 1959 ; ACRL Mono-
graph No. 23), p. 97. 

(Continued on page 15~) 



152 I College & Research Libraries • March, 1966 

officers agreed to state that the Board had 
seen no objection to the establishment of a 
new division, as recommended by COO. 
The new division was approved by the ALA 
Council on Thursday, January 27, under the 
title, "Information Science and Automation 
Division.") 

A statement on preliminary planning for 
the administration of Title IIA of the 
Higher Education Act of 1965 was read by 
Miss Brown, including prospects for funds 
and preliminary and unofficial information 
for basic grants, applications from "com-
binations of institutions," supplemental 
grants, and special purpose grants. The in-
formation will be published in CRL in clari-
fied form. 

Robert Talmadge, chairman of the LAD 
Statistics Committee for College and Uni-
versity Libraries, reported the extensive re-
organization of the U.S. Office of Educa-

SPECIAL LIBRARY SERVICES . 
(Continued from page 199) 

library is somewhat more limited than it 
has been proclaimed to be, a more impor-
tant implication is that there is widespread 
lack of understanding or, at least, consensus 
among faculty and staff about what a li-
brary can and should contribute to the 
college-indeed, about what a library is.3 

Unlike the training of high school 
teachers and administrators, the training 
of college faculty and administrators 
does not ordinarily include courses deal-
ing with education on the college level. 
There is ordinarily no opportunity pro-
vided in the training of college faculty 
and administrators, therefore, to equip 
them to teach students to find and use 
multiple sources, or, indeed, to de-
termine whether this is desirable. Nor is 
there opportunity provided to study 
ways in which teaching methods might 
fulfill these educational goals by using 
special library services and techniques 
as aids in these teaching methods. 

The objectives of the study did not 
include the setting forth of a blueprint 
which college librarians might follow in 

a Ibid., p. 93. 

tion. Frank Schick has been transferred to 
the National Center for Educational Sta-
tistics. With this upheaval, a distribution 
of the questionnaires for statistics collec-
tion was delayed by four months. The fu-
ture appears uncertain. USOE hopes to con-
solidate the questionnaires sent to academic 
institutions to include library data. How-
ever, ALA could get the data from USOE 
and publish it separately, if desired. The 
1964/ 65 Statistics will appear as in the 
past, however. 

A statistics conference is scheduled for 
June 1-3, 1966 (the dates were changed 
after the A CRL Board meeting) and will 
include approximately one hundred partici-
pants. The purpose is to determine what 
USOE wants from librarians and what the 
latter expects from USOE. The Handbook 
of Library Statistics should be published by 
April 1966. 

The meeting was adjourned at 11:40 p.m. 

acting upon its conclusions and implica-
tions. One factor, however, appeared to 
the writer, as a subjective response, to 
be perhaps the major determinant of the 
future successful application of special 
library services and techniques to the 
college library in further experimenta-
tion: the attitude of college librarians 
toward the service program. 

In order to determine exactly what 
educational goals are desirable and how 
they are best fulfilled, librarians, faculty, 
and administrators must be willing to 
divest themselves of preconceived ideas 
of what each "should" do and explore 
their roles on the basis of faculty and 
student need. The mere initiation of such 
discussions will be difficult and their 
outcome will undoubtedly indicate at 
least some change from present practice, 
bringing into play natural human re-
sistance to change. It appeared to the 
writer, therefore, that the future service 
program in college libraries, whether 
or not special library services and tech-
niques are ultimately applied, may well 
be a measure of the maturity of college 
librarians. • • 

·,