College and Research Libraries EDWARD G. HOLLEY Organization and Administration of Urban University Libraries This report is an outgrowth o~-S!__ ouncil on Library Resources study grant which the author used to examine urban universities in the Spring of 1971. AT THE BEGINNING of the 1970s Amer- ican university libraries can look back upon a decade of phenomenal growth. · Their volume count, long a traditional measure of library excellence, grew from 201,423,000 in 1961/62 to an estimated 350,000,000 in 1970/71, while at the same time total personnel, both clerical and professional, increased from 21,100 to 48,000, and total annual operating ex- penses advanced from $183,700,000 to an estimated $600,000,000. 1 Even more impressive was the sharp increase in ex- penditures for library materials, a hefty 370 percent, accounted for partly by in- flation and partly by federal funding un- der Title II-A of the Higher Ed_ucation Act of 1965. Despite these apparently substantial gains, student enrollment, which grew from 3. 9 million to 8.2 million, actually caused a decline in the number of vol- umes per student from 51.6 in 1961/62 to 42.7 in 1970/71.2 No doubt much of this decline occurred because of the num- ber of libraries in new institutions (some 600) but some of it was also accounted for by the expansion of enrollments in large universities, chiefly urban, where library resources have been traditionally less than satisfactory. 3 When added to Mr. Holley is Dean, School of Library Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. the pressures from new graduate pro- grams, the increasing power of ac- creditation agencies in many subject dis- ciplines, the emergence of higher educa- . tion boards in forty-six of the fifty states, and the general unrest both on the cam- pus and in society as a whole, this mas- sive growth presented serious problems of organization and administration for many universities. Tensions grew among the students-faculty-administration-li- brarians. Thus, what one might have re- corded as a decade of progress, in retro- spect was sometimes obscured by the frustration of library administrators deal- ing with everyday problems over much too long a period of time. At the end of the sixties it has not been uncommon for chief librarians, who by any objective standards served their institutions well, to retire early from their directorships, some with . sorrow, some with reliet and a few with bitter- ness. Very few have retired with the glory and honor that used to accompany extraordinary accomplishments in build- ing resources and expanding services. After years of important contributions 'they deserve better of their associates. One cannot help feeling a sense of re- gret that their staffs, so concerned with being treated humanly and humanely .by chief librarians, do not show similar char- acteristics in return. Even without consideration of the I 175 I I ·I I I I , 176 I College & Research Libraries • May 1972 newer technologies, including micro- forms, computers, microwave links, etc., or the change in the book market itself with the advent of reprints galore and canned processing, a library staff which has grown from 30 to 100, as many smaller universities have, or from 150 to 300 or 400, as is true in many of the larger universities, presents any adminis- trator with a fundamental change in the way his library system can be adminis- tered. Organizational problems become more complex, supervision more diffi- cult, human relations problems less sus- ceptible of quick resolution, and com- munications among staff formidable in- deed. No longer is it possible for every staff member to see top management every day and often it is much more difficult for each individual to see how his role fits into overall library objec- tives or how he plays his part in achiev- ing library goals. Under the circumstances, where the growth of collections and the expan- sion of units of service were. the main characteristics of the decade, perhaps it is not surprising that library literature, like the literature of higher education as a whole., · showed more attention to the problems of financing, building col- lections, processing books, securing per- sonnel, than it did to administration or to new forms of organization. Thus li- brary organization became a patchwork quilt in some cases without any rethink- ing of the basic structure. There. was simply more of everything: more assist- ant directors, more department heads, more specialists, and more beginning li- brarians. As the. Booz, Allen, and Hamil- ton study, . Problems in University Li- brary Management, notes; "Existing plans of organization of university libraries appear often to be the consequence of gradual development rather than the result of analysis of requirements and consideration of alternatives."4 Few would deny this assertion. University li- braries, like their parent institutions, came late to long-range planning. . Before examining what has emerged in the. way of new organizational struc- tures, or rather what appears to be emerging, perhaps we should remind ourselves of the typical library adminis- trative structure as it has been found in American colleges and universities. Traditionally, academic libraries were highly centralized with a head librarian at the top, and four to six department heads all reporting directly to him. These departments usually reflected such basic library operations as acquisitions, cata- loging, circulation, and reference, .with other departments added as the univer- sity library system expanded. Many li- brary departments were quite small. When College & Research Libraries published its first annual statistics for 1941- 42, the median number of full-time personnel in the largest college and uni- versity libraries was 37.5 Thanks to the return of World War II veterans to the campus and the economic expansion in the late forties, the median number of FTE library staffs rose to 51.5 in 1948/ . 49. 6 Thus it is not surprising that sim- ple departmentalization served many academic libraries well. The prevalence of this kind of organization today among universities with a small staff and small enrollments indicates its basic service- ability. In the traditional departmentally or- ganized library, the chief librarian often operated in a paternalistic, though not autocratic, style, and his library tended very much to bear the stamp of his own personality. Some of his modern detrac- tors view him as an authoritarian, but this did not necessarily follow. Staff in- put was often greater than assumed, whether it took place in the weekly meeting of department heads or infor- mally in conversation with everyone. from the janitor to the associate librar- ian, if there was one. Consultation with 1 1 1 I the staff, meetings with the catalog de- partment, for example, often occurred daily and the chief librarian could keep his wary eye on all aspects of the li- brary's operations. Few chiefs made de- cisions without consultation with their staffs, though this was often done with- out a good deal of fuss or fanfare. Cer- tainly there was much less structure. The chief librarian was more concerned with his representation of library interests to his administrative superiors than he was with the internal structure, and much was written about the place of the li- brary in the total university community. 7 Generally, this meant the place of the chief librarian in the university hier- archy. The growth and development of li- braries after World War II made this . pattern obsolete for most larger univer- sities. No longer could the chief librarian see -everyone, every day. He had obli- gations both on campus and off which precluded his direct involvement in daily operational problems. More assist- ants didn't really solve the problem, so there emerged during the forties the so- called bifurcated functional organization in which all library activities were di- vided either into readers' services or technical services. Arthur McAnally, in his article on "Organization of College and University Libraries" in the first is- sue of Library Trends, could remark with some justification that "by 1952, however, one particular plan [i.e., the bifurcated] for divisional organization has been widely accepted in large libraries."8 - Typically, two associate or assistant di- rectors, one for public services, and one for technical services, were added be- tween the director of libraries and the department heads. The public services chief assumed daily operational respon- sibility for all reference and circulation services, whether this took place in a central building or in departmental/ col- lege libraries. In terms of the adminis- Urban University Libraries I 177 trative principle of no more than ten peo- ple reporting to any one individual, his responsibility in some places was much too extensive, and as many as thirty or forty people, in theory at least, reported directly to the assistant director for pub- lic services. Technical services were much less ex- tensive, but probably required even more coordination because of the increase in size of collections and yearly rate of ac- quisitions. To the acquisitions and cata- log departments were sometimes added a serials department plus a few auxiliary units such as binding, catalog card pro- duction, and gifts and exchange. The bifurcated system, with some modifications, still remains the basic op- erational pattern for most large univer- sity library systems. Occasionally other assistant directors have been added for administrative services, personnel, de- velopment of the collections, systems de- velopment; or departmental libraries. Most of these assistant directors operate within well-defined areas. Operational authority and responsibility remain large- ly with the p-ublic and techniCal ser- vices administrators, who, after all, con- trol most of the budget. In cases where there are medical and/ or law schools and where these come under the budg- etary control of the director of libraries, their librarians tend to operate in fact, if not in theory, on a par with assistant directors when it comes to policy-mak- ing. Their library operations are often more influenced by the deans of their respective schools than they are by di- rectors of libraries. This can be illustrat- ed by an answer to my question at one major university, "How do you handle the law library?" The response was, "Very carefully." These two plans, with some variation, still provide the basic organizational form for most American university li- braries. They are hierarchical plans, built upon the earlier management prin- 178 I College & Research Librar,ies • May 1972 ciples of line authority stemming from the top. Lines of authority and respon- sibility are clearly marked out, and the pyramid form is probably their best graphic representation. They are not as lacking in staff involvement as is fre- quently assumed. Councils, committees, advisory boards, etc., usually have come into existence especially in the public services area, to enable staff to have in- put to administrative decisions. Meetings of the total staff occur les.s frequently as the staff grows in size. This can be a source of tension for some staff members who remember the delightful informal- ity of earlier days. The institution of academic planning on many campuses, the encourage- ment of more precise definitions of ob- jectives and goals by higher education boards, and the prospect of a levelling off of support in .the seventies, have sug- gested to many librarians the need for a new look at the way libraries are or- ganized and managed. Discussions be- gan in 1968 between the Association of Research Libraries and the Council on Library Resources concerning the need for an investigation of university library management problems. 9 In 1969 ARL and the American Coun- cil on Education crehted a Joint Commit- tee on University Library Management to study the possible application of mod- ern management principles to research libraries. With funding from the Coun- cil on Library Resources, the committee then contracted with the management consulting firm of Booz, Allen, and Ham- ilton (BAH) to conduct the preliminary investigation. The BAH study, Problems in University Library Management, ap- peared in 1970 and caused vigorous dis- cussion at ARL meetings. The report re- sulted in the establishment of an Office of University Library Management Stud- ies in ARL and the selection of the Co- lumbia University libraries for a case study of the "forms of university library organization and the pattern of staffing library operations," since this was re- garded by the committee as the highest priority. 10 At the same time Columbia University would use the management consulting firm, again Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, to help the university libraries prepare for their distinctive future. The consultants, with the help of the ARL/ ACE Joint Committee, focused on al- ternate plans of organization and the identification of total staff capabilities to see if new ways might be devised to maximize the effect of talent and re- sources of the libraries on the educa- tional programs of the university. The summary of their efforts, Organization and Staffing of the Libraries of Colum- bia University, has just appeared and the complete case study will probably be published late in 1972.11 Little of . this ARL effort was familiar to me. when, at about the same time, the University of Houston became involved in a serious way in looking at its aca- demic planning. Among the University of Houston staff we had discussed at great length our future needs, resources, and organizational patterns. When I was asked to apply for a Council on Library Resources Fellowship, nothing seemed more appropriate than a look at univer- sity library organization and administra- tion. The University of Houston li- braries had made substantial progress during the decade, and all of the pres- sures mentioned earlier had, in one way or another, been a part of the Houston scene. The opportunity to take a semes- ter off and have a look at how libraries were actually operating was a stimulat- ing prospect. After all, the literature was sparse. Was anything actually going on from which I could learn? Had the newer developments actually influenced li- brary management or were we merely patching up the old bifurcated plan? Since at that point I intended to stay at the University of Houston, I deliberately 1 I 1 j I t chose to look primarily at publicly sup- ported urban universities. As matters turned out, I had a good opportunity to look at nonurban universities, too, dur- ing the spring of 1971. Though public universities were my main interest, I did not ignore such major private univer- sities as Columbia, Southern California, New York University, University of Chicago, or Emory. Many of the urban public universities absorbed enormous enrollment increases during the sixties. By 1969/70 urban uni- versity e~rollment represented 19.4 per- cent of full-time, 31.8 percent of part- time, and 22.6 percent of the grand total of students enrolled in higher educa- tion.1:! Urban universities were often in- volved, willingly or not, in the major is- sues of the day. By the end of the decade the question was not whether they would be committed to community actiop and service but how and in what ways. For their rhetoricians urban universities prom- ised to be as significant for twentieth- century urban America as the land-grant college had been for nineteenth-century agricultural America. Since the expan- sion of higher education opportunities and enrollments coincided with reappor- tionment of most state legislatures to reflect population density, the large cities became the sites for new branches of major universities, expansion of former small colleges, or conversion of several private universities into public institu- tions. The branch-type campus can be typified by the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, the University of Mis- souri-Kansas City, Louisiana State Uni- versity at New Orleans, and the Uni- versity of North Carolina at Charlotte. Examples of former small colleges raised to university status include Georgia State University (Atlanta), the University of J Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Clevelend State University (formerly Fenn College -a YMCA branch). Among the pri- vate universities converted to public Urban University Libraries I 179 status were the universities of Buffalo, Cincinnati, Houston, Louisville, and Pitts- burgh. For most of them it was a mat- ter of survival. Meanwhile, state sys- tems were emerging and several large public institutions in New York City, e.g., City College, Queens, Brooklyn, Hunter, were combined to form the City University of New York, which imme- diately made that system one of the largest in the country. Samples of each of these types were high on my list of · libraries to visit in the spring of 1971. For many observers of the higher edu- cation scene these universities are quite different from the normal American con- ception of universitiesY-l They do not exist, for the most part, .amid tree- shaded lawns; theirs is largely a com- muting student body, they serve a sub- stantial part-time enrollment, including large nighttime student bodies; students often come from considerable distances and they frequently seek solutions to their library problems close to where they live. However, these students also have the tremendous resources of the cities on which to draw, though they also share the increasing problems of the cities; violence; deteriorating neigh- borhoods, breakdown of transportation. As earlier studies have shown, most of them are relatively poor in library re- sources and they largely remain so to- day.14 Except for a few isolated examples like UCLA and the University of Minne- sota they· do not rank among the top thirty or forty universities in the coun- try. However, support for some of these institutions, in terms of new library buildings, catch-up funds for book pur- chases, and increased funds for total li- brary operations was substantial during the decade. Still, none of these increases really kept pace with the expansion of enrollments and new graduate programs, and most publicly supported urban uni- versities have far too few staff, both 180 I College & Research Libraries • May 1972 professional and clerical, to do much more than operate as service-station li- braries. There is even some indication that a few are not doing that success- fully. ' In view of these differences one might expect ·that urban university libraries would be organized differently from their counterparts in rural areas. They are not. While they vary greatly as uni- versities, e.g., the University of Southern California and the University of Chicago, or the University of California, Los An- geles, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, their organizational patterns tend to be either the traditional cen- tralized departmental organization or the bifurcated plan. There is ·little evi- dence that urban university libraries have planned seriously with the urban situation in mind. For the most part they are like other American academic libraries but are merely located in large cities. In terms of departmentalization tJwy tend to have fewer branch libraries than other types of universities though there are obvious exceptions. Because they have fewer staff members a sim- . pier form of organization often prevails. If urban university libraries have sim- ilar organizational patterns to other aca- demic libraries, are there any other pat- terns either in embryo or emerging, that may provide alternate plans for the future? That is a much more difficult question to answer, though there is more study, talk, discussion, and planning go- ing on among university library staffs than outsiders might expect to find. The idea that every member of society has a right to participate in decisions which immediately affect him has had a de- cided impact upon some academic li- brarians. Study groups, councils, ad hoc committees, and professional staff meet- ings are busily engaged in studying participatory management in many aca- demic libraries. Yet at this point no one can point to any specific institution and say that its pattern will become the new organizational model for all univer- sity libraries. Academic librarianship is still groping for solutions; it has not yet found them. However, much of the investigation does seem to revolve around three main points: the need for greater staff in- volvement in library decision-making (participative management), the need for some form of academic ·governance for professional staffs, and the prospec- tive unionization of library staffs. To quote the AR~ study again: Librarians are confronted with the need to make organizations responsive to trends which stress the greater :Bow of communi- cations among staff and the greater in- volvement of professional staff in decision- making. This is an outgrowth of the previ- ously cited strengthening of employee or- ganizations within the library and the in- creas~d number of higher level profes- sionals which libraries have added to serve the specialized and sophisticated research and teaching needs of the faculty and ~tu­ dent body .15 In a recent issue of Library Trends, . two articles, one by Lawrence A. Allen and Barbara Conroy on "Social Inter- action Skills" and the other by Maurice P. Marchant on "Participative Manage- ment as Related to Personnel Develop- ment," stress the present trend toward more participation by the library staff in decision-making as well as the need for developing more social interaction skills among staffs so that libraries can become more effective social institu- tions.16· 17 While much of the present writing in this area seems more hortatory than factual, my trips around the coun- try last spring did indicate a decided interest among many library staffs in greater participation in library policy- making. Not surprisingly, in view of the li- brary's existence within the groves of academe, the most widespread interest Is m some form of faculty governance. At the ALA conference in Dallas, mem- bers of the Association of College and Research Libraries approved tentative .standards on faculty status.18 Included in those standards is a clause which man- dates an academic form of governance for libraries. Paragraph 2, "Library Gov- ernance," reads as follows: 2. Library · Governance. College and uni- versity libraries should adopt an aca- demic form of governance. The librari- ans should form as a library faculty whose role and authority is similar to that of the faculties of a college, or the faculty of a school or a department.I9 No doubt approval of this document will give still further impetus to the move- ment toward academic governance. Many library staffs are in the process of drawing up tentative bylaws or consti- tutions for the library faculty. They range from universities as diverse a.s the Uni- versity of Minnesota, Northern Illinois University, New York University, :Uni- versity of Pittsburgh, and the California State Colleges. An example of an urban university with a carefully defined faculty govern- ance pattern for librarians is the Uni- versity of Miami (Coral Gables). Miami's Charter states that "the library shall have status equivalent to that of a school and its director shall be considered to be the dean."20 Deans of library adminis- tration, of course, are not new but more important than the chief librarian's status are the powers delegated to the library so that it can develop a system of gov- ernance which involves the normal fac- ulty procedures and activities. The key to the powers and duties granted the faculty of the library are given in the Charter on Faculty Government: 3.5 The following powers and duties are granted to the faculty of the Library: to participate in the appointment, retention, promotion and a~ard of tenure and merit salary increases to its members; to par- Urban University Libraries I 181 ticipate in the selection and retention of its administrative officers (italics mine) ; to promote the educational and research pol- icy and the general welfare of the Library. These powers and duties are subject, how- ever, to the authority of the Senate to de- termine policies which affect the general welfare of the University or which are necessary for the coordination of the vari- ous schools, and, except when specifically delegated to the faculty, are subject also to the authority of the President. In or- der to exercise these responsibilities the faculty of the Library is authorized to de- termine its own organization and rules of procedure. Under this authority the faculty of the Library shall establish a Council as its executive agency.21 Some believe that under a form of academic governance the role of the chief librarian will undergo a decided change. He may become a dean, as at New York University, -appointed by the president and presiding over a faculty, and thus primarily an administrative official. Or he may merely be a department head, whether appointed by the college ad- ministration, as at the City University of New York, or possibly elected and con- firmed by the professional staff as ap- pears to take place at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Some librar- ians in the City University of New York are now urging the election of the chief librarian as occurs in other a~ademic de- partments of the university. Unless chief librarians become deans instead of department heads, that would, of course, be a natural development from academic governance. Chief librarians themselves view a deanship as more commensurate with their responsibilities than depart- mental chairmanship. With faculty governance the normal academic procedures come into play: faculty committees on promotion, tenure, grievances, policy decision by the en- tire faculty or committees of the faculty, more formal standards for professional development, etc., a.s well as the normal 182 I College & Research Libraries • May 1972 professional jealousies such committees often encourage. One puzzling aspect of the trend to- ward academic governance is that the organizational charts for operations re- main much the same. As one individual explained, the professional staff makes the policies and the library administra- tion then carries out these policies. How this will work, or if it will work, is not yet clear. There are some evidences that librarians, accustomed to working in a hierarchical structure, find it difficult to adjust to a real policy-making role. Per- haps as Stanley Seashore noted at an ARL meeting, "Few people have had a chance to acquire the skills of pgrtici- pation to the needed degree, and an ex- tended period of training and individ- ual development may be required during the transition."22 Faculty organization, while seemingly a trend, does raise some serious ques- tions among thoughtful librarians . If the professional staff does organize as a fac- ulty, whether departmental or college, what about the clerical staff? If one as- sumes as a basic principle that staff should participate in decisions which directly affect them, then he can scarce- ly ignore a group of full-time employees which do the bulk of the work and who constitute anywhere from 50 to 70 per- cent of the total staff. One director sug- gested that "they have their union to protect them," and, apparently there are more clerical staffs with union organiza- tions than professional staffs. That kind of attitude would seem to suggest that clerical employees are not interested in policy matters, but are chiefly concerned about their benefits and working condi- tions. Is this true? Are professional li- brarians mainly interested in faculty gov- ernance for policy matters or for bene- fits and working conditions? At some universities large amounts of time have been spent by new committees not on organizational structure but on routine personnel problems. If librarians are more interested in benefits and working conditions, do pro- i motion, tenure, and grievance commit- tees necessarily provide a professional li- brarian with a more objective evaluation for salaries, adjustment of his problems, etc., than competent department heads or other administrators? What about the ~ objective evaluation of an individual who may have been passed over several times for promotion? Is he necessarily better off with his peers than with his super- visor? Can a library staff, given both the ~ external and internal pressures exerted upon any large library system, actually determine policies which will be accept- able to the total university community? If one is talking about cataloging and classification, perhaps. If he is talking about collection development or hours of opening, both of which have budgetary and staffing implications, probably not. Given the budgetary constraints like- ly to be present during the seventies, will our already hard-pressed staffs be able to find the hours for deliberations and will they take seriously the long hours necessary for finding solutions to "" difficult policy questions? If one adopts an extensive and powerful committee structure, how shall the committees be constituted? By election? By appoint- ment? Is participatory democracy actual- ly better than representative democracy? Is it possible to organize a large uni- versity library system so that everyone invariably is consulted about every ma- jor policy issue, and what constitutes a "major" policy issue anyway? Can there be some selection of policies requiring mutual consent? If so, who will do the selection? One answer, suggested by . Richard Lyman at an ARL meeting is "to have a very precise sta"tement of the purpose and objectives of the library for a very specified period of time."2a A more fundamental question arises from the current attitude of society to- ward higher education. At a time when tenure, academic organization generally, and the very nature of the university are all under serious attack as being un- responsive, do librarians need to look at the way faculti~s are organized, do they need to look to others for models, or do they need to seek some other form of organization more far-reaching than anything that now exists? Some critics believe that the most inefficient, ineffective ways of organizing anything are the traditional procedures of aca- demic departments and colleges. If they should be right, little is to be gained from adoption of such outmoded forms. On the other hand, there is much to be said for organizing within the frame- work of the currently most powerful group on any American university cam- pus: the faculty. Two universities which are not fol- lowing the route of faculty governance for librarians are UCLA and Columbia. They are also both involved in studies and experiments in organization which seek to apply newer management prin- ciples, particularly those adopted by the behavioral sciences, to research libraries. Both have had much staff involvement in trying to determine ~bjectives, pol- ICies, and procedures which would fit their particular situation. Both univer- sities have also used outside manage- ment consultants to conduct seminars, help define their needs, and to help their staffs face up to internal and ex- ternal chAnge. In some ways their results, as far as the staff is concerned, bear strong re- semblance to some parts of academic governance, e.g., faculty procedures and faculty promotion ladders. At the same time both institutions remain committed to central control of all their library op- erations under one director. Columbia librarians are organized under the stat- ., utes of the university which define three Urban University Libraries I 183 categories of professional personnel: of- ficers of administration, officers of in- struction, and officers of the libraries. Thus librarians are defined as academic but do not have faculty titles. The sum- mary of the Columbia case study recom- mends five grades within the librarian category, as well as several position grades within the executive, specialist, and clerical groups. 24 In the UCLA li- brarian series provision is also made for five grades. Presumably the aim at both institutions is to provide for a recogni- tion of career development which recog- nizes advancement in position as well as in administration. Among a staff or- ganized with faculty titles this same end is achieved by promotion through the four faculty ranks. Common to these two universities, as well as those with aca- demic governance, is provision for peer evaluation for promotion, grievances, and tenure. Also common to all schemes is the mat- ter of staff involvement and participa- tion in policy-making. Whether or not policy-making actually occurs may be debatable, but committees have spawned gloriously in many institutions. They have been unusually extensive at Co- lumbia and UCLA. At Columbia some 80 librarians out of 150 serve on committees. To foster bet- ter communications, the director issues a biweekly newsletter and holds regu- lar meetings for three professional groups: all professional librarians, all department heads, and all division heads. Some eight standing committees, dealing with such matters as collection development, com- puter applications, bibliographic records, etc., set objectives and priorities for the library system while a Representative ·Committee of Librarians, elected by the staff, focuses on the role of the librarian in the academic community. There is some evidence that the committee as- signments and the involvement in the ARL study have changed staff view- 184 I College & Research Libraries • May 1972 points and attitudes. Certainly in terms of Columbia's grave financial problems (a rumored $17 million deficit last year) and the legacy of unrest from 1968 one might expect to find an unhappy and defensive staff. That seems not to be true at this time, though how much of this accrues to the staff through the psy- chological boost of being studied, how much through new leadership, and how much through common bonds of ad- versity is not clear. In looking at both UCLA and Columbia, where deteriorat- ing morale was reportedly a strong fac- tor, one might suspect that perceptive leadership has had much to do with a change in staff attitudes. Restructuring at UCLA has taken the form of a Library Administrative Net- work consisting of the Library Adminis- trative Officers, five Random Groups, seven Staff Resource Committees, and a Library's Advisory Council. This struc- · ture grew out of common staff concern as expressed by the UCLA Librarians Association in December 1966, and dis- cussions and seminars subsequently con- ducted by two management consultants. Effective communication was identified as a major priority. The first part of the . new structure came into existence in · May 1968, with the Staff Resource Com- mittees following in February 1969. Un- der the new structure department heads have been given more responsibility for their own units, communications have been improved as a result of regular meetings of the various groups, and bet- ter channels to the library administra- tion have been established. Description of the UCLA Library Ad- ministrative Network is difficult, but the best statement on the various segments can be found in "The New Library Management Network at the University of California, Los Angeles," by Johanna E. Tallman. 25 Although there are a: num- ber of Library Administrative Officers, i.e., individuals with titles of university librarian, associate university librarian, and assistant university librarian, only the university librarian and the associate university librarian actually exercise line authority. The chief executive officer of the system is the associate university librarian and all twenty-six department heads report directly to her. With this many units involved, the administrative control cannot be very tight. Under re- structure the assistant university librari- ans for public services, etc., actually be- come systems coordinators and do not exercise control over the traditional de- partments. Their task is to encourage, to advise, to guide, to plan, but not to su- pervise. They are, however, members of the Advisory Council, along with the chairmen of the five Random Groups, plus one representative from the Library Staff Association and one from the UCLA Librarians Association. This Advisory Council, chaired by the university librar- ian, meets every two weeks. Its func- tions are to .serve as a recommending body for administrative decisions, to chan- nel information between the administra- tion and the Random Groups, to serve as a source for new ideas, and to refer problems to committees. At his request a chairman of a Staff Resource Committee · may appear when a topic of concern to his committee is discussed. The -five Random Groups consist of all twenty-six unit heads who have ac- tual responsibility for day-to-day library operations. The designation, "Random Groups," comes from the fact that once a year names of the departments are drawn at random to determine the mem- bership of each group and the rotation of its chairman. Presumably this encour- ages interaction among the various operational entities and results in posi- tive recommendations for administrative consideration. The seven Staff Resource Committees contain both professional librarians and clerical staff. One Library Administrative ' I , I Officer serves ex officio on each com- mittee. These committees may discuss any topic within their sphere of func- tional responsibility and may appoint ad hoc subcommittees to deal with special topics. Like the Columbia standing com- mittees Staff Resource Committees have been appointed in such areas as a col- lection development, personnel, public services, technical processes, etc. Though the many committees and the time consumed in interaction may seem formidable, there is little doubt that they do open up the communication lines in a large library system. Unfor- tunately, many staff members come to feel isolated from the administration as a university library expands rapidly in size. As a non-UCLA colleague of mine remarked, "One of our biggest hurdles is the remoteness and depersonalization of administration from other staff. These are some of the attendant disadvantages with growth." Whether or not anything comes of the UCLA experiment it is surely unique among American university libraries in approach and design. In cooperation with the UCLA Survey Research Center, a Library Administrative Network Eval- uation Committee studied the new struc- ture through questionnaires to the en- tire staff in spring 1971. Although the report has now been completed, tbe re- sults have not yet been released. Hope- fully someone on the UCLA library staff will write up the results of this sh1dy and share them with the profession. The only point one can make for the present is that the UCLA system is definitely non- hierarchical in structure and seems to have assured the . maximum participa- tion by a very large number of staff members over a considerable period of time. In contrast to the UCLA plan, the recommended overall plan for reorga- nization of the Columbia University li- braries envisions the creation of an Of- Urban University Libraries I 185 £ice of Vice-President and University Li- brarian to be a part of the university's top management team, two systemwide staff offices for planning and personnel, and three large, mutually interdepen- dent units with major operating respon- sibilities: the services group, the support group, and the resources group. Although building upon the strengths of the bi- furcated plan, the recommended plan would redistribute all activities, expand them in concept, and enhance them in emphasis. Under this sort of structure the role of the new vice-president and uni- versity librarian (already an accom- plished fact) remains very strong and the summary report unequivocally favors the current approach to centralized con- trol of all library resources and person- nel. Some elements of peer evaluation are introduced through a Staff Develop- ment Committee which will evaluate professional librarians, though there would be a continuation of the primary administrative functions of performance review and salary decision. Clerical and general assistance staff would continue under the present university and union arrangements, a development stemming from the strike in 1968 and formalized by a vote of the clerical staff to unionize in March 1969. Columbia appears to want the best of both worlds. With ARL and CLR involvement, subsequent de- velopments will be of interest to all li- brarians. Another development in library man- agement which is just getting underway is unionization, which first came to li- braries from clerical staffs. Now a good- ly number of professional staffs are or- ganizing, with the pattern not yet clear on how far this may go. Under provi- sions of the Taylor law in New York state, all state employees must belong to some bargaining agent. For the City Univer- sity of New York, since academic li- brarians are defined in the bylaws as faculty, this means participation with the 186 I College & Research Libraries • May 1972 faculty in the Legislative Conference, a bargaining agent which negotiates a three-year contract spelling out in de- tail the rights and privileges of all · fac- ulty members. There are also contracts for other staff members, including full- time and part-time clerical employees. CUNY librarians are understandably proud of their recently acquired faculty status and being included in the union contract with the faculty does give them leverage within the academic communi- ty. It also provides one of the most at- tractive pay scales in the country, very carefully defined promotion, tenure, and grievance procedures, and enviable work load, and severe constraints upon the power of the chief librarian. Current sources of friction are work hours at night and the presumed right to elect rather than appoint chief librarians. On the negative side has been denial of ten- ure to a highly respected librarian, for what seem arbitrary reasons, the end- less paperwork involved in semester-by- semester evaluation of each individual, and the lack of time for such important activities as planning for better service and strengthening collections. The po- sition of Dean of University Libraries, created to coordinate all libraries in the system and give libraries greater visibil-· ity in the central administration, seems not to have worked out. Unionization is now a possibility for the state of Michigan as a result of a r~­ cently passed law and has been seriously. discussed by the staff at Wayne State University. The University of Chicago had a considerable union organization effort in the winter of 1971, but the Na- tional Labor Relations Board ruled that supervisory personnel could not pro- mote this effort. Since supervisors were behind the movement, the matter has been dropped for the present. Future decisions on this point await clarifica- tion, but a recent case at Fordham would indicate that there are battles yet to be waged. 2 6 As previously men- tioned, clerical employees at Columbia and at New York University are orga- nized but the professional staffs are not. One can look upon unionization as de- sirable or not, but ultimate unionization of all staffs would undoubtedly change the ways in which libraries can be or- ganized and managed. 27 This review of what seem to me to be emerging trends in library organization is, of course, oversimplified. Each institu- tion has its own peculiarities and prob- lems; most have some variation of the basic patterns described. Yet there are similarities. Whether through faculty governance, greater staff involvement through committees or other structures, or through unionization, the stress is upon staff involvement in library deci- sions. Except for one or two universities, most librarians gave their chiefs good marks for encouraging greater partici- pation in management and for their will- ingness to experiment with new forms. Objectively, it is difficult to see that much of this ferment actually results in radical new organizational patterns for libraries. The only really different pat- tern is that at UCLA, although Colum- bia may eventually provide a different pattern too. Interestingly enough, the new Rogers and Weber book, University Library Administration, is a fairly tradi- tional approach to university library or- ganization as it exists. 28 One wonders why no one has taken a new look at Harvard's coordinated decentralization where each school and college library becomes the responsibility of its school or college?29 Why has there been no attempt to ap- ply the principle of decentralization to large universities and their libraries, breaking them down into smaller units and possibly more manageable units? Ex- cept for law and medicine, and even sometimes there, we have maintained the principle of centralization of control. No doubt--' this has been a cardinal prin- •, ' ciple primarily for reasons of economy and efficiency. But what about decen- tralization for service? In our question- ing society a number of individuals would propound the view that, after a certain size has been reached, some form of decentralization is both necessary and desirable. Despite these questions, to which I have not heard very good answers in- cidentally, most urban universities now have and will continue to have central- ized libraries. UCLA and Columbia are obvious exceptions, but they more near- ly resemble their cousins on the plains of the Midwest than they do the typical urban university. Institutions like Wayne State, Southern California, the Univer- sity of Illinois at Chicago, various units of the City University of New York, Georgia State University, and the Uni- versity of Houston are likely to remain commuter universities, and one library, or at most three or four major units, will probably have to serve their needs. Rel- ative to the two or three dozen major university libraries in the country, they remain small in collections and staff, yet substantial in the size of their student bodies. They are essentially service-sta- tion libraries attached to service-station universities. This is not to downgrade their contributions to higher education but to recognize their fundamental dif- ferences from the largely residential uni- versities with many professional schools and heavy graduate enrollments. Many students and faculty of urban universities find their library services elsewhere, either in the central collec- tions of the public libraries, the more extensive collections of private uni- versities, or other special libraries in the area. Unfortunately, no one has yet de- vised any satisfactory means to com- pensate these libraries for the services they render the urban student. With diminishing budgets for big city pub- lic libraries this presents a problem of Urban U niversi.ty Libraries I 187 crisis proportions. The City University of New York did contract with the New York Public Library's central research li- brary, but the funds were not adequate and the services were predictably poor. Establishment of the Graduate Center of the City University across the street from the NYPL seemed an unusually far- sighted idea at the time. Like most co- operative enterprises this one apparent- ly never got off the ground. To my own great disappointment I walked across the street from Wayne State to the Detroit Public Library one Thursday evening at 6:00 p.m. only to discover that budg- etary constraints forced the closing of this great library at 5:30p.m. every day except Monday. Meanwhile private uni- versities, in an attempt to recover some of the costs incurred 'by outside. bor- rowers, are raising their borrower's fees. A truly exciting development is the Midtown Manhattan Branch of the NYPL, a collection of some quarter of a million of the most heavily used books needed by the college undergraduate. Duplication has been extensive, with the provision that one copy of any title must remain in the. library at all times. Sev- eral visits at various times of the day indicated that Midtown :Manhattan is a highly successful library operation. An additional three such libraries were scheduled for New York City, but ·re- duction in funding makes this seem un- likely for the near future. Thus as urban university librarians struggle with the problem of how they should organize for service, they con- front several contradictory thrusts. En- rollment pressures will continue to be heavy. Financial resources are. likely either to stabilize or diminish. Staffs want to be part of the action: in policy decisions, in developing goals, in deter- mining their own professional develop- ment and rewards, and even in that area usually marked "Faculty Only" -develop- ment of the collections. They believe, 188 I College & Research Libraries • May 1972 and probably with justification, that they know better how to make the maximum use of the limited resources they have for the benefit of the university's stu- dents and faculty. Moreover, those in- stitutions upon which they have tradi- tionally relied, the public libraries and the research collections of major pri- vate universities, will be available under more restrictions than heretofore. Ob- viously the urban university librarian does not live in splendid isolation from the total realm of higher education and must, as a part of his professional re- sponsibility, work for the good of all li- braries in his area. Such problems seem almost over- whelming and the tendency to despair would be quite forgiveable. Yet with few exceptions I discovered little breast- beating, few mea culpas, and, even in an institution that should have had the greatest concern for its future, a kind of faith in the life of learning that was heartwarming indeed. Though tensions do exist and may even mount, especially with pressure from outside agencies, but also from within staffs, there is a re- markable willingness to use one's abil- ities as a professional in the best sense of that word. Whatever organizational pat- terns emerge, the urban university li- braries are likely to take them in their stride, adopt the best after careful staff analysis, and then move on to more ef- fective service. A year ago I might not have said that, or if I had, it might not have had the ring of conviction. After visiting with many dedicated and intel- ligent librarians in universities from coast to coast, I am optimistic about the future of academic libraries and the aca- demic librarian. NoTES 1. Theodore Samore, "College and Universi- ty Library Statistics," The Bowker Annual of Library and Book Trade Information (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1971), p.B-10. 2. Ibid. 3. See my "Resources for Research in Urban Areas," Wilson Library Bulletin 41:502-09 (Jan. 1967), as well as Robert T. Grazier, "The Development of the Urban Univer- sity Library," Library Trends 10:460 (April 1962). 4. Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, Inc., P1·oblems in University Library Management; A Study Conducted ... for the Association of Research Libraries and the American Council on Education (Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, 1970), p.31. (Hereafter, BAH, Problems in Uni- versity Library Management.) 5. "College and University Library Statistics," CRL 4:158 (March 1943). 6. "College and University Library Statistics," CRL 11:155 (April 1950). 7. See, for example, Eugene H. Wilson's ex- cellent article, "Government and Control of the College Library," in Hem1an H. Fussier, ed., The Function of the Library in the Modern College, The Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Graduate Li- brary School (Chicago: University of Chi- cago Press, 1954), p.22-36. 8. Arthur M. McAnally, "Organization of Col- lege and University Libraries," Library Trends 1:23 (July 1952). 9. BAH, Problems in University Library Man- agement, p.iii-iv. 10. "University Library Organization and Pat- terns to Be Studied at Columbia Uni- versity Libraries," CRL Recent Develop- ments no.299, for release 6 Dec. 1970. 11. Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, Inc., Organiza- tion and Staffing of the Libraries of Co- lumbia University: A Summary of the Case Study (Washington, D.C.: Associa- tion of Research Libraries, 1972). (Here- after, BAH, Organization and Staffing.) 12. Garland G. Parker, "50 Years of Collegiate Enrollments: 1919-20 to 1969-70," School and Society 98:287 (Summer 1970). 13. A good review of the urban university li- brary can be found in Lorena A. Garloch, ed., "Urban University Libraries," Library Trends 10 (April 1962). While this issue does need updating, it still contains much useful information. 14. Holley, "Resources for Research," and Grazier, "The Development." 15. BAH, Problems in University Library Man- agement, p.31. 16. Lawrence A. Allen and Barbara C. Con- roy, "Social Interaction Skills," Library Trends20:78-91 (July 1971). 17. Maurice P. Marchant, "Participative Man- agement as Related to Personnel Develop- ment," Library Trends 20:48--59 (July 1971 ). 18. "Standards for Faculty Status for College and University Librarians," CRL News (Sept. 1971), p.217. 19. "Standards for Faculty Status for College and University Librarians," CRL News (June 1971), p.17l. 20. "Faculty Government," Faculty Manual 1971-72 (Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami, 1971), p.33. 21. Ibid., p.36. 22. Stanley E. Seashore, "Main Themes for 'Staff Participation in Management,' " Asso- Urban University Libraries I 189 ciation of Research Libraries, Minutes, 75th Meeting, January 17-18, 1970, p.38. 23. Association of Research Libraries, Minutes, 78th Meeting, May 14- 15, 1971, p.23. 24. BAH, Organization and Staffing, p.18-23. 25. Joanna E. Tallman, "The New Library Management Network at the University of California, Los Angeles." (ditto) 26. "NLRB Reaffirms Its Jurisdiction in Bar- gaining at Private Colleges," Chronicle of Higher Education 6 (27 Sept. 1971), p.1, 3. 27. See Rutherford D. Rogers and David C. Weber, University Library Administration (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1971), "Li- brary Unions," p.54-57. 28. Ibid., p.61-88. 29. Douglas W. Bryant, "Centralization and Decentralization at Harvard," CRL 22: 328-34 (Sept. 1961).