College and Research Libraries


The Making of a College, Plans for a New 
Departure in Higher Education. By 
Franklin Patterson and Charles R. Longs-
worth. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 
1966. $4.95 (67-17785). 

In the fall of 1969, some 360 freshmen 
will begin a four-year program of liberal 
studies at Hampshire College, a college ini-
tiated as a cooperative venture of Amherst, 
Mt. Holyoke, Smith, and the University of 
Massachusetts. If the program lives up to 
the promise presented in this report of 
Hampshire's first president, they will have 
an exciting experience and an opportunity 
to acquire a truly liberating undergraduate 
education. 

The report serves well as a review of re-
cent thinking about undergraduate educa-
tion because Hampshire proposes to imple-
ment many of the best ideas which have 
been suggested: emphasis on processes of 
inquiry, student-initiated independent study, 
participation in social action programs, the 
abolition of the credit-hour and grade sys-
tem in favor of "field" and "integrative" ex-
aminations, campus and organizational plan-
ning to achieve a sense of community among 
administrators, faculty, and students, and so 
on. In his rationale for the program, more-
over, President Patterson draws upon some 
of the most penetrating of recent analyses, 
notably Daniel Bell's The Reforming of 
General Education. 

College and university librarians will be 
particularly intrigued by the plan for a 
school of language studies, which will bring 
together analytical philosophy, psycholin-
guistics, information transfer and the tech-
nology of language, and, of course, modern 
language studies. Here important recogni-
tion is given to a multidisciplinary field 
which is closely related to their own profes-
sion. (Students who specialize in this field 
would be first-rate prospects for librarian-
ship. Recruiters should take notice.) 

At the same time, librarians will be dis-
appointed at the lack of attention given to 
the role of the library in a curriculum whose 
unifying theme is the process of inquiry, in 
a program which calls for a great deal of 
independent study. The library is described 
as "far more than the ordinary conception 
of a library ... the educative aorta of the 
College." But there is nothing in the report 

Book Reviews I 355 

to indicate how it will differ from the fa-
miliar old "heart of the college." It is to 
be in the center of the campus; 41,000 
square feet is allocated to stacks, reading, 
faculty offices, with 6,000 square feet for 
undifferentiated "service"; $2,029,500 is 
budgeted for building and furnishings; and 
$600,000 capital outlay is budgeted for 
an initial 100,000 volumes. No estimate of 
the cost of processing is indicated. The only 
mention of library staff is this sentence: 
"The Director of Library Services should be 
a very able man in terms both of traditional 
librarianship, bookmanship, library display, 
and pioneering in the new." 

When this report was prepared, plans for 
Hampshire College were, of course, very 
incomplete and tentative. (Calculations of 
faculty required to carry specific courses are, 
however, carried to the second decimal 
place, and space is allocated in detail for 
administrators, secretaries, and reception-
ists.) Since that time there has been a 
fruitful conference and considerable con-
sultation about the library. Presumably, 
therefore, plans are now more thoughtful 
and detailed. Furthermore, the sponsorship 
of the college and the precedent of the 
Hampshire Interlibrary Center suggest that 
Hampshire students will have access, theo-
retically, at least, to the resources of four 
excellent libraries. 

This reviewer is depressed, nevertheless, 
to find the library playing such a small part 
in this first published "organized vision" of 
undergraduate education in a liberal arts 
college which will in all likelihood join the 
handful which carry the standard of excel-
lence in the academic procession. 

What does it mean? Is it only that a 
good collection, a bookish librarian, "skilled 
in library display," and technological access 
to rich resources is simply a " given" for 
a good college? Or is it that we librarians 
have so little of an organized vision of our 
own that we leave entirely to others the 
intellectual challenge of effective use of the 
resources we acquire and organize? . 

These are questions for us, not for ·Presi-
dent Patterson. He has presented an inspiring 
report on "plans for a new departure in high-
er education." What we need in academic li-
brarianship is new departures to complement 
programs as promising as this.-Patricia B. 
Knapp, Wayne State University. • • 



~This invention of yours 
will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls 
because they will not use their memories ... 
they will appear to be omniscient, 
and will generally 
know nothing." 
.. . from Plato's Phaedrus 

Thus spoke the Egyptian god, Thamuz, 
to the inventor of the alphabet. 

Just as controversial-yet perhaps 
even more important to the future of 
education-is a more recent innovation: 
the development of nationwide 
information centers and learning labs . .. 
linked together by the nationwide 
complex of Bell System communications. 

And what more natural a development? 

For education must keep pace with 
the community in which it exists. 
And, as one of the nation's leading 
educators recently pointed out: 

"On this threshold of another great age 
for the humanities, the entire human 
community is being made into a global 
neighborhood and an interacting whole." 

Linking the nation in education 

@AI~!