College and Research Libraries


DAVID C. WEBER 

/ '1 

A Century of Cooperative Programs 

Among Academic Libraries 
.~ 

A REVIEW OF COOPERATIVE PROGRAMS 
among colleges and universities over the 
last century leads to the conclusion that 
a few very significant developments and 
changes have taken place during the 
past decade after ninety years of la-
borious and diverse effort toward coop-
erative programs dominated by the ef-
fects of national policy and economic 
conditions. It is an interesting history, 
one made difficult by the plethora of 
data. The present paper uses a histori-
cal perspective in order to assess b~er 
the present and the immediate future. 
The first part chronologically prese~ts 
selected examples of cooperative pro-
grams. The latter section includes de-
tails on a few programs of current spe-
cial significance, comments on some 
strengths and weaknesses, and reaches 

111
. a few conclusions. 

EARLY HISTORICAL REVIEW 

Before reviewing the past century, it 
...., may be worthwhile taking a brief look 

at circumstances in academic libraries 
>1 two hundred years ago. At that time 

academic libraries in America were in-
deed insignificant by today's perspective. 
Dartmouth had 305 volumes. Brown 
University owned 312 volumes including 

't fifty-two received in 1772 which were 
"by far the greatest donation our little 

~ 
library has yet had." Princeton had 
more than 1,200 volumes, all to be con-

sumed by fire in 1801. The University 
of Pennsy~vania' s chief distinction in 
1776 was that during the Revolution it 
had received a gift of scientific books 
from Louis XVI. Columbia stor~d its 
volumes during the war in the city hall 
or elsewhere; British soldiers took them 
to barter for grog, and only six or seven 
hundred volumes were found-thirty 
years later-in St. Paul's Chapel. By the 
time of the Revolution, Yale had col-
lected over 4,000 volumes in its library. 
The College of William and Mary had 
a very few thousand volumes. Harvard 
had lost all but 404 volumes of its li-
brary by fire in 1764, yet by the Revo-
lutionary War it had been rebuilt prob-
ably to nearly 10,000 volumes. 

By 1876 the circumstances were mark-
edly different. Great libraries had come 
upon the American scene. Some remark-
able librarians had created most of the 
essential concepts and policies for li-
brary administrative methods. Collec-
tions began to grow rapidly, with a great 
deal of attention necessarily given to 
cataloging and classification. The year 
1876 was momentous in that the Ameri-
can Library Association was formed. 1 
The American Library ] ournal was 
founded with four of its twenty-one as-
sociate editors "leading the profession" 
from university libraries. The Library 
Bureau was established as a supply 
house providing a major force toward 

I 205 



206 1 College & Research Libraries • May 1976 

standardization. It also was the year in 
which the classic -volume, Public Li-
braries in the United States of America; 
Their History, Condition and Manage-
ment, was published by the United 
States Bureau of Education. One looks 
in vain, however, in that major volume 
of 1,187 pages for any statement re-
garding cooperation among academic li-
braries. 

Cooperative cataloging was one of the 
very first interests of the new library as-
sociation. A committee was formed to 
devise a plan for continuation of 
Poole's "Index to Periodical Literature," 
and another committee tackled the mat-
ter of standardization of cataloging. 
Several articles in the Library I ournal 
discussed plans for cooperation in in-
dexing and cataloging. Yet it was a 
Committe·e on Cooperation in Indexing 
and Cataloguing College Libraries, 
which was appointed August 1876, that 
is significant with respect to academic 
cooperation. It was formed by the li-
brarians of the University of Rochester, 
Cornell University, Vassar College, Syra-
cuse University, and the New York State 
Library. This committee presented to 
the University Convocation of the State 
of New York in July 1877 a substantial 
report which called upon college li-
braries to speak out on any special 
adaptation of the cooperative catalog-
ing movement which was required for 
their special wants: 

At present the work is chiefly in the 
hands of the public libraries. . . . In 
making this report your committee do 
not wish to be understood as endorsing 
fully all the methods proposed by the 
committees of the Library Association. 
It is very doubtful whether as good 
cataloging can be done, in the manner 
proposed, by a considerable number 
of libraries, even under very explicit 
rules, as might be expected of one or 
two experts, who should work for pay 
under the general direction and criti-
cism of the committee. Cooperation 
can be secured quite as effectively by 

a combination of capital as by a com-
bination of labor. In.such an enterprise 
the first most important thing to be 
aimed at is perfection of work. . . . 
Other points might be mentioned but 
a review of the methods proposed is 
not the object of this report. We be-
lieve that it will be far better for us to 
work with the Library Association, 
though we may differ in opinion as to 
some details, than to undertake any 
separate work in this state.2 

The decade of the 1890s witnessed 
the beginnings of major national pro-
grams of academic library cooperation. 
It did not come unannounced onto the 
scene. There had indeed been discus-
sions over several previous decades, at 
least since 1851, and no doubt there may 
have been a large number of local ar-
rangements of such cooperation. In 
1898 the librarian of the University of 
California announced willingness to 
lend to other libraries that would lend 
to the University of California. 

In January 1898 the American Li-
brary Association began publishing 
analytic cards as a shared indexing/ cata-
loging program. The copy for these 
cards was prepared by five major li-
braries for articles in some 250 serials. 
The H. W. Wilson Company took over 
this analytic activity in June 1919 for 
incorporation into the International In-
dex of Periodicals. 

INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

In another consideration, the librari-
an of Princeton University, Ernest C. 
Richardson, proposed in the spring of 
1899 "a lending library for libraries" 
and suggested that this might be the Li-
brary of Congress or an independent 
organization. 

The Library of Congress issued a pol-
icy governing interlibrary loans in 1907 
and lent to such an extent that by 1909 
it loaned. 1,023 volumes to 119 libraries 
-including forty-nine academic li-
braries which accounted for half of 
these loans. An ALA interlibrary loan 

• 

+ 



• 

A Century of Cooperative Programs I 207 

code was first published in 1916. 
If a union catalog of holdings is per-

mitted within the definition of coopera-
tion, there were then major develop-
ments, notably so in the first decade of 
this century. The first regional union 
catalog was created in 1901 at the Cali-
fornia State Library. After first being 
limited to periodicals, it was soon en-
larged to cover all nonfiction. The Na-
tional Union Catalog was established in 
1900. In November 1901 the Library of 
Congress began selling copies of its 
printed catalog cards as well as galley 
proofs of these cards. During the win-
ter of 1901-02 it began the donation of 
complete "depository" sets of cards to 
certain libraries. Some libraries receiv-

,.; ing these began immediately to file them 

t 

1 into their public card catalogs, thus con-
stituting union catalogs. The University 
of Chicago Library from 1913 and the 
Harvard College Library from 1911 
published printed cards, the scope de-
signed to supplement LC and comple-
ment each other. Chicago distributed its 
cards from 1913 until1917. (When Chi-
cago began distributing its cards May 2, 
1913, those titles also owned by Har-
vard, about 30 percent, appeared with 
the symbol "UCL-HCL.") The Univer-
sity of California issued them from 
1915 to 1917. In July 1918 the Universi-
ty of Chicago began publishing analytic 
cards for certain European serials. The 
University of Michigan published for 
some time after 1924; the University of 
Illinois started in 1926. Wesleyan Uni-
versity published cards sold to thirty-
two research libraries from 1934 until 
World War II. The Library of Con-
gress established its Cooperative Cata-
loging Division in 1932.3 

Another cooperative endeavor is that 
of joint acquisition programs. Perhaps 
the earliest example is the 1913-14 
South American buying trip to eleven 
countries by Walter Lichtenstein, the 
Librarian of Northwestern University. 
He acquired 9,000 volumes plus news-

papers and a few manuscripts on be-
half of Harvard University, Brown 
University, Northwestern University, 
the John Crerar Library, and the Ameri-
can Antiquarian Society. One or two 
features of this joint effort are of note: 

In Venezuela and Bolivia and partly 
also in Brazil the purchases consisted 
of collections which had to be divided 
among the cooperating institutions, 
and naturally included a fair amount 
of material which, either because the 
cooperating institutions already had it 
or because the class of material in 
question is not collected by the institu-
tions which I represented, can be sold 
to other libraries in this country. The 
purchase of collections on joint ac-
count in this manner was a new ex-
periment. It did not seem to me to be 
wholly satisfactory. The chief difficulty 
was that the material could not be 
readily divided until my own return 
to this country, with the result that no 
one knew until I did return how much 
each institution was liable, and hence 
I was considerably hampered in mak-
ing further purchases. As it finally 
turned out, one institution acted to a 
large extent as banker for the other in-
stitutions, which evidently is pleasant 
enough for the latter, but is not quite 
fair to that institution which has the 
misfortune to be the banker .... When 
the collections came to be divided it 
was soon felt that the only possible 
way to divide the cost among the in-
stitutions interested was to devise a 
system of points. A pamphlet was 
counted as one point, an unbound vol-
ume as four, and a bound volume as 
eight.4 

It seems quite certain that the in-
crease in publishing in the 1850s and 
the economics surrounding the Civil 
War brought an end to the common 
practice of publishing library catalogs 
periodically in book . form. It also there-
. by hastened the adoption of unitary 
catalog cards which during the last 
quarter of the nineteenth century be-
came the prevalent mode for listing 



208 I College & Research Libraries • May 1976 

holdings and facilitated sharing of bib-
liographic data. If the more affluent 
times of the 1880s and 1890s resulted in 
phenomenal growth of collections, it 
may have been predictable there would 
be an upsurge in cooperative proposals 
and the beginning of national coopera-
tive programs. 

Despite the 1927 publication of the 
great Union List of Serials in Libraries 
of the United States and Canada, it 
would seem that the decade of the 1920s 
was not a period of new concepts in 
academic library cooperation. With the 
crash of 1929 and conditions of the 
Great Depression, however, there was 
impetus for cooperation which led to 
new programs of which a few among 
academic libraries may be cited. 

Dozens of new union card catalogs 
were begun in the 1930s, stimulated by 
the vast federal relief program. One re-
sult was the 1940-41 survey under the 
sponsorship of the ALA Board of Re-
sources of American Libraries which 
recommended their future coordination 
to assure thorough coverage, minimum 
overlap, and sound fiscal support. 

As a predecessor to cataloging-in-pub-
lication and the National Program for 
Acquisitions and Cataloging (NPAC), 
the Cooperative Cataloging Program be-
gan in 1932. Within ten years nearly 400 
U.S. and Canadian libraries contributed 
data for 60,000 scholarly titles for LC 
editing and publication. 

An informal arrangement among sev-
eral institutions constituted the Coop-
erating Libraries of Upper New York, 
CLUNY. Formed in 1931, it included 
Buffalo University, Colgate University, 
the Grosvenor Library, Hamilton Col-
lege, Syracuse University, Cornell Uni-
versity, and Union College. This group 
functioned until 1939 as a clearing-
house for mutual problems and coop-
erated on a union list of periodicals 
and the joint purchase of microfilm of 
early English publications. 

An example of a formal agreement 

is the Duke University and the Univer-
sity of North Carolina interlibrary proj-
ect. In 1931 these two institutions agreed 
to ~pedal book collecting areas, and the 
libraries exchanged author cards for 
their catalogs. Four years later a mes-
senger service commenced. Two other 
;North Carolina institutions joined in 
1955, and full borrowing privileges 
were extended to all members of each 
institution. 

An example of contractual arrange-
ments among several libraries is the 
Joint University Libraries founded in 
1936 by Vanderbilt University, George 
Peabody College, and Scarritt College 
for Christian Workers. Operating un-
der a joint board of trustees, the facili-
ty is an independent entity, jointly 
owned and financed by the partici-
pants. 5 Ano.ther example is The Clare-
mont Colleges library system which be-
gan in 1931 when a contractual arrange-
ment among the Claremont Graduate 
School, Pomona College, and Scripps 
College established a joint order and 
catalog department to serve the three li-
braries. 

A 1933 example of an arrangement 
for reciprocal borrowing privileges is 
the Atlanta University Center Corpora-
tion in Atlanta, Georgia. With an initi-
ating grant from the General Educa-
tion Board it included Atlanta Univer-
sity, Morehouse College, Spelman Col-
lege, Morris Brown College, Clark 
University, and in 1957 the Interdenom-
inational Theological Center. · 

Another variation of interinstitution-
al cooperation is the unification of aca-
demic libraries under state control. This 
was pioneered in 1932 by the Oregon 
State Board ·of Higher Education which 
appointed one director of libraries for 
the entire state system and established 
the principle of free circulation among 
all state institutions. It also set up a 
central order diVision which now takes 
the form of a combined author list of 
all books and periodicals in the state 

.. 
,. 

+ 



A Century of Cooperative Programs f 209 

system maintained in the Order Depart-
ment of the Oregon State University Li-
brary "to eliminate unnecessary duplica-
tion of materials."6 

MORE RECENT EVENTS 

A highly selective list of other coop-
erative programs of the past forty years 
would include the following: 

1942-0pening of the New England 
Deposit Library ( NEDL) as a 
cooperative storage facility of 
Boston College, Boston Uni-
versity, Harvard University, 
M.I.T., Radcliffe College, Sim-
mons College, Tufts Univer-
sity, and four nonacademic li-
braries. 

1944-The Cooperative Committee 
on Library Building Plans ini-
tiated by President Dodds of 
Princeton to concern itself 
with common problems in the 
planning for and design of 
academic library buildings. 

1946-The Cooperative Acquisitions 
Project for Wartime Publica-
tions conducted by the Library 
of Congress which, over three 
years, shipped nearly a mil-
lion volumes from Europe to 
113 participating American li-
braries. 

1948-Formation of the Universal 
Serial and Book Exchange, Inc. 
(previously named the U.S. 
Book Exchange). Of the ini-
tial members, 106 ( 76 percent) 
were college or university li-
braries; they continue to de-
posit about 70 percent of the 
material exchanged, and they 
receive about the same percent-
age of 'the total distributed. 

1948-Start of servic.e under the 
Farmington Plan to about sixty 
research libraries of a coordi-
nated foreign acquisition pro-
gram for current mateJCials of 
research value-a cooperative 

program born of disconcerting 
experiences with European ac-
quisitions during and immedi-
ately following World War II. 
This major cooperative pro-
gram was one of the most ef-
fective and • significant over 
many years. With 1965 as an 
example, fifty-two libraries ac-
quired 22,419 volumes, consti-
tuting the total research publi-
cations from fourteen coun-
tries, in addition to area assign-
ment receipts from the less-
developed countries. 

1951-0pening of the Midwest Inter-
Library Center, later to be 
known as the Center for Re-
search Libraries, by ten mid-
western university libraries as 
a cooperative akin to the 
NEDL but with a program for 
joint buying and different cate-
gories of deposit or center 
ownership. 

1956-Initiation of the Foreign News-
paper Microfilm Project a_s a 
cooperatively filmed, shared-
positive-copy program managed 
by the Association of Research 
Libraries, the offspring of Har-
vard's duplicate sale program 
begun in 1938. 

1959-The Latin American Coop-
erative Acquisitions Program 
(LA CAP), begun as a com-
mercial endeavor for about 
forty academic libraries. 7 

1961-Congress authorized · expendi-
tures under Public Law 480 of 
blocked currencies for acquisi-
tion and cataloging of multi-
ple copies of publications 
from eight countries. Managed 
by the Library of Congress, 
this PL 480 program benefited 
over 300 academic libraries, 
with materials from Ceylon, 
India, Indonesia, Israel; Nepal, 
Pakistan, United Arab Repub-



210 I College & Research Libraries • May 1976 

lie, and Yugoslavia. 
1965-The Medical Library Assist-

ance Act, creating, among oth-
er programs, the eleven Re-
gional Medical Libraries pro-
viding interlibrary loan and 
reference and consultation ser-
vices to a broad region. Seven 
are located in universities: 
Harvard, University of Wash-
ington, Wayne State, UCLA, 
Emory, Texas, and Nebraska. 

1966-The National Program for 
Acquisitions and Cataloging 
(NPAC), managed by the Li-
brary of Congress and initiated 
by the Association of Research 
Libraries. 

1966-The New York State Refer-
ence and Research Library Re-
sources Program ( 3Rs Pro-
gram) established to .facilitate 
use of research library materi-
als. 

1967 -Incorporation of the Ohio Col-
lege Library Center ( OCLC) 
as a cooperative cataloging ser-
vice for Ohio colleges and uni-
versities. 

1968-The Center for Chinese Re-
search Materials, formed by 
the Association of Research Li-
braries for acquiring, reprint-
ing, and distributing selected 
valuable but inaccessible Chi-
nese scholarly materials. 

1973-The Research Libraries Group, 
formed of Harvard Universi-
ty, Yale University, Columbia 
University, and the New York 
Public Library, to undertake a 
program of coordinated collec-
tion building, reciprocal access 
privileges, delivery service, and 
a common computer storage of 
catalog records for their col-
lections so as to enhance coor-
dinated acquisitions and re-
source sharing. 

The composition of prograins for 

four cooperatives begun in the late 
1960s may be cited as typical. The Five 
Associated University Libraries (FAUL) 
in New York (Buffalo, Rochester, Syra-
cuse, Cornell, and Binghamton) cur-
rently includes assigned subject special-
ization for acquisitions, delivery service, 
photocopying, reciprocal borrowing, ex-
panded interlibrary loan service, and 
joint research projects. ·The Librarians 
of the Council of Independent Ken-
tucky Colleges and Universities encom-
passes twenty-one colleges active in joint 
purchase, assigned subject specialization, 
reciprocal borrowing privileges, expand-
ed interlibrary loan service, and produc-
tion of union lists and directories. The 
Middle Atlantic Research Libraries In-
formation Network (MARLIN) of sev-
en universities includes delivery ser-
vices, photocopying, mutual notification 
of purchase, production of union lists 
and directories, expanded interlibrary 
loan, and special communication ser-
vices. The North Dakota Network for 
Knowledge of seventeen college and 
university libraries plus thirteen public 
and special libraries includes all of 
MARLIN's program except purchase 
notification and also provides mutual 
reference services, reciprocal borrow-
ing, and operation of a special biblio-
graphic center. 

One or two cooperative liaisons were 
·formed every year or so from 1930 until 
1960 when there was a sharp increase. 
The Delanoy-Cuadra directory lists the 
births: four in 1964;· seven in 1965; 
eleven in 1966; sixteen in 1967; twenty-
four in 1968; twenty-four in 1969; and 
at least nineteen in 1970.8 If one had a 
comparable mortality list, one might 
speculate that some of these would fal-
ter. Yet a spot check found none of 
those listed as formed during the 1960s 
were deceased by 1975. 

SHORT-LIVED EFFORTS ALSO 

PROVIDE LESSONS 

Yet it must also be recorded that some 

• 



• 

+ 

A Century of Cooperative Programs I 211 

major attempts at cooperation among 
academic libraries petered out or failed, 
though much may have been learned. 
An evaluative history of library cooper-
ation is faced with problems. Joe W. 
Kraus has written: 

Several difficulties present themselves 
at the outset. The literature of library 

· cooperation is very large and most of 
the articles are uncritical. Although 
most of the cooperative enterprises of 
libraries are announced and described 
in some detail in library periodicals, 
there are few evaluative reports that 
give a clear account of the success of 
a venture and the factors leading to 
success or failure. Unsuccessful ones, 
in fact, simply seem to fade away. 
Costs of a cooperative effort are par-
ticularly hard to ascertain, in part be-
cause many expenses are absorbed in 
the participating libraries, and in part 
because standard reporting procedures 
have generally not yet been devel-
oped.9 

One may here cite the Columbia-Har-
vard-Yale medical library computer-
based cooperative c·ataloging program 
that was terminated after operating 
from 1963 to 1966. As stated in the re-
search proposal issued in December 
1962 from the Yale Medical Library, 
the objective of the project was to test 
the feasibility of using a computerized 
catalog to provide rapid and improved 
information services in medical li-
braries. An on-line system was projected; 
the significant achievements were the re-
cording of 23,000 titles and the auto-
mated production of catalog cards. (It 
was the precursor of OCLC.) An array 
of technical problems concerned input 
procedures. A change in data format 
standards was needed. Authority files 
were lacking. The subject treatment 
caused great problems, as did error-de-
tection procedures. There were prob-
lems of staff cooperation. and communi-
cation.10 Operational methods among 
the three participants varie<l widely, and 
detailed documentation of procedures 

and decisions was lacking. Furthermore, 
"it had become apparent that a latent 
conflict of purpose had begun to form 
between the interests of the inter-insti-
tutional Project comprising divisional, 
i.e., medical libraries, and the interests 
of the individual university library sys-
tems where the medical library is but 
one of the integral units."11 

Another which did not last long was 
the Colorado Academic Libraries Book 
Processing Center, which also operated 
for only three years. This Colorado 
project began in 1965 with nine academ-
ic libraries. The test phase, operated for 
fourteen institutions, lasted from early 
1969 until 1973 and covered the full 
tange of acquisitions, cataloging, pro-
cessing, and bookkeeping. Its problems 
were incompatibilities among library 
procedures; changes not made by all of 
the individual libraries; differences in 
size, traditions, and service philosophies; 
and failure to recognize that errors were 
inevitable. Turnaround time was below 
expectation and generally inferior to 

. that obtained when libraries ordered di-
rect from publishers or jobbers. Com-
munication breakdowns accounted for 
many problems. Geographical separa-
tion of participants was partially to 
blame, and staff did not understand the 
center's role or how it would affect their 
jobs, future, and status. Furthermore, 
"centralization, cooperation, and com-
puterization have created a library en-
vironment that is completely alien to 
many librarians."12 Its final processes 
were phased out in 1973. 

The most successful acquisition and 
processing centers, both founded in 
1969, are the Cooperative College Li-
brary Center, Inc., in Atlanta, and the 
Massachusetts Central Library Process-
ing Service in Amherst. From the latter, 
thirty-one institutions were provided ac-
quisition support and cataloging; a mil-
lion items have been processed by its 
batch computer process. Exceedingly 
low costs were achieved under con-



212 I College & Research Libraries • May 1976 

straints which constitute mass produc-
tion methods. The program was success-
ful in bringing public higher education 
librarians together in an organized way, 
which was timely since the Common-
wealth Legislature eliminated funding 
for fiscal year 1976. 

More often those cooperatives that 
were weak were merged into other pro-
grams, reduced to a smaller practical 
element, or superseded by a newer, 
larger, and more effective program. An 
example of a program which served its 
time is the Farmington Plan of 1948 to 
1972 which was obviated as strength was 
gained by the National Program for Ac-
quisitions and Cataloging (Title II-C 
of the Higher Education Act signed in-
to law November 8, 1965). The PL 480 
program was also a factor. 13 

DIVERSITY IN RECENT EFFORTS 

Academic library cooperation is clear-
ly flourishing. After many experimen-
tal starts, there seem to have been per-
sistent efforts since the 1930s. Such pro-
grams continued to grow in number and 
magnitude after World War II. It may 
indeed be asserted that the efforts since 
World War II have become more for-
mal, more extensive, and far more ex-
pensive than previous efforts. Develop-
ments such as the New England Deposit 
Library and, particularly, the Center 
for Research Libraries demanded active 
participation and support by college 
presidents. A program such as the N a-
tiona! Program for Acquisitions and 
Cataloging involved Congressional lob-
bying with resultant major appropria-
tions and sweeping impact. The forma-
tion of the Ohio College Library Cen-
ter demonstrated that cataloging opera-
tions could be effectively supported 
daily through on-line access to a single 
computer system. Formation of the Re-
search Libraries Group indicated that 
not only the libraries of OCLC but also 
the largest academic and research li-
braries in the nation found the need 

and the means for a major e·ffort in-
volving a legal instrument, highly ex-
pert professional staff, fund-raising 
programs, and locally contributed effort. 

The more prevalent existing programs 
found among 125 consortia ( of which 
60 percent were incorporated) may be 
tabulated as follows: 14 

reciprocal borrowing privileges-97 
expanded interlibrary loan service 
-80 
union catalogs or lists-78 
photocopying services-72 
reference services-50 
delivery service-44 
mutual notification of purchase-
40 
special communications service-35 
publications programs-34 
catalog card production-34 
other cataloging support-33 
joint purchasing of materials-30 
assigned subject specialization of 
acquisitions-28 

Quite clearly there are few complete-
ly innovative programs. An effort like 
the Research Libraries Group contains 
elements from a number of programs 
of the past forty-five years. In his recent 
article, "An Historical Look at .Resource 
Sharing," Basil Stuart-Stubbs concluded: 

If the word network wasn't prominent 
in the vocabulary of our pioneers, the 
concept was there. In fact, although 
the centennial of Samuel Swett Green's 
proposal for interlibrary lending will 
be celebrated next year [i.e., 1976], 
and although the dimensions of coop-
eration among libraries have increased 
enormously, there have been few intel-
lectual innovations in the interim 
years. Wherever the spirits of our 
predecessors now abide, they must be 
waiting for the realization of their an-
cient hopes.15 

Just as there are few completely novel 
twists to academic library cooperation, 
so also one can find little novelty in the 
impetus for and obstacles to cooperative 
programs. Joseph Becker has cited the 

• 



A Century of Cooperative Programs I 213 

motivating factors of service, econom-
ics, and technology.16 John P. McDonald 
expanded these to include financial con-
striction, cost sharing, availability of 
funds, pressure of numbers, resource 
improvement, service improvement, man-
agement improvement, image enhance-
ment, and technological development. 
To these nine forces urging coopera-
tive enterprise, he has also cited a num-
ber of obstacles. 

If there are incentives to cooperation, 
there are also many problems and dif-
ficulties that limit or frustrate our best 
efforts at collective action. There is, 
for example, a persistent attitude that 
assigns cooperative activities low pri-
ority and low or no budget. This view-
point insists that cooperation be under-
taken as a part-time extra duty and 
then only after more important work 
has been accomplished. There are 
other attitudes that have proved diffi-
cult to overcome. It is asserted that co-
operation causes delay and incon-
venience resulting in a general deteri-
oration in service. Other complaints 
are that cooperation is expensive, that 
it involves high effort for low return, 
that there are inequities in contribu-
tions and benefits, and that coopera-
tion is often ill defined or redun-
dant.17 

These problems may be endemic with 
any -cooperative program-less visible 
where cooperation between two depart-
ments of a single library is concerned 
but exposed to view and psychologically 
much more difficult to resolve when co-
operation between two institutions is 
undertaken. When one remembers that 
almost any two institutions are disparate 
in program, financial support, and a 
host of other variables, one may wonder 
whether any cooperation can be effective 
and lasting. 18 

The challenges, the opportunities, 
and the problems do not seem to change 
fundamentally with the ,. passing of 
time. This may be true even for techno-
logical development. In 1851, three years 

after Charles C. Jewett left Brown Uni-
versity to become Librarian of the new-
ly established Smithsonian Institution, 
he proposed the stereotype printing of 
cataloging data. 19 However, the spirit of 
cooperation was blunted by the difficul-
ties of organizing the business and the 
unexpected warping of the plates. The 
Library of Congress card distribution 
plan of fifty years later pursued this 
same promise of a new technology 
which could solve problems of individ-
ual libraries. 

HISTORICAL LESSONS 

The relative impact of these obsta-
cles will change with respect to each co-
operative endeavor. Furthermore, each 
endeavor is commonly a mix of several 
incentive factors and must cope with a 
variety of obstacles.20 What can be con-
cluded from this review of cooperative 
programs over the last century? 

In 1945 an assessment was made by 
Robert B. Downs. His study revealed 

certain important principles which 
have influenced the success or failure 
of various kinds of library cooperation. 
First, distance is a handicap, and it is 
easier for libraries not too far removed 
from each other to work together. Sec-
ond, regional library cooperation has 
its greatest opportunities in those areas 
with inadequate book resources. Third, 
libraries should not be asked to give 
up anything but rather to assume posi-
tive responsibilities and receive direct 
benefits. Fourth, agreements must be 
flexible enough to provide for expan-
sion and adjustment. Fifth, complete 
elimination of duplication between li-
braries is not possible or desirable. 
Finally, only a comparatively limited 
number of libraries are at present 
equipped to make any substantial or 
effective contribution to a general pro-
gram of cooperation on the research 
level.21 

A university president provided an-
other assessment. 



214 I College & Research Libraries • May 1976 

It is my personal judgment that those 
that work best are of two sorts: they 
are either between universities, or 
parts of universities, of equal status 
and quality or, at the other extreme, 
between universities, or parts of uni-
versities, that differ widely in status 
or quality .... But where the grada-
tions in quality are small in extent but 
noticeable, co-operation is exceedingly 
difficult .... the obstacles to co-opera-
tion are not material. ... [They] are 
found in the mind and spirit of rna~. 
They are institutional pride and insti-
tutional jealousy .... They are inertia 
and complacency. It is self-satisfac-
tion, institutionwise, that makes the 
building of effective co-operation a 
difficult thing. And I would say, final-
ly, that it is an irrational provincialism 
or an emotional particularism on the 
part of college faculties which makes 
co-operation difficult.22 

To some extent there are cycles of 
popularity. Within a decade after the 
New England Deposit Library was 
opened, the Center for Research Li-
braries and the Hampshire Inter-Library 
Center came along, soon followed by lo-
cal storage facilities for Princeton Uni-
versity, the University of Michigan, and 
the University of California at Berke-
ley. At the moment, computer-related 
programs are clearly looked upon as 
holding great promise. They are the 
prime, but not the only, objective of 
consortia such as NELINET founded 
in 1966, SOLINET ( 1974), MIDLNET 
(1974), and CLASS (1976). For in-
stance, MIDLNET, the Midwest Region 
Library Network, includes research li-
braries and state networks in Michigan, 
Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, 
Iowa, and Missouri; it aims to develop 
faster delivery of books to users; to co-
ordinate library planning, development, 
and research in the Midwest; to attract 
federal funds available for regional li-
brary network development; to provide 
a voice in the emerging national library 
network; and to develop a coordinated 
program of materia,ls preservation. Each 

of these programs rides some wave pat-
tern of popularity and success. Each in-
dividual library tries its ability to swim 
in the current, but none operates apart 
from circumstances in its own institu-
tion. Library changes can be found to 
be closely derivative of their institution-
al conditions and/ ot national circum-
stances.23 

The cause and effect can sometimes 
be clearly traced. For example, projects 
supported by the Library Services and 
Construction Act Title III (signed into 
law July 1966) for intertype coopera-
tives obviously show derivation from 
that federal law. One can cite the 1972 
Cooperative Information Network in 
California which was formed of 250 
libraries, including the University of 
California campus at Santa Cruz, the 
Universities of Santa Clara, San Jose 
State, Golden Gate, and Stanford to-
gether with over a dozen community 
colleges and the U.S. Naval Postgradu-
ate School. Yet the New England De-
posit Library was born of space prob-
lems mounting during the depression 
years, although the concept was pro-
posed by Harvard's President Eliot. In 
the fall of 1901, Eliot wrote that 

the increasing rate at which large col-
lections of books grow suggests strong-
ly that some new policy is needed con-
cerning the storage of these immense 
masses of printed matter .... It may 
be doubted whether it be wise for a 
university to undertake to store books 
by the million, when only a small pro-
portion of the material stored can be 
in active use. Now that travel and 
sending of books to all parts of the 
country has become cheap, it may well 
be that great accumulations of printed 
matter will be held accessible at only 
three or four points in the country. 
. . . The unused might be stored in a 
much more compact manner than they 
are now, even in the best-arranged 
stacks. 24 

The concept is venerable, but it had to 
await implementation until the massive 



) 

-
A Century of Cooperative Programs I 215 

Widener Library was full in the 1930s. 
Then the New England Deposit Library 
was justified and financed. 

Timing is often key, as with the 
NEDL. The Center for Research Li-
braries was initiated under the name 
Midwest Inter-Library Center. But ten 
years before its foundation President 
Robert M. Hutchins of the University 
of Chicago asked Keyes D. Metcalf to 
conduct a study of such a cooperative 
facility for twelve Midwest universities 
stretching from Ohio to Minnesota and 
Michigan to Missouri. Eleven of the 
twelve university presidents approved 
the idea, and only one was opposed. 
However, eleven of the twelve librari-
ans opposed the idea, and only one ap-
proved of it. Metcalf suggested the mat-
ter be put off until after the approach-
ing war. When a new study was then 
made, it turned out that all but one of 
the librarians had changed and all but 
one of the presidents had retired. Elev-
en out of twelve current incumbents of 
both groups then approved. Thus can 
ten years change attitudes toward inter-
library cooperation. 

Recent cooperative examples face 
most if not all of the problems treated 
above, develop under similar motiva-
tions, and seem to follow principles in- , 
fluencing their success which are the 
same as similar programs of past dec-
ades. One significant difference seems to 
be the greater legal and administrative 
formality required. In this connection, 
it may be useful to review the purposes 
for creation of the Center for Research 
Libraries, the Ohio College Library Cen-
ter, and the Research Libraries Group. 
These may be typical of the next sig-
nificant wave of developments. 

E-XAMPLES OF INCREASED FoRMALITY 

The Center for Research Libraries 
was incorporated in 1949 by ten univer-
sities as a nonprofit corporation with the 
primary purpose of increasing the li-
brary research resources available to co-

operating institutions in the Midwest. 
Four areas of activity were initially out-
lined: 

The deposit into a common pool of the 
infrequently used library materials 
held by the participating institutions 
in order to reduce their local · space 
needs, and also to make more readily 
available when needed more complete 
collections than any one of the partici-
pating libraries itself could reasonably 
maintain for its own exclusive use. 

The cooperative purchase and cen-
tralized cataloguing and housing of in-
frequently used library research ma-
terials that were not already adequate-
ly available to the participants. 

The centralized acquisition and cata-
loging [sic] of the materials acquired 
by the participants for their own col-
lections. 

The coordination of the acquisitions 
of the individual participating libraries 
to avoid unnecessary duplication.25 

A building for the center was occupied 
in 1951. Within a dozen years the coop-
erative acquisition program had been 
given increased emphasis. The most sig-
nificant shift came in 1963 when the 
center invited Stephen A. McCarthy and 
Raynard C. Swank to survey the pro-
gram and make recommendations deal-
ing with concerns such as the gradual 
assumption of many characteristics of 
a ~national interlibrary center while its 
base of support was primarily r~gio-!}al; 
questions of whether the center's activi-
ties were truly worth their cost to the 
members; how it could be of better ser-
vice to all of the nation's research li-
braries ( and potentially of Canada and 
Mexico as well); and how it might most 
effectively broaden its base of support. 
The most significant recommendation 
was that: 

The Center should formally cease to 
be a regional. agency and should be-
come a national institution. 



216 I College & Research Libraries • May 1976 

All suitable methods of bringing about 
this change should be fully explored. 

In seeking the best means of becom-
ing a national research library center, 
the possibility of a relationship with 
the Association of Research Libraries 
and contractual relationships with the 
Library of Congress and other federal 
agencies should be thoroughly investi-
gated.26 

Among many recommendations and 
changes in the acquisition program, this 
change to a national scope and altera-
tions of its governance, funding, and 
operations have been especially signifi-
cant, and have led to an increase in its 
membership from the original ten uni-
versities to a present total of sixty. 

The Ohio College Library Center was 
incorporated in 1967 by nine public and 
private colleges and universities as a not-
for-profit corporation. There were fifty-
four members during 1967-68. The· 
OCLC Articles include the statement 
that: 

The purpose or purposes for which 
this corporation is formed are to estab-
lish, maintain and operate a computer-
ized, regional library center to 'serve 
the academic libraries of Ohio (both 
state and private) and designed so as 
to become a part of any national elec-
tronic network for bibliographical 
communication; to develop, maintain 
and operate a shared cataloging pro-
gram based upon a central computer 
store; to create, maintain and operate 
a computerized central catalog (inven-
tory) of books and journals in the 
participating libraries; and to do such 
research and development related to 
the above as are necessary to accom-
plish and to extend the concept.27 

That same year the OCLC trustees ap-
proved a general statement of two prin-
cipal goals for the organization: 

These goals are, 1) increase of re-
sources for education and research to 
faculty and students of its member in- · 
stitutions, and 2) the deceleration of 

per-student costs in its member col-
leges and universities. Techniques for 
achieving these goals include library 
and the new library-like information 
servicing techniques, such as dial-up 
'installations, audiovisual centers, and 
computer assisted instruction. Al-
though "academic libraries" of the im-
mediate future must be looked upon 
as including all of these activities, only 
the traditional library is presently 
common to all institutions which are 
OCLC members. Therefore, major em-
phasis in planning and development 
will continue to be for activities asso-
ciated with classical library operations. 
However, OCLC will stand ready to 
participate in newer information ser-
vicing activities, and it may well be 
that furnishing powerful computation 
service will be among its earliest ac-
tivities.28 

In 1974-75, participating libraries cat-
aloged 2,555,055 books; the data base 
contained over 5.3 million locations. 
Cataloging using existing records in the 
on-line catalog increased to 84.7 percent. 
Use of records for catalog production 
by libraries other than the one inputting 
the record rose to 41.8 percent. This in-
dicates a major operational interlibrary 
endeavor. 

The Research Libraries Group was 
formed by Columbia, Harvard, and 
Yale Universities and the New York 
Public Library to develop a common 
bibliographic system, cooperative acqui-
sitions, shared resources, and a program 
of book conservation. The presidents 
of the three universities gave their 
strong endorsement to the RLG concept, 
and the Trustees of NYPL demonstrat-
ed their support by voting in October 
1974 to allow materials from the re-
search libraries to be sent to other RLG · 

·members on interlibrary loan. The Re-
search Libraries Group is governed py 
a board of directors with working com-
mittees on policies and programs for 
preservation, collection development, se-
rials, readers services, bibliographic pro-

+ 

I 



A Century of Cooperative Programs f 217 

cesses and control, and systems and tech-
nology applications. It has created a 
joint bibliographic center and appoint-
ed a president and vice-president for 
systems. It was incorporated in Decem-
ber 1975 as a not-for-profit corporation. 
The certificate of incorporation present-
ly includes the statement: 

The nature of the activities to be con-
ducted, or the purposes to be carried 
out by the corporation, are as follows: 
(a) to promote coordination in the de-
velopment of library collections, and 
to develop cooperative programs in the 
conservation and preservation of li-
brary materials; (b) to develop im-
proved methods for identifying and lo-
cating recorded information in libraries 
and for creating and · using biblio-
graphic systems; (c) to develop, op-
erate, support and coordinate coopera-
tive programs to improve physical 
access to the collections of libraries; 
(d) to improve the efficiency and to 
promote economics in the operations 
of libraries; (e) generally, in any and 
all lawful ways to improve library ser-
vices provided by the Members; and 
(f) to engage in any other lawful act 
or activities (consistent with the fore-
going purposes). 29 

In its first report to a supporting 
foundation, the RLG restated that rap-
id development of a limited number of 
cost-effective programs is vi~wed as the 
basis for eventual solicitation of other 
members similar in nature to the found-
ers and possibly selling services on a 
cost-recovery basis to other libraries. 

ASSESSMENTS OF USEFULNESS 

How useful are existing cooperative 
programs from the point of view of the 
college or university student or profes-
sor? One finds little data that can help 
in the evaluation. It may be worth not-
ing that there have been almost no pub-
lished research studies comparing and 
analyzing two or more cooperative pro-
grams of a similar nature. 30 

A tabulation of cataloging copy con-

tributed to the National Union Catalog 
indicates records which constitute inter-
library loan potential for other institu-
tions as well as potential shared catalog-
ing. In 197 4-75, academic libraries con-
tributing the largest number of cards 
were the following: 

University of Texas 
Harvard University 
University of Wisconsin 
Cornell University 
University of California, 

Berkeley 
Yale University 
Rutgers University 
Princeton University 
Columbia University 
Duke University 
Indiana University 
Ohio State University 

124,209 
113,830 
105,386 
97,494 

83,213 
78,230 
76,277 
74,353 
68,751 
67,795 
66,548 
66,060 

Since universities use LC cataloging 
for from 35 percent to 89· percent of 
their material, the value of help via 
NUC, MARC, NPAC, and other Lc · 
Processing Department products is clear-
ly in the tens of millions of dollars. 

Statistics of interlibrary lending and 
borrowing are evidence of the value of 
one universal cooperative program. 
Using a sample of academic libraries, 
the picture for 1974-75 is shown in 
Table 1. 

Of all recorded circulation, the inter-
library traffic constitutes an almost in-
finitesimal proportion-an aggregate av-
erage of 1.79 percent for colleges and 
1.33 percent for universities! It is the 
most expensive form of resource shar-
ing. (It may cost 5 cents to circulate a 
reserve book, 10 cents from the general 
stack collections, $1.00 from a locked 
stack, $2.00 from a campus auxiliary 
stack, but it costs from $4.00 to $9.00 by 
interlibrary loan.) 

Specific evidence is avail:;tble of an-
other type of program directly benefit-
ing patrons-commuting service for 
persons to another library. An instance 
is the intercampus bus service estab-



218 I College & Research Libraries • May 1976 

TABLE I 

INTERLmRARY LENDING AND BoRROWING AND TOTAL REcoRDED 
CmCULATION, SELECTED CoLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES, 1974-75 

Name of Items 
Institution Borrowed 

Colleges 
Amherst 1,826 
Bowdoin 287 
Colby 863 
Denison 143 
Goucher 23 
Ithaca 559 
Middlebury 1,430 
Mills 22 
Oberlin 1,408 
Occidental 36 
Reed 199 
Stephens 16 
Vassar 2,823 
Weber State 379 
Westmount 159 
Wooster 459 

Universities 
Delaware 3,301 
Humboldt State 1,008 
Illinois 4,427 
Kansas 6,126 
Long Beach, Cal. State 3,311 
Michigan 5,910 
Northwestern 1,311 
Pennsylvania 2,612 
Stanford 3,529 
Texas 2,648 
UCLA 4,006 
Utah 4,549 
Virginia 1,962 
U. of Washington 3,349 

lished in late 1961 by the University of 
California. Transporting scholars and 
books six days each week, it operates 
from Davis and Santa Cruz to Berkeley, 
and from Irvine, Riverside, San Diego, 
and Santa Barbara to UCLA. During 
1972-73 there were over 16,000 pas-
sengers plus 35,000 complete interlibrary 
or returned personal loans. A study in 
early 1974 revealed half of the com-
muters used library services or collec-
tions; the others used laboratories, at-
tended classes, or were otherwise on uni-
versity business. Before making the trip, 
19 percent had conferred with a local 
librarian about the resources to be visit- · 
ed, and 58 percent went with some pre-
knowledge of what they would find. A 
third of the commuters checked out a 

Items Total Recorded 
Lent Circulation 

2,424 62,092 
1,504 84,212 

387 80,993 
94 46,816 
17 44,262 

600 105,421 
1,206 89,358 

45 41,906 
2,751 290,386 

21 85,040 
316 38,906 

5 61,264 
3,218 104,832 

50 87,840 
103 37,247 

98 48,739 

2,953 394,022 
412 437,819 

43,729 1,882,960 
7,346 1,033,353 
1,402 944,577 
8,939 1,565,148 
3,653 1,014,701 
9,079 545,293 

16,737 1,481,675 
8,615 1,626,449 

14,695 1,933,268 
5,693 549,463 
6,848 521,742 

53,055 2,792,968 

book, the return of which by a later bus 
constituted a third of the above annual 
quantity of loans while the other two-
thirds were interlibrary loans including 
the 9 percent personally fetched and 
charged out by the bus driver. Here is 
another quantifiable example of practi-
cal interinstitutional sharing of library 
resources. 

One looks in vain in published li-
brary literature to find major compre-
hensive cost-effectiveness studies of joint 
acquisitions programs or interlibrary 
borrowing. To the patron they are rela-
tively marginal programs when viewed 
against the totality of library services 
in any one college or university. Insti-
tutions have obviously recognized that 
the final 1 percent of service volume 

t 



A Century of Cooperative Programs j 219 

justifies costs that are disproportionate. 

THE NATURE OF FuTURE PROSPECTS 

It is difficult to· discern trends. Inter-
institutional cooperation seems to be 
universaily recognized as essential, al-
though the extraordinary efforts re-
quired and the hazards in the course are 
now understood-and continue to exist. 
In some sense a library is only effective 
if it has acquisition, processing, and ser-
vice programs; physical facilities in 
which to house the collections and read-
ers; and a specialized staff for these pro-
grams. Many but not all aspects of this 
library program are subject to interin-
stitutional cooperation. For those that 
are subject to a cooperative approach, 
nearly all types have been explored and 
are still being pursued. Where staff pres-
sures increase, and as economic circum-
stances shift and technology develops, 
buffeted by institutional and national 
economic conditions, the movement for 
academic library cooperation advances 
on different fronts at different times. It 
seems, however, like an army moving 
ahead-the cavalry unit or armored 
tank unit, followed by foot soldiers, 
supply, communication, and manage-
ment units, with no one getting far 
ahead of the others and no unit of the 
force long ignored. 
r The economic motive may not always 

l
be the eternal catalyst, yet it can be 
found in every one of the examples 
eited. 31 The financial resources used by 
libraries in their acquisition of materi-
als and provision of service to users cre-
ate economic environments. Whether 
they be in publicly or privately support-
ed institutions, they respond to national 
changes in the economy and to local 
conditions. Programs have . prospered 
with good fiscal support or have re-
mained static due to · inadequate eco-
nomic studies or an insufficient financial 
base. 

American academic libraries have 
reached a watershed that is almost as 

significant as the change from block 
printing to printing with movable type. 
This conclusion is based on the pre-
sumption that on-line computer-based 
operational programs constitute a radi-
cal and permanent change in coopera-
tive style. When one is freed from most 
of the constraints of the card catalog, 
of the U.S. mail, and of locally pre-
pared cataloging data, this adoption of 
sophisticated on-line computer-based 
programs may well be by far the most 
significant change ever achieved in li-
brary operations. It is a permanent 
change in the mode of library opera-
tions which should be accomplished dur-
ing the period 1965 to 199().32 

It is not a sudden change, for it has 
its origins in the early 1950s; and, in-
deed, library programs using tabulating 
machines date from the mid-1930s. Yet 
if one looks ahead ten years, the college 
student of 1986 may well find at least 
10 percent of all bibliographic citations 
of the library collections in machine-
readable form accessible through a 
computer terminal; in some instances 
it may reach 100 percent. It is certain to 
include all of the more heavily used 
materials. The student will also be able 
via the terminal to call upon collections 
in other libraries, locally and national-
ly, and have instantaneous loan trans-
actions, only constrained by copyright 
controls on photocopying and limited 
by telefacsimile or by the remaining 
need to send the text by air parcel post. 
Just as the development of national 
standards was important in 1876 and 
1900, it again becomes of major impor-
tance in the nation's ability to develop 
a national . computer-supported system 
of libraries. 

This shift to on-line computer-based 
systems nationally linked will ·face the 
same type of problems as have been 
seen in cooperative examples cited 
above. After reviewing current experi-
ence with computerized library and aca-
demic resource-sharing networks, Pro-



220 I College & Research Libraries • May 1976 

fessor Lewis B. Mayhew concluded: 

It seems clear that the major problems 
to be overcome with respect to educa-
tional or research use of networks are 
not technical. Technical problems ei-
ther have been solved or the directions 
established to solve them. The real 
problems are political, organizational 
and economic. Governmental policy 
must be refined so as to produce 
health and balanced growth rather 
than uneven and unplanned partial 
growth. Universities, by tradition in:-
dependent, must find ways of reorga-
nizing their uses of computers so as to 
optimize effectiveness and institutional 
autonomy. They need to mature to a 
point where they will trust external 
agencies. And as has been indicated 
earlier, stable, long-range systems of 
financing must be found. 33 

The economically forced and tech-
nologically facilitated cooper~tion of 
the 1970s must surely be resulting in 
just as significant a change in the li-
braries of the future as the political 
changes of 1776 created for the new 
American nation. The thirteen separate 
states operating independently then 
formed a federal government with care-
ful orchestration of local authority, re-
gional coordination, selected national 
standards, and some over-reaching fed-
eral programs. At the time the Ameri-
can Library Association was formed in 
1876, the union of interests had recent-
ly been reasserted. There would seem to 
be a close parallel with the state of li-
brarianship in this decade as it applies 
to cooperative programs among academ-
ic libraries. 

REFERENCES 

1. An earlier move in this direction was the 
Librarians' Convention held in New York 
in 1853. "Proceedings," Norton's Literary 
Register, 1854, p.49--94. 

2. "Co-operative College Cataloguing," Amer-
ican Library Journal 1:435-36 (August 
1877). 

3. Of historical use are the "Symposium on 
Printed Catalog Cards," Library Journal 
36:543-56 (Nov. 1911), and the volume 
by Robert B. Downs, Union Catalogs in the 
United States (Chicago: American Library 
Assn., 1942). 

4. Walter Lichtenstein, "Report to the Presi-
dent of Northwestern University on the 
Results of a Trip to South America," 
Northwestern University Bulletin 16:8-9 
(Sept. 1915). 

5. In this setting the Conference of Graduate 
Deans and Librarians resulted in The De-
velopment of Library Resources and Grad-
uate Work in the Cooperative University 
Centers of the South;.. Proceedings ... Held 
at the ]oint University Libraries ... , ed. 
Philip G. Davidson and A. F. Kuhlman 
(Nashville, Tenn.: Joint University Li-
braries, 1944). 

6. A useful work is by Mildred Hawksworth 
Lowell, College and University Library 
Consolidations (Eugene: Oregon State Sys-
tem of Higher Education, 1942). 

7. M. J. Savary, The Latin American Cooper-
ative Acquisitions Program; An Imaginative 
Venture (New York: Hafner, 1968). 

8. Diana Delanoy and Carlos A. Cuadra, Di-
rectory of Academic Library Consortia 
(Santa Monica, Calif.: System Develop-
ment Corp., 1971). A second edition by 
Donald V. Black and Carlos A. Cuadra 
appeared in spring 1976. 

9. Joe W. Kraus, "Prologue to Library Coop-
eration," Library Trends 24:171 (Oct. 
1975). This issue is devoted to "Library 
Cooperation." 

10. Paul J. Fasana, "The Collaborative Library 
Systems Development Project (CLSDP): 
A Mechanism for Inter-University Coopera-
tion," in Collaborative Library Systems De-
velopment (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Pr., 
1971)' p.22&-36. 

11. Ritvars Bregzis, The Columbia-Harvard-
¥ ale Medical Libraries Computerized Prot-
ect-a Review (Toronto: 1966), p.4; see 
also specific comments on eleven major 
problems areas on p.17-19. See also Fred-
erick G. Kilgour, "Basic Systems Assump-
tions of the Columbia-Harvard-Yale Medi-
cal Libraries Computerization Project," In-
formation Retrieval with Special Reference 
to the Biomedical Sciences; Papers Present-
ed at the Second Institute on Information 
Retrieval, ed. Wesley Siminton and Char-
lene Mason (Minneapolis: Univ. of Min-
nesota, 1966), p.145-54. 

12. Richard M. Dougherty and Joan M. Maier, 
Centralized Processing · for Academic Li-
braries: The Final Report, Phase Ill, ]an. 
1-]une 30, 1969, of the Colorado Academic 



A Century of Cooperative Programs I 221 

Libraries Book Processing Center-the 
First Six Months of Operation (Metuchen, 
N.J.: Scarecrow, 1971), p.119. See also 
Allen B. Veaner, "Colorado Academic Li-
braries Book Processing Center-Consult-
ing Report," June 1972. 

13. A useful review is James E. Skipper, "Na-
tional Planning for Resource Develop-
ment," Library Trends 14:321--34 (Oct. 
1966); see also Robert Vosper, The Farm-
·ington Plan Survey: A Summary of the 
Separate Studies of 1957-1961 ([Occa-
sional Papers, no.77] Urbana: University 
of Illinois Graduate School of Library Sci-
ence, 1965). 

14. Carlos A. Cuadra and Ruth J. Patrick, 
"Survey of Academic Library Consortia in 
the U.S.," College & Research Libraries 
33:271-83 (July 1972). 

15. Basil Stuart Stubbs, "An Historical Look 
at Resource Sharing," Library Trends 23: 
662 (April 1975). 

16. Joseph Becker, "Information Network Pros-
pects in the United States," Library Trends 
17:311-12 (Jan. 1969). 

17. John P. McDonald, "Interlibrary Coopera-
tion in the United States," Issues in Library 
Administration, ed. Warren M. Tsuneishi, 
Thomas R. Buckman, and Yukihisa Suzuki 
(New York: Columbia Univ. Pr., 1974), 
p.131. 

18. An extensive list of problems is presented 
by Merton W. Ertell, Interinstitutional Co-
operation in Higher Education; A Study 
of Experiences with Reference to New 
York State (Albany: The University of the 
State of New York, 1957), p.98-100. 

19. Charles Coffin Jewett, "A Plan for Stereo-
typing Catalogues by Separate Titles, and 
for Forming a General Stereotyped Cata-
logue of Public Libraries of the United 
States," Proceedings of the American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science 
4:165-76 (Aug. 1850). . 

20. A useful work is Ruth J. Patrick, Guidelines 
for the Development of Academic Library 
Consortia (Santa Monica, Calif.: System 
Development Corporation, 1971). 

21. Robert B. Downs, "American Library Co-
operation in Review," College & Research 
Libraries 6:407-15 (Sept. 1945, part II). 

22. Ernest C. Colwell, "Inter-University Co-
operation," Library Quarterly 22:2-3 (Jan. 
1952). 

23. In this connection, a useful work is Eileen 

Thornton, "Cooperation among Colleges," 
Library Trends 6:309-25 (Jan. 1958). 

24. President's Report for 1900-01, p.30-31. 
See also Library ]ournal27:53-54 (1902). 

25. Quotations from Stephen A. McCarthy and 
Raynard C. Swank, "The Report of a Sur-
vey with an Outline of Programs arid Poli-
cies" (Chicago: 1965), as reprinted in 
Michael M. Reynolds, ed., Reader in Li-
brary Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: 
NCR Microcard Editions, 1972), p.199. 

26. Ibid., p.200. 
27. "Articles of Incorporation of the Ohio Col-

lege Library Center," approved July 6, 
1967, third section. 

28. Annual Report 1967/68, p.2-3. 
29. From internal draft document, November 

1975. Personal communication from James 
E. Skipper. 

30. An exception is the study by H. Joanne 
Harrar of the NEDL, CRL, and HILC, 
summarized as "Cooperative Storage Ware-
houses," College & Research Libraries 25: 
37-43 (Jan. 1964). 

31. Note for example a product of the Associa-
tion of Research Libraries: Problems and 
Prospects of the Research Library [papers 
and proceedings of the Monticello Confer-
ence], ed. Edwin E. Williams (New Bruns-
wick, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1955). 

32. Four seminal works may be cited as omens: 
(1) Conference on Libraries and Automa-
tion, Airlie Foundation, 1963, Libraries and 
Automation: Proceedings, ed. Barbara 
Evans Markuson (Washington, D.C.: Li-
brary of Congress, 1964); (2) Summer 
Study on Information Networks, University 
of Colorado, 1966, Edunet: Report, authors 
and eds., George W. Brown, James G. Mil-
ler, and Thomas A. Keenan (New York: 
Wiley, 1967); (3) Conference on Inter-
library Communications and Information 
Networks, 1970, Proceedings, ed. Joseph 
Becker (Chicago: American Library Assn., 
1971); and (4) U.S. National Commission 
on Libraries and Information Science, To-
ward a National Program for Library and 
Information Services: Goals for Action 
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 
1975). 

33. Lewis B. Mayhew, Computerized Networks 
among Libraries and Universities: An Ad-
ministrators Overview (ED 115220) ( Stan-
ford, Calif.: ERIC Clearinghouse on In-
formation Resources, 1975), p.61. 

David C. Weber is director 
of University Libraries, 

Stanford University, 
Stanford, California.