College and Research Libraries PAMELA REEVES JuniOr College Libraries Enter· the Seventies The junior college as a major focus of higher education is a relatively new development in most parts of this country. An extensive ques- tionnaire survey and program of site visits reveals norms of practice in five areas of junior college library operation: instruction in library use; community relations; collection development; staffing, hours and circulation practices; and automation. Notable trends include strong audiovisual services,. liberal circulation policies, and limited profes- sional coverage. Findings reveal a profile of library services resem- bling a cross between university and public library operation. BIG NEWS IN EDUCATION during the past decade has been the public two-year col- lege boom. The number of junior col- leges increased by over two-thirds during that time, and enrollment increased al- most five-fold. In thirteen years before 1968, the proportion of all undergradu- ates who were in two-year colleges in- creased from 18 to 28 percent. By now, at least one third of all students starting higher education enter a junior college. 1 Geographic distribution remains un- even; in California and Florida, over .4alf of the undergraduates and over two-thirds of the entering freshmen are in junior colleges. 2 Junior college students present a great range of traits but by and large are sig- · nificantly different from four-year col- lege students: lower in academic ability and aspirations, older, from lower socio- economic levels. A larger proportion of them are part-time students concurrent- ly holding a job; most are commuters. Ms. Reeves is acting campus librarian, Cuyahoga Community College, Metropoli- tan Campus, Cleveland, Ohio. In most respects they resemble their nonstudent age-peers more than they re- semble four-year college students.3 Given the recent growth boom, there are many librarians who came to junior colleges with previous experience in public, school, and university libraries. They have had to adapt. Their new cli- ents are less sophi.:sticated than univer- sity students, yet have course-related needs which are less casual than those of most public library patrons and somewhat more challenging than those of high school students. Those in tech- nical programs have needs that can stump the typically generalist librarian. Most of the meager literature pro- duced so far about junior college li- braries, if not describing specific li- braries, deals with standards or guide- lines. This article reports instead what is actually being done at junior college libraries. For the survey reported here, some 600 questionnaires were sent to junior college libraries in the United States; re- sponses were received from 250. Visits were made to 53 colleges around the country, covering the seven "pacesetter /7 8 I College & Research Libraries • January 1973 states" (California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Texas, and Wash- . ington ) and most of the fourteen other states which are undergoing substantial junior college development. 4 The responding 250 included private as well .as public colleges but private colleges were a small proportion ( 14 re- sponses ) , partly because of the other criteria used: comprehensive curriculum (both college-parallel and technical-oc- cupational), at least five years old, and at least 400 students. 5 I~ addition to basic institutional data, information was collected in five areas: ( 1) instruction in library use, ( 2) rela- tions with the outside community, ( 3) collection-building, ( 4) sta·ffing and public service, ( 5) uses of automation. (Audio-visual materials and methods, which have an important place in most junior college libraries, will be studied in a separate project.) The sample divided itself into four approximately equal full-time-equiva- lent ( FTE) enrollment groups, as fol- lows: ( 1) under 900, ( 2) 900-1,999, ( 3) 2,000-4,299, ( 4) 4,300 and over. For FTE as percent of total headcount, the median was 73 percent. As to open- ing year, the sample included four ap- proximately equal groups: ( 1) pre- World War II, (2) 1945-1960, (3) 196t-1965, ( 4) . 1966 and later. Nine- teen percent of the respondents are lo~ cated in a central city, 14 percent in an inner suburb or residential city area, and 66 percent in an outer suburb, small town, or rural area. Regular public or ·college-operated transportation is .avail- able to only 29 percent of the respon- dents. (Here's where the much-touted · "open door" turns out to be partly closed.) LIBRARY INSTRUCTION The door is open far enough, how- ever, to let in a great number of stu- dents who need a great deal of help in using a library. By far the most com- mon approach to library instruction, re- ported by 88 percent of the respon- dents, is group instruction to classes. En- glish classes are the most frequent but a great variety of others were men- tioned. Many librarians . expressed a strong preference for giving such in- struction only when it served an imme- diate assignment need. Also common-reported by 73 percent -is the library manual, ranging from near-textbooks to flip-tab pamphlets. A useful variant found in a few libraries is a set of handout sheets each describ- ing library tools for a specific subject area. Required orientation or class visits are not very prevalent or p0pular. A few colleges-19 percent-offer credit courses in library use. Quite a few-40 percent -use audiovisual techniques for library instruction. Most often mentioned was a slide-tape presentation. Among the more impressive, though uncommon, techniques are: audio-tutorial programs with workbooks, a duplicate card cata- log (inherited from a closed branch), and cassette-tape tours. NEIGHBORS Junior college libraries reflect ' reason- ably well the community orientation of the parent institutions. Sixty percent of the respondents loan directly to unaffili- . ated community residents, some on a de- posit or annual fee basis. As might be expected, the percent is somewhat high- er ( 68 percent) among those in near- rural locations where they are often the biggest library available. Among those in central cities, only 36 percent loan to outsiders. Wherever there is a consortium which includes academic libraries, chances are the local junior college will be repre- sented; 44 percent reported such an af- filiation. As to specific areas of coopera- tion with other libraries in their region, 37 percent of the respondents contrib- ute to a union list of serials, 10 percent , Junior College Libraries I 9 TABLE 1 FTE Enrollment Median FTE ( approx.) Vols. per FTE Student 400- 899 900-1,999 2,000-4,299 over 4,300 650 1,450 3,150 8,750 35.8 20.1 12.6 9.1 to a union catalog of books, 7 percent .are in a teletype system, and 8 percent reported shared acquisition or process- ing. Being .part of a multicampus junior college district does not seem to inspire much more sharing. Of 65 districted colleges in the sample, less than half re- ported any sort of district-level collab- oration beyond interlibrary loan. Only 37 percent reported a union catalog of books and/ or serials, and only 31 per- cent reported di~trict level acquisitions, cataloging and/ or processing. Campus libraries are operated autonomously in at least two-thirds of the cases; some of the others reported a district director of libraries, some reported the situation in flux, and some gave ambiguous answers. On many of my visits I sensed an edgi- ness about campus autonomy, a reluc- tance to get any more involved with sis- ter campuses than necessary-particular- ly in some big-city districts where the bureaucracy is inevitably heav}r. The district system may be useful for rais- ing money, increasing access, and limit- ing campus size in populous areas, but librarians aren't rushing in great num·- bers to exploit its other potentials. CoLLECTION- BuiLDING As can be expected, the number of volumes per FTE student is a good deal lower in junior college libraries than in academic libraries generally-an average of 19.8 volumes as compared to '51.6 Li- braries with at least 70 percent of the students in college-parallel programs have a higher average, 23.4 volumes per FTE student. Enrollment makes a great deal of difference, of course. (See Table 1.) Median FTE enrollments were identi- fied and average volume per FTE stu- dent computed for the seven pacesetter states. Texas and Washington showed ratios somewhat lower than expected for their enrollments: Michigan and New York showed exceptionally high ratios. The private colleges averaged 42.8 per student, appropriate for their median FTE enrollment of 544. ( See Table 2.) TABLE 2 State Median FTE Vols. per FTE Student California New York Illinois Florida Washington · Michigan Texas 5,535 3,808 3,312 2,383 2,316 2,2B7 1,135 10.2 15. 12.7 18.1 14.2 19.7 20.3 Annual growth rate of book collec- tions varies .somewhat with age. The median rate is about 10 percent. For colleges and universities generally, . the average is 7.7; their median age is of course a lot higher. 7 For schools in the youngest age group, 5 years old or less, the median growth rate is about 15.5 percent. In the next age group it is about 10.5 percent, in the 1941-60 age group it is about 9 percent, and in the oldest group it is about 8 percent. In each age group there are some schools in each growth rate quartile; the young- est age group shows the least amount of spread. New York and Illinois schools show growth rates a bit higher than the norm for their median age group; 10 I College & Research Libraries • January 1973 Michigan schools are a bit behind in that respect. Participation of teaching faculty in book selection varies widely; the propor- tion of books selected by them averages 46 percent. Measures to encourage fac- ulty involvement, such as circulation of CHOICE cards and publishers' litera- ture, active library committees, specific liaison assignments for librarians and/ or teachers, and frequent reporting, generally seems to pay off. Many librari- ans find it necessary to cull faculty re- quests which are too numerous or too high-level. Intangible factors such as personal relationships and general fac- ulty morale have impact here; a high faculty turnover rate seems to hamper faculty -library cooperation. Departmental book budgets are rare for junior college libraries, reported by only 19 percent; some others allocate in- formally within the library budget. Slightly over half of the respondents reported 1 percent or more of their books to be student-selected. Less than 10 percent reported routine purchase of currently used textbooks. Very few use approval plans, except for reviewing films. One percent of the collection or less is kept on Reserve by 41 percent of the sample; 14 percent reported keeping over 3 percent on Reserve. A few of the respondents are government document depositories, most but not all of them in near-rural locations. A good many li- braries provide popular reading via the MeN aughton ·plan and/ or a paperback collection. In use of book-selection tools, junior college librarians appear to have one foot in each camp, i.e. public and aca- demic libraries. CHOICE was the most frequently mentioned as a tool in regu- lar use ( 85 percent ) . Next came Library ] ournal ( 66 percent), Booklist ( 41 per- cent) and The New York Times Book Review ( 33 percent) . Other sources mentioned by over 10 percent of the re- spondents were Publisherl Weekly, pub- lishers' literature, specialized journals, Wilson Library Bulletin, Saturday Re- view, and Books for Junior College Li- braries. (Tools such as BJCL would no doubt have been more prominent had the sample included the youngest li- braries.) Almost all of the respondents ( 95 percent) reported the use of jobbers. Some use them for only a small propor- tion of their purchases, but most use them for the bulk of their purchases (average, 70 percent). In some cases the cataloging and processing are also han- dled by the jobber. Even among colleges using shared acquisition services, well over half reported using jobbers for 60 percent or more of their purchases. STAFFING AND SERVICE Most junior college libraries manage to have a professional on duty during all open hours. As a group, however, they lag behind other academic libraries in ratio of professional staff to students. Academic libraries as a whole average one to 410; junior college libraries av- erage one to 658. 8 If we assume the use of jobbers to be more common in jun- ior colleges, that provides some explana- tion. Of course junior college libraries also don't need bibliographers, archi- vists, or subject specialists, as university libraries do. Junior college libraries, on the other hand, are more likely to need media specialists on their staffs. And their students have more need for indi- vidual professional help; you can't just point to the catalog .and hand them a map. Again, of course, the ratio varies with school size. The private colleges' ratio of one to 301 fits their median enroll- ment of 544. (See Table 3.) Among the pacesetter states, New York, Illinois, and Florida showed rela- tively favorable ratios with respect to their enrollments; Washington, Califor- nia, .and Michigan were behind the l ) t TABLE 3 Median FTE FTE Enrollment (Approx.) Student: Prostaff 400- 899 650 352:1 900-1,999 1,450 519:1 2,000-4,299 3,150 711:1 4,300 and over 8,750 1,088:1 TABLE 4 State MedianFTE Student: Prostaff California 5,535 1,312:1 New York 3,808 552:1 Illinois 3,312 680:1 Florida 2,383 507:1 Washington 2,316 834:1 Michigan 2,287 728:1 Texas 1,135 451:1 norm for their enrollments. (See Table 4.) Almost all the libraries ( 239) report- ed employing at least one library profes- sional; on the average they comprise 40 percent of the staff. Thirty-nine percent of the professional librarians have a second master's degree. The profession- al librarians generally have faculty status. Almost half reported a nonlibrary professional on the staff; where present, such comprised on the average 22 per- cent of the staff. This amounts to an overall average of roughly 10 percent; for academic libraries as a whole the figure is 5 percent. 9 The most common role is that of audiovisual specialist, re- ported by about 43 percent of the re- spondents employing a nonlibrary pro- fessional. (This position is filled by a library professional in 16 percent of the libraries.) Circulation and technical service roles for nonlibrary profession- als were each reported by 12 percent of the respondents who employ them. In colleges which educate paraprofes- sionals and which do not operate at the highest academic level, one might expect to find library paraprofessionals and in- deed 45 percent of the respondents re- Junior College Libraries I 11 port employing them. 10 Where em- ployed, the LT A averages 23 percent of the staff. Use of LTA's probably ex- plains in part the poor professional-to- student ratio . . LTA's are often put in charge of circulation or periodicals, po- sitions more likely to be held by pro- fessionals in ~niversity libraries. Only 17 percent of the junior colleges report- ed a professional librarian in charge of circulation and only 14 percent reported one in charge of periodicals. Where L T A's are employed by junior college libraries they have a higher sal- ary level than clerical staff in 80 percent of the cases. As we know, however, ac- ceptance of the L T A varies with local- ity and librarian. Almost 40 percent of the libraries whose institutions train LTA's do not hire them. The State Uni- versity of New York provides no LTA salary level, but New York civil service does so de facto with its middle level of "Principal Library Clerk." Illinois civil service doesn't even have a de facto sal- ary level for library paraprofessionals. California civil service provides a slot for L T A's, and many California junior college libraries hire them. Probably the best climate for LTA's is in North Car- olina: several junior colleges train them, most hire them, and the civil service rec- ognizes them. Economic climate can play havoc with the LTA's status. Where the unemploy- ment rate is high, most librarians seem quite willing to under-employ and will hire college, sometimes even library sci- ence, graduates into LTA positions. The same situation may occur in university communities where there are college- educated "captive wives."11 Audiovisual paraprofessionals, or me- dia technicians, are employed by about 41 percent of the respondents, and where present, account for 14 percent of the staff on the average. Library clerks are almost as sure to be found ( 88 percent) as professional librarians, and average 44 percent of the staff. All 12 I College & Research Libraries • January 1973 of the libraries hire student assistants. From the data there emerges a profile of a prototype junior college library staff serving an FTE enrollment of 2,250. It looks like this: three profes- sional librarians, one with a second mas- ter's; one nonlibrary professional for AV services or one library paraprofes- sional; three library clerks; and one half-time media technician. The newer junior college libraries generally use microfilm rather than bind back periodicals, or buy microfilm for some and keep others loose for a few years. Many older libraries continue or complement their bound collection with microfilm. Almost one-third of the li- braries circulate their unbound periodi- cals. Some libraries circulate practically anything mobile-not only phonodiscs but cassette tapes and players, art prints, microfiche and readers, even reference books. Among valuable fringe services com- mon in junior college libraries are type- writers ( coin-op or free), photocopy machines, and conference rooms. Some libraries provide calculators in the typ- ing rooms. Some will transfer library audio holdings ' to a student's own tape. At one, I found a few drafting tables. Almost all of the libraries are open weekday evenings except Friday. Thirty- five percent report Saturday open hours and 35 percent report Sunday hours, some having both; altogether, 53 percent are open some time on the weekend. Saturday classes are reported for over half of the schools . that have Saturday library hours; Sunday classes are very rare. Sunday hours appear to get much more student use than do Saturday hours. Weekend hours are slightly less common than average for central city schools. They are no more common with the 23 percent which have residential facilities except for the private schools; 13 of the 14 private colleges have dor- mitories and 1:2 of them have weekend library hours. There was no formal effort to deter- mine the prevalent classification system used, but interview notes and manuals for part of the sample indicate that roughly two-thirds are using LC. Many of these have switched over from Dew- ey during the past decade or so; one California librarian observed that the rush to LC seems over now, and many West Coast libtaries remain "unconvert- ed." Most of the Washington junior colleges use Dewey. Those in New York's SUNY and CUNY system and in the Chicago system use LC. When asked, most librarians seemed happy with whichever system they have. Those using LC consider it more economical (one li- brary reduced the number of catalogers from 23~ to one after the switch). Those using Dewey consider it more suitable for their students and their col- lection. AUTOMATION Only 27 percent of the respondents have automated one or more of their operations. Half of those are in the largest enrollment group, and the use of automation decreases as school size decreases. Automation was reported most frequently for catalog production ( 14 in card form, 13 in book form, and two on microfilm). Other areas of au,to- mation, in descending order of fre- quency, are circulation, serials list (sometimes with check-in control), shelflist, acquisitions, various special- ized lists, and pocket/ label production. In almost half the cases, keypunching or tape-typewriting is done by library staff; in 23 percent of the cases at least some of the programming is done by li- brary staff. Further automation is planned for 53 percent of those report- ing automated operations. WHERE WE STAND In reporting library operating ex- penditure as a percentage of total col- lege expenditure, the respondents pro- duced an average percent of 5.1 percent. For all academic libraries this percent was reported to be 3.8 for the same year ( 1970-71) in The Bowker Annual and 4.3 for 1968-69 in the HEW Analytic Report. (See Table 5.) State Washington Florida Texas Illinois Michigan New York California TABLE 5 Library Expenditure as Percent of Total Institutional Expenditure 5.9% 5.8 5.5 5.2 5.2 3.8 3.6 Two plausible reasons come to mind for the higher percent in junior col- leges. One is that a large proportion of them are in their early years when rela- tively high book budgets are necessary. The other reason is the greater promi- nence of audiovisual media it). junior college libraries. Although the questionnaire did not cover A V services directly, it is evident from staffing data, unsolicited written comments, and visit notes that at least half of the libraries handle most of their colleges· A V activities. For those that do so, the average percent of total college expenditues is 5.3 and the aver- age expense per volume acquired is $10.06. 12 For the other libraries, the averages are 5 percent and $7.95. An indication that junior college libraries exceed aca- demi9 libraries generally in audiovisual services is the fact that roughly 10 per- cent of the academic library "book" budgets are spent on audiovisual materi- als, whereas in one of the pacesetter states 29 percent of all junior college li- brary materials are nonprint.1 3 As junior college libraries enter the seventies, several observations based on my visits seem relevant. Most libraries provide a variety of audiovisual materi- als. Many are not as service-oriented as Junior College Libraries I 13 they should be: they tend to be short on professional staff and it was rare to find a staff that seemed always ready to take the initiative with a student who had a "question on his face." Many of the libraries that I saw were recently-built. Most seemed attractive, easy to run and easy to use, some were noisy or badly cut up, or had such bur- dens as two major entrance-exit areas. Many of the host/ hostess librarians whom I visited were not only cordial and helpful but seemed energetic, crea- tive, and effective. I was especially im- pressed with the librarians I encoun- tered in the Northwest. Among other li- braries on my itinerary that seemed es- pecially successful were: Macomb-South ( Michigan), Monroe (New York), St. Peters burg -Clearwater ( Florida), Wilkes ( North Carolina), Florissant Valley (Missouri), and San Antonio (Texas). VISITS Monroe County Community College, Monroe, Michigan Macomb County Community College, South Campus, Warren, Michigan Oakland Community College, Orchard Ridge Campus, Farmington, Michi- gan Schoolcraft College, Livonia, Michigan Erie Community College, North Cam- pus, Buffalo, New York Monroe Community College, Rochester, New York Malcolm X College, Chicago, Illinois Wilbur Wright College, Chicago, Illi- nois College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois Joliet Junior College, Illinois Lakeland Community College, Mentor, Ohio Lorain Cmpmunity College, Lorain, Ohio Sinclair Community College, Dayton, Ohio Community College of Allegheny Coun- ty, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 14 I College & Research Libraries • January 1973 Worcester Junior College, Massachusetts ( Independent) Holyoke Community College, Massachu- setts Bronx Community College, New York Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York New York City Community College, Brooklyn, New York Northampton County Area Community College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Community College of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Montgomery College, Rockville, Mary- land St. Petersburg Junior College, St. Peters- burg, Florida St. Petersburg Junior College, Clearwa- ter, Florida Miami-Dade Junior College, South Cam- pus, Florida Miami-Dade Junior College, North Campus, Florida Palmer College, Charleston, South Caro- lina (Independent) Kennesaw Junior College, Marietta, Georgia Clayton Junior College, Forest Park, Georgia Caldwell Community College & Techni- cal Institute, Lenoir, North Carolina Wilkes Community College, Wilkesboro, North Carolina Florissant Valley Community College (St. Louis District), Ferguson, Mis- souri Meramec Community College (St. Louis District) , Kirkwood, Missouri Penn Valley Community College, Kan- sas City, Missouri Navarro Junior College, Corsicana, Texas El Centro College, Dallas, Texas Tarrant County Junior College, South Campus, Fort Worth, Texas San Antonio College, San Antonio, Texas Phoenix College (Maricopa Co. J. C. District), Phoenix, Arizona Golden West College, Huntington Beach, California Fullerton Junior College, Fullerton, Cal- ifornia Riverside City College, Riverside, Cali- fornia Citrus College, Azusa, California Allan Hancock College, Santa Maria, California College of San Mateo, San Mateo, Cali- fornia Laney College (Peralta District), Oak- land, California San Jose City College, California DeAnza College, Cupertino, California Lane Community College, Eugene, Ore- gon Clackamas Community College, Oregon City, Oregon Skagit Valley College, Mount Vernon, Washington Shorline Community College, Seattle, Washington Green River Community College, Au- burn, Washington REFERENCES 1. We won't get hung up on terminology. "Junior" and "community" college are equally common terms; "junior" is shorter. 2. Leland L. Medsker and Dale Tillery, Breaking the Access Barriers: A Profile of Two-Year Colleges (McGraw-Hill, 1971), Ch. 2. 3; Ibid., Ch. 3. 4. So identified by Medsker & Tillery, p. 22. 5. Because I selected from Junior College Di- rectory, which gives founding dates rather than opening dates, I included many that are less than five years old; several re- sponded and were counted. 6. Bronson Price & Doris C. Holladay, Library Statistics for Colleges and Universities, Fall 1969 Analytic Report (U.S. Dept. of H.E.W., 1971 ), p. 24 (reporting for 1968- 69). The average for public institutions was 37. 7. The Bowker Annual of Library and Book Trade Information, 1970-71, p. 8-10. 8. Ibid., In computing the ratio of professional staff to students, I included nonlibrary pro- fessionals, defined as people with a college or university degree in a field other than librarianship. If, as seems evident, the Bowker ratio of 1 to 410 excludes non- library profession~ls, then the junior col- lege ratio is even less favorable by com- parison. 9. Price & Holladay, LSCU Fall 1969 An- alytic Report, p. 2. 10. For this survey they were called "Library Technical Assistant" and were defi11ed as graduates of a two-year college Library Technology program or employees having at least one year of college plus library work experience. Junior College Libraries I 15 11. The questionnaire defined the minimum qualifications for LTA's but did not ask about the backgrounds of those on the staff. Interview discussions revealed that many people classed as LT A's actually had professional qualifications. 12. I asked for the number of (book) volumes added during the past year, and for the "expenditure for books, including nonbook reading and study materials," for the same year. 13. Bowker Annual, p. 55; Washington State Assn. of Community College Librarians and Media Specialists, A Survey of the Learning Resources Programs in the Com- munity Colleges of Washington State, 1970. Library News Bulletin 31: 300-301 ( Oct.- Dec. 1970).