College and Research Libraries RAY L. CARPENTER College Libraries: A Comparative Analysis in Terms of the ACRL Standards A quantitative analysis of 1977 REGIS data bearing on college libraries in terms of the ACRL Standards for College Libraries (1975 ) concludes that most of the libraries do not meet the Standards' criteria for collection size and development , staff, and budget. Variables in the Standards not included in the REGIS data are not analyzed here. More detailed surveys of library characteristics and fuller financial support for library operations are needed to enhance both this kind of analysis and libraries and their standards in the future. INTROD UCTION The 1975 Standards for College Librar- ies1 by the Association of College and Re- search Libraries (ACRL, American Library Association) is the focal point for this study. It is a systematic and quantitative assess- ment of college libraries in terms of the Standards. The data for the study are de- rived from national survey information col- lected by the National Center for Educa- tional Statistics (NCES ), U . S. Office of Education , Fall 1977 . The four Higher Education General Information (HEGIS ) surveys of academic libraries, faculty , en- rollment , and finance were produced in machine-readable form by NCES ; they comprise the most recent information avail- able at this time. Financial support for com- puting services to generate the statistics for this report was provided primarily by ACRL. Additional aid was provided by the Com- putation Center, the School of Library Sci- ence, and the Institute for Research in So- cial Science-all of the University of North Ray L . Carpenter is associate prof~ssor, School of Library Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Carolina at Chapel Hill . Members of the ACRL Committee on College Library Stan- dards Revision-Pat Sacks, Jasper Schad, and Arthur Monke , chair-made valuable contributions to the design of this study. The libraries to which the standards apply are those classified by the Carnegie Com- mission on Higher Education as Liberal Arts Colleges I and II and Comprehensive Universities and Colleges I and 11. 2 The usable data gathered by NCES included re- sponses from 95 percent of the relevant in- stitutions. While the aggregate of institu- tions fits the Carnegie Commission' s and the ACRL Standards' intended audience the classification of types of institutions i~ this study does not correspond precisely with those of the Carnegie Commission. In this study, tables present summary informa- 1tion for all institutions (libraries) and, with few exceptions , for those schools classed as :Private graduate , private undergraduate, jpublic graduate, and public undergraduate. The number of each of these types appears :in each table. In most of the cross- tabulations the four types of institutions constitute, respectively , 23 percent, 45 per- icent, 25 percent, and 7 percent of the total ,number of libraries analyzed (1 , 146). I 7 8 I College & Research Libraries • January 1981 All private and public institutions have programs for the baccalaureate degree: the undergraduate institutions, comprising 52 percent of the total, prepare only for the baccalaureate and one or a very few first professional degrees, typically a M. Ed . Graduate institutions are defined as those that grant master's degrees, have programs beyond the master's not leading to the doctorate, and some doctorate degrees (few- er than ten per year). Thus, large doctorate- granting or research universities, two-year institutions, and a large number of special- ized institutions such as theological semi- naries are not included in this study. The standards are not intended to apply to them. The four major topical categories in this analysis deal with collections, staff, budget, and service. Only the statistics available from NCES were analyzed, and as NCES did not collect data about characteristics of building space in 1977, no report related to this major standard is included here . More important, many of the major factors in the Standards, for example those which deal with administration policy, are qualitative. There are no data about these qualitative factors, and no attempt is made here to ex- amine libraries directly in these terms. Often , of course, the statistical information does lend a perspective or insight about some of these qualitative standards. In the tables of this report the numbers in parentheses identify the number of li- braries . Percentages do not always sum up to 100 percent due to rounding. Further, the summarizing measures of many vari- ables have been rounded to the nearest 10 or 100 in order to avoid spurious precision and enhance readability. In nearly all of the tabulations , skewed distributions are com- mon; they are frequently indicated by the contrasts between the means and medians. Consequently, the median more often rep- resents a more v1.lid average than does the mean. In sum, the study is intended to tell us how well the more than 1,100 college and university libraries meet the ACRL stan- dards, given the limitations of missing vari- ables, the ever-present possibility of errors due to reporting, and the original data pro- cessing. All the probable sources of error typical of secondary analysis were elimi- nated by systematic screening of the data, school by school and variable by variable, by the author and other members of the ACRL Committee on Revision of College Library Standards. Careful use of this study can assist in the improvement of the under- standing of the Standards and possibly their revision. Moreover, it is possible that by seeing the kinds and extent of libraries' shortcomings, tactics for improvement may be determined. In comparing the characteristics of these libraries with the statements in the Stan- dards, recall that the Standards are for adequate, not ideal , programs. The relevant statement from the Standards document is as follows: The Standards .. . do not present [an] unattain- able ideal. They rathe r de scribe a realistic set of conditions which, if fulfilled , will provide an adequate library program in a college. 3 COLLECTIONS The Basic Collection , defined in Formula A of the Standards , should consist of 85,000 volumes of books , plus fifteen volumes for each FTE student , 100 volumes for each faculty member, and various allowances for each field of study. The HEGIS data bases provide no information about the nuinber of fields of study , majors or minors , but the basic collection size and holdings per stu- dent and faculty are known as shown in several tables below. Presumably in order to meet the standards of Formula A, no li- brary can operate "adequately" with fewer than 100,000 volumes: hence the lowest row class for table 1. To illustrate more fully the implications for Formula A on collection size , consider the following hypothetical "model": Basic collection Assume 100 faculty @ 100 volumes Assume 1,500 students @ 15 volumes Assume 16 undergraduate major or minor fields @ 350 volumes Assume no other special or graduate fields Total 85,000 10,000 22,500 5,600 123, 100 C allege Libraries I 9 TABLE 1 BOOK COLLECTION SIZE Private Private Public Public TOTAL Grad . Undgrad. Grad . No. of Volumes (N = 1134) (N = 261 ) (511) (287) Undgrad . (75) <100,000 <200,000 <300,000 300,000 or more 43% 33% 68% 7% 52% 34 43 13 16 10 9 Median Vols. Mean Vols. 112,800 133,700 151,700 162,000 Conclusions: (1) The majority of all undergraduate institutions, comprising 52 percent of these colleges and universities, have fewer than 100,000 volumes of books. Indeed, 55 percent of the private under- graduate institutions have fewer than 85,000 volumes, the standard for the Basic Collec- tion in Formula A. 2. Given the hypothetical model above, the mean and median collection sizes of both public and private undergraduate in- stitutions fall below the hypothetical 123,100 volume "requirement." Another perspective of libraries and the formula for book-collection size appears when book stock is analyzed in terms of stu- dent enrollment (FTE students). Roughly speaking, the larger the student body the fewer the volumes per capita. ~ore precise comprehension of table 2 may be facilitated by the following: Among all (1, 134) schools, 30 percent have fewer than 1,000 FTE students 27 percent have 1,000-1,999 FTE stu- dents 23 percent have 2,000-4,999 FTE stu- dents 20 percent have 5,000 or more FTE stu- dents. Book holdings in volumes per faculty member are shown in table 3. Inasmuch as 26 38 40 4 26 7 2 29 1 79,800 224,700 97,700 94,600 254,900 108,600 TABLE 3 BOOK HOLDINGS : VOLUMES PER FACULTY Vols./Faculty <1,000 <2,000 <3,000 3, 000 or more Median number of volumes per faculty = 1,410 Mean number of volumes per faculty = 1,670 All Libraries 27% 50 17 5 most of the libraries in this study have few- er than 2,000 students, small faculties are to be expected. Among all schools, 28 percent have fewer than 50 full-time faculty _ 32 percent have 50-99 full-time faculty 22 percent have 100-199 full-time faculty 18 percent have 200 or more full-time faculty . The variations by type of institution are particularly great in comparing the private undergraduate institutions with others. The Standards state that " .. . it is good prac- tice for a library to own any title that is needed more than six; times a year. "4 The number of periodical subscriptions by type and size of college is shown in table 4. There are no available data to assess either the frequency of need for periodicals or the extent by which the periodical titles in TABLE 2 BOOK HOLDINGS : VOLUMES PER STUDENT Vols./Student FTE<1,000 FTE<2,000 <50 vols. 50<150 150 or more 5% 72 23 All libraries Median number of volumes per FTE student = 63 (N = 1134) Mean number of volumes per FTE student = 85 16% 75 9 FTE<5,000 57% 40 3 FTE 5,000 or more 91% 9 0 10 I College & Research Libraries • ] anuary 1981 TABLE 4 NUMBER OF PERIODI CAL SUBSCRIPTIONS Private No. Periodical TOTAL Grad . Subscriptions (1, 133) (261 ) <500 28% 17% <750 22 25 <1,500 27 39 1,500 or more 23 19 Median No. 755 848 Mean No. 1, I70 1,060 these libraries are included in the "several good handlists . . . of periodicals appropri- ate for college collections" as generally cited in the Standards document. 5 Private Public Public Undgrad . Grad. Undgrad. (510) (287) (75) 49% 2% 13% 29 4 31 18 28 47 4 66 9 510 1,970 802 590 2,350 940 terpretation. Excluding all new editions, books classed as juvenile , fiction, and medicine, the total U.S. titles for 1977 was approximately 26,000. 6 The median number of acquisitions, 4, 770 volumes, presumably includes some retrospective materials, some multiple copies , and some works of foreign origin, allowing for a possible 10-15 percent selection of the titles appearing new that year. Measures of book collection development appear in tables 5 and 6. Nearly half of the modal type of libraries, those serving pri- vate undergraduate schools, acquired fewer than 3,000 volumes in 1977. By contrast, 58 percent of the public graduate schools' li- braries acquired between 10,000 and 25,000 volumes. If we consider the number of ti- tles published in the U.S . in 1977, the dis- tribution in table 5 is afforded another in- An exact measure of library book acquisi- tions in terms of the Standards appears in table 6. The public-controlled institutions, . on average, meet or exceed the standard. TABLE 5 BOOK VOLUMES ADDED PER YEAR Private Private Public Public Total Grad . Undgrad . Grad . Undgrad . Vols . Added (1, 134) (261 ) (511) (287) (75) <3,000 29% 22% 49% 4% 19% <5,000 23 27 31 5 24 <10,000 24 34 15 26 40 <25,000 21 15 6 53 17 25,000 or more 3 2 0 12 0 Median No . 4,770 5,190 3,050 12,230 5,650 Mean No. 7,490 6,890 3,850 14,780 6,530 TABLE 6 PERCENT OF BOOKSTOCK ADDED (STANDARD : 5% OF THE COLLECTION SHO ULD BE A UGMENTED YEARLY) Pri vate Private Public Public Total Grad . Undgrad . Grad . Undgrad . %Added (1,134) (261 ) (511 ) (287) (75) <3 22% 27% 30% 8% 12% <4 22 28 27 12 13 <5 19 22 18 17 17 Cumulative % Under 5% (63%) (77%) (75%) (37%) (42%) <6 13 13 7 22 11 6--7.9 14 3 9 27 23 8 or more 10 7 8 14 24 Median% 4.3 3.8 3.7 5.7 5.7 Mean% 5.3 5. 1 4.6 6.4 6.4 However, they comprise only 32 percent of all schools and the overall median falls be- low the standard. STAFF Formula B of the Standards determines the adequate number of professional librar- ians needed by taking into account the number of students, book collection size, and annual book acquisitions . 7 Such a pro- cedure would seem to be a better indicator of staffing requirements than the percentage distribution in table 7, and a more precise understanding of college library professional staffing in terms of Formula B is to be found in tables 8 and 9. However, table 7 documents the relatively small size of pro- fessional staff, especially staffs in private undergraduate institutions , and comple- ments the foregoing discussions of book stock and periodical subscriptions. The Formula B procedures for calculating individual library professional staff needs are as follows: one: For each 500 (or fraction ) FTE stu- dents up to 10,000 College Libraries I 11 one: For each 1,000 (or fraction ) FTE students over 10,000 one: For each 100,000 volumes (or frac- tion) in the collection one: For each 5,000 volumes (or fraction ) added per year. Table 8 shows us the number of staff needed for the large majority of libraries to meet the terms of Formula B. The information about professional staff needs in table 8 is quite provocative-one- third of the libraries need four or more additional staff, and 81 percent fall below the standard. However, Formula B also has a grading system for professional staffing as follows 8 : When supported by sufficient other staff members libraries that provide 100 percent of re- quirements are at level A ; libraries that provide 71>-99 percent are at level B; libraries that provide 51>-7 4 percent are at level C ; libraries that provide 4~54 percent are at level D. TABLE 7 N UMBER O F PROFE SS IO NA L STAFF Pri vate Pri vate Public Public No. of Total Grad . Und grad . Grad . Und grad . Prof. Staff (1, I34) (261 ) (511 ) (287) (75) 0-2 19% 11% 34% 2% 11% 3-5 37 41 49 11 40 6--8 18 25 13 19 32 9--14 14 16 5 29 13 15 or more 11 6 0 38 4 Median No. 5.0 5.5 3.5 12. 1 5.7 Mean No . 7.2 6.6 3.9 14.1 6.5 TABLE 8 DISTRIB UTION OF PROFESSIO NAL STAFF SIZE ACCORDING TO FORM ULA B REQ UIREME NTS Private Private Public Public Prof. Staff Total Grad . Undgrad . Grad . Undgrad. Plus or Minus (1, 134) (261 ) (511 ) (287) (75) Need 4 or more 34% 37% 10% 73% 40% Need 3 14 16 14 11 13 Need 2 16 11 25 5 15 Need 1 17 16 26 3 13 Need 0 8 7 13 2 8 Exceed by 1-2 7 8 10 2 8 Exceed by 3 or more 3 5 2 3 3 Median Minu s 2 Minus 3 Minus 1 Minus 5 Minus 3 Mean Minus 2 Minus 2 Minus 1 Minus 4 Minus 2 12 I College & Research Libraries • January 1981 Table 9 reports the grade levels of libraries in these terms. Fifty-one percent of public graduate insti- tutions meet the B or better level, the best score by type of institution. Table 10 shows the percentage distribu- tion of support staff. The data in table 10 do not include any weighted factor for student assistance. Evidence for the qualification that professional staff be supported by suf- ficient other staff members is provided in table 11. The distribution of hours of stu- dent assistance appears in table 12. The standards call for 25-35 percent pro- fessionals as percent of staff. 9 This would yield a ratio of about 1:3 (25 percent) to 1:1.9 (35 percent). On average, well over half of all libraries fall below the lower part of the range, 35 percent. The largest group of libraries by type, private undergraduate libraries, fares the worst with averages of fewer than one support staff member for each professional librarian. The use of student assistants in libraries is generally considered to be a necessary, important, and efficient factor in library staffing. Table 12 displays the considerable variations in the employment of student assistants not only in the percentage dis- tributions but also in the means and me- dians. As is the case with many other vari- ables in this study, there is a contrast be- tween public graduate and private under- graduate institutions . Interpreting hours of student assistance as a staffing function is problematic; translating the hours into some kind of FTE staff equivalent invites a variety of procedures. For instance, if one staff position were to be defined as equal to 40 hours a week, 50 TABLE 9 Grade Level A or higher B c 0 Below 0 Median % and Grade No . of Support Staff 0 1-2 3--5 6-8 9-14 15 or more Median No. Mean No. Median Mean Maximum Minimum GRADING OF LIBRARIES ACCORDING TO FORMULA B REQUIREMENTS Private Private Total Grad . Undgrad . (1, 134) (261 ) (511 ) 18% 20% 24% 27 23 22 29 34 23 16 13 20 9 10 12 71% (C) 68% (C) 70% (C) TABLE 10 TECHNICAL, CLERICAL, AND OTHER SuPPORT STAFF Private Private Total Grad . Undgrad . (1, 134) (261 ) (511 ) 6% 5% 10% 27 21 45 22 26 29 13 15 10 14 19 5 18 14 2 4.8 5.5 2.6 8.9 7.8 3.5 TABLE 11 RATIO OF PROFESSIONAL TO SUPPORT STAFF Private Private Total Grad . Undgrad . (1,118) (254 ) (501 ) 1:1.0 1:1.0 1:0.8 1:1.1 1:1.9 1:0.9 1:9.0 1:9.0 1:5.2 1:0.0 1:0.0 1:0.0 Public Public Grad . Undgrad. (287) (75) 7% 19% 44 20 37 27 10 29 2 5 75% (B) 61 %(C) Public Public Grad . Undgrad . (287) (75) 0% 1% 3 17 8 24 13 24 23 25 54 8 15.8 7.0 19.9 8.2 Public Public Grad . Undgrad . (286) (75) 1:1.4 1:1.1 1:1.4 1:1.3 1:4.6 1:5.6 1:0.0 1:0.0 College Libraries I 13 TABLE 12 HOURS OF STUDENT ASSISTANCE , ANNUAL Hours/Year <3,000 <7,000 <11,000 <15,000 15,000 or more Median No . Mean No. Total (1,122) 26% 28 15 18 13 6,400 10,600 Private Grad . (261 ) 21% 28 18 24 10 7,100 9,600 weeks a year, 2,000 hours of student assis- tance are required to "equal" a support staff position . Given the median and mean figures in table 12, libraries in aggregate gain from student assistance the equivalence of from two to five support positions. This is , of course, at best a crude estimate of the value of the flexibility in this kind of staffing, its cost, and its quality. Other dimensions useful for approximat- ing staff and collection development are presented in the following tables which relate professional staff size to the size of book collections and annual book acquisi- tions . Previous tables have shown that col- lege libraries have rather modest collections and professional staff. The median book stock of these libraries is just above 110,000 volumes, annual additions are fewer than 5,000 volumes, and the median professional staff is 5.0 (one-third of private undergradu- ate institutions having two or fewer staff). Tables 13 and 14 provide an additional per- spective: about 75 percent of libraries have one professional to "service" as many as 30,000 volumes and over 40 percent of the libraries have one staff member for the selection , processing, and dissemination of as many as 1,000-2,000 volumes per year. CORRELATIONS : STAFF, ENROLLMENT, COLLECfiONS During the examination of the tables on staffing, enrollment, the size of the book collection, and the number of book volumes added, several interesting relationships among these variables came to mind. Among them, hypotheses evolved that cor- relations existed between the size of staff and other variables--correlations that were high. Systematic analysis produced con- firming results, · producing moderate to Private Public Public Undgrad . Grad . Undgrad . (503) (284) (74) 34% 15% 32% 36 14 22 17 8 23 11 26 12 2 37 11 4,500 15,400 6,200 5,700 21,100 8,200 moderately high positive correlations as shown in table 15. Namely, the larger the staff, professional or professional plus support staff, the larger the number of volumes in the collection and the larger the number of students. Howev- er, recall that libraries with larger enroll- ments have fewer volumes per capita stu- dent (table 2) . Nearly as strong a rela- tionship is reflected in the correlation be- TABLE 13 BOOKSTOCK VOLUMES PER PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIAN Ratio of Prof. Lbns. to Book Collection 1:<10,000 vols. 1:10,000-19,999 1:20,000-29,999 1:30,000-39,999 1:40,000 or more TABLE 14 Percent of Libraries (1, 134) 4% 39 31 16 10 BOOKS ADDED PER PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIAN Ratio of Prof. Lbns . to Books Added 1:< 1,000 1:1,000-1,999 1:2,000 or more Professional Sta{G Proba ility No . of Libs . Professional & Support Staff Probability No. of Libs. Percent of Libraries (1, 134) 53% 39 8 TABLE 15 CORRELATIONS Book FTE Books Vols. Held Students Added r = .81 r = .84 r = .71 .0001 .0001 .0001 1134 1134 1134 r = .85 r = .87 r = .75 .0001 .0001 .0001 1134 1134 1134 14 I College & Research Libraries • January 1981 tween staff size and collection development as measured by "books added . " On the other hand, these relationships exist within quite strict parameters: staff size, collection size, enrollment, and book acquisitions are in the aggregate quite small, especially in terms of the Standards. BUDGET The standards call for a m1mmum of 6 percent of the institution's budget, exclusive of capital and physical maintenance expendi- tures, to be allocated to the library. Fol- lowing are tables of library operating ex- penditures , including a table showing how well libraries are faring with the 6 percent "rule" (table 16). Summarizing for all libraries, 84 percent are allocated less than 6 percent of their in- stitutional budgets, and more than one-third receive less than 4 percent. Institutions with 3,000-5,000 student enrollments fare the best, but even these and the largest in- stitutions fail by four or more to one to meet the 6 percent standard. This critical budgetary standard is simply not met by the great majority of libraries . As enrollment size and size of faculty should tend to correlate, the results in table 17 are similar to those in the preceding table with distribution by FTE students. Larger faculties do not accompany larger percentage allocations of budgets to the li- brary. While specific dollar amounts for library operations are not specified in the Stan- dards, the following tables provide some additional sensitivity about library budgets by showing total operating dollar expendi- tures, expenditures for salaries and wages, and for materials. As shown in table 18, public graduate in- stitutions have far larger budgets than the other types; more than two-thirds of these 287 schools have more than one-half-million dollars for library operating expenditures. The contrast among the median budgets highlights the differences among the institu- tional types. Table 19 reports $100,000 as an approx- imation for salaries and wages. Assuming the medians of five each professional and support staff (tables 7 and 9) and discount- ing any allocation for student wages, the TABLE 16 LIBRARY EXPENDITURE AS A PERCENT OF INSTITUTIONAL EXPENDITURE , BY FTE STUDENTS FTE Students Lib . % Total < 1,000 <2 ,000 < 5,000 5,000 or More of Budget (1,132) (345) (306) (263) (218) <3 12% 15% 11% 11% 11% <4 26 27 30 25 20 <5 29 26 29 28 36 <6 17 18 16 16 19 Cumulative % Below 6% (84) (86) (86) (80) (86) &-6.9 8 5 7 10 10 7 or more 8 10 7 10 4 Median , all institutions , 4.3% Mean, all institutions, 4.8% TABLE 17 LIBRARY EXPENDITURE AS A PERCENT OF INSTITUTIONAL EXPENDITURE , BY SIZE OF FACULTY Lib.% Total <50 Number of Faculty <100 <200 200 or More of Budget (1, 128) (319) (360) (246) (203) <3 12% 15% 14% 8% 9% <4 26 24 31 27 20 <5 29 27 28 28 37 <6 17 15 16 19 19 <7 8 6 6 11 10 7 or more 8 12 6 7 4 C allege Libraries I 15 TABLE 18 TOTAL OPERATING EXPENDITURES FOR LIBRARIES Total Lib. Budge t ($) <$75,000 <100,000 <200,000 <500,000 <1 million 1 million or more Median Mean Total (1, 134) 12% 10 28 28 14 8 $200,000 $364,000 Private Grad . (261 ) 6% 9 26 44 12 3 $232 ,000 $297,000 Private Public Public Undgrad . Grad. Undgrad . (511 ) (287) (75) 23% 0% 1% 17 1 5 41 5 25 16 27 53 2 37 12 0 30 3 $113,000 $717,000 $264,000 $146,000 $826,000 $326,000 TABLE 19 SALARIES AND WAGES BUDGETS Salaries & Wages($) <$50,000 <100,000 <300,000 $300,000 or more Median Mean Total (1,134) 20% 28 33 18 $103,000 $188,000 Private Grad . (261 ) 13% 26 51 10 $124,000 $153,000 salaries of college library staffs are presum- ably quite low. Five professionals with a median salary of $11,000 and five support staff with a median of $9,000-1977 dol- lars-would require $100,000. The quality of service so long sought for and strongly emphasized in the standards may depend in no small part on financial compensation adequate to attract staff appropriate in qual- ity to the level of services in libraries' ob- jectives. The materials budget figures in table 20 are hardly remarkable considering the me- dian purchase of fewer than 5, 000 book volumes per year. The average price (1977) per volume of hardcover books, excluding Private Public Public Undgrad . Grad. Undgrad . (511 ) (287) (75) 37% 1% 7% 43 5 23 20 34 61 1 60 9 $62,000 $358,000 $143,000 $74,000 $426,000 $169,000 those costing $81.00 or more , was $17.32. 10 The overall median materials budget would permit purchase of about 4,100 volumes assuming a 10 percent discount from the average price cited. (This does not allow for purchase of periodicals, audiovisuals, etc.) Libraries, of course, must acquire titles costing $81.00 or more; such titles added to the total publications, raise 1977's mean cost to $19.22, reducing the number of volumes even further for all libraries, and clearly having considerable effect on the 50 percent of all libraries having less than $64,000 for materials and the 50 percent of private undergraduate schools with less than $36,000 for all materials. TABLE 20 MATERIALS BUDGETS Private Private Public Public Total Grad . Undgrad. Grad. Undgrad. Materials ($) (1, 134) (261 ) (511 ) (287) (75) <$25,000 16% 10% 30% 0% 7% <50,000 24 23 36 3 16 <100,000 23 31 25 9 40 <300,000 26 32 9 47 36 $300,000 or more 11 5 0 40 1 Median $64,000 $70,000 $36,000 $237,000 $89,000 Mean $124,000 $100,000 $49,000 $285,000 $109,000 16 I College & Research Libraries • January 1981 Depending upon local factors, between 35 and 45 percent of the library's budget is normally allo- cated to the purchase of materials and between 50 and 60 percent is expended for personne l. 11 The fact that the proportions allocated for personnel and materials from the total oper- ating budget of libraries collectively are up to standard (table 21) may be of small com- fort when we recall that 80 percent or more of all types of libraries receive less than 6 percent of the institutional budget and that median total operating budgets are about $200,000 with $113,000 for private under- graduate institutions . From a policy point of view, however, the proportions cited in the Standards are satisfactorily met with excep- tional uniformity. SERVICE Among the following tables are four in- dicators of service. Data available for this study provide far less insight into the "out- put" than the " input" of libraries. Of the four indicators presented below, only one reflects directly on the standards for service: that " the public's need for access to libraries may range upward to 100 hours per week . . . " 12 The availability of library ser- vices elsewhere and conjointly provided by library cooperation is in no way measurable with the NCES data base ; each library stands alone in this respect as in others. Nonetheless, as table 22 shows, the 100 hours per week "s tandard" seems to be ap- proximately met, with considerable range as indicated by the minimum and maximum hours . The ratio of professional library staff to students is more favorable in private than in public-controlled schools (table 23). Nonetheless, if library staffs are to provide "adequate" services, including the wider adoption of on-line bibliographic searches and bibliographic instruction, these staffing ratios suggest the need for more profession- als. Also, the data base reinforces the TABLE 21 Materials Personnel Median Mean Minimum Maximum Ratio of Prof. Lbns. to Students 1:<200 1:200-299 1:300-399 1:400-699 l: 700 or more Median Ratio Mean Ratio AGGREGATE MEAN PERCENT OF TOTAL BUDGET FOR MATERIALS AND PERSONNEL Private Private Total Grad . Undgrad . (1, 134) (261) (511 ) 34% 34% 34% 51% 51% 51% TABLE 22 HOURS OPEN PER WEEK Private Private Total Grad . Undgrad . (1,135) (26 1) (5 10) 82 85 78 82 86 79 9 49 9 168 168 168 TABLE 23 PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIANS PER FTE STUDENT Private Private Total Grad. Undgrad . ( 1, 116) (254) (50 1) 18% 17% 29% 23 23 33 19 19 20 29 27 14 11 13 4 1:350 1:340 1:260 1:410 1:440 1:310 Public Public Grad . L1 nd~rad . (287) (75) 35% 33% 52% 52% Public Public Grad. L'ndgrad. (287) (75) 85 77 85 76 49 52 168 93 Public Public Grad . Undgrad . (286) (75) 1% 9% 7 21 15 16 54 40 23 13 1:530 1:430 1:570 1:460 findings in table 9, that professional staff. size is quite rarely up to Standard B. The range of loans per FTE student (table 24) is very large-from less than one per student in nine libraries to 302 in one library. The tenth and ninetieth percentiles provide a more compact basis for compari- son but nonetheless suggest great disparities in this measure of service (use). The use of reference services as reported by about 90 percent of the college libraries is potential evidence for the need to de- velop bibliographic instruction and related programs. Only 5 percent of libraries frac- tionally report more than one reference (or directional ) transaction per student per week (table 25). Private undergraduate li- braries are more active in this respect than are the other types of libraries ; their weekly .25 median may support the deduction that students at such schools, on average , ask more questions a month regarding library resources and services. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION The analysis of the 1977 HEGIS data yielded many conclusions about college li- braries that may be briefly summarized as follows: A. l. Libraries serving institutions with no or very few post-baccalaureate programs fail on average to meet the Standards for the basic book collection ; further, nearly C allege Libraries I 17 half have fewer than 500 periodical title subscriptions. A.2. Three-fourths of privately controlled schools, including those with graduate pro- grams, added less than 5 percent to their book stock in 1977. The majority of all in- stitutions acquired fewer than 5,000 volumes each that year. A.3. From 77-91 percent of those librar- ies serving enrollments of fewer than 2,000 students (a majority of the schools) hold fewer than 150 volumes per student. B.l. The number of staff members in col- lege libraries is characteristically modest; the 511 private undergraduate schools have two or fewer professional librarians. Ap- plication of the Standards' formula for pro- fessional staff indicates that all types of li- braries fall far short of the standard. Private undergraduate schools rate better than the other three classes in terms of the raw num- bers needed ; however, when classed by the formula's grading system they rank quite similarly with others as about 3~51 percent of all libraries rank B or higher. B.2. The ratio of professional to support staff is on average about 1:1, a fact not like- ly to appear cost- or service-effective. C. The Standards' expectation that in- stitutions allocate 6 percent of their operat- ing budgets to the library is met by only 16 percent of these schools. The median (4 .3 percent) allocation is 30 percent below the TABLE 24 Median Mean lOth percentile 90th percentile Median Mean lOth Percentile 90th Percentile 95th Percentile ANNUAL LOANS PER FfE STUDENT Private Private Total Grad. Undgrad . (1, 132) (260) (510) 19 20 23 24 25 27 8 6 9 42 46 47 TABLE 25 DIRECTIONAL AND REFERENCE TRANSACTIONS PER FfE STUDENT PER WEEK Private Private Total Grad . Undgrad . (997) (233) (443) .17 .18 .25 .33 .26 .45 .05 .05 .07 .66 .57 .91 1.08 .74 1.47 Public Public Grad. Undgrad . (287) (75) 15 16 18 20 7 6 31 36 Public Public Grad. Undgrad . (254) (67) .10 .14 .18 .24 .04 .04 .36 .47 .47 1.14 18 I College & Research Libraries • January 1981 standard 6 percent. The expenditures for materials and personnel reflect clearly the very modest sums appropriated for library expenditures in all four classes of institu- tions. D. Access to and use of libraries, as measured here, is equally moderate. In sum, for most libraries it seems fair to say that they are underdeveloped, under- staffed, and underused. Assuming that the Standards are reason- able, far greater support for all library func- tions is required for the great majority of li- braries. While the particul~rs of each for- mula for collection size and staff as well as other parts of the Standards may well be open to revision , the data presented here on these basic indicators of library behavior suggest that any serious reduction in the quantitative aspects of the Standards may mean concession to inferior quality. After all, a collection .of fewer than 100,000 volumes and a professional staff member to serve each 350-400 students (plus faculty and other patrons) are presumably not adequate much less "ideal" goals-yet these are the median measures of these character- istics for most libraries. This analysis is intended to clarify the sta- tus of libraries in as many respects as possi- ble , given the available data, in order to facilitate understanding of the Standards' implications. In the future perhaps the clar- ification will be fuller, for many factors can- not now be measured because there are no relevant data systematically collected. As data collection and analysis increase, the perspective of empirical conditions in con- trast with those of the Standards may not only itself improve, but also the conditions of the libraries may improve. This occurs often when surveillance and analysis of an organization imply more intense interest in and heightened valuation of the organization as wen · as sensitivity to its needs . REFERENC ES 1. "Standards for College Libraries ," College & Research Libraries 36:277-79, 290-301 (Oct. 1975). 2. Carnegie Commission on Higher Education , A Classification of Institutions of Higher Education: A Technical Report (Berkeley , California, 1973). 3. "Standards for College Libraries ," p.277. 4. Ibid. , p.290 . 5. Ibid. , p.290. 6. Chandler P. Grannis , " Updated Book Output Statistics, 1978 ," Publishers Weekly 216, no.l0:44 (Sept. 3, 1979). 7. "Standards for College Libraries ," p.291. 8. Ibid ., p.291 9. Ibid., p. 292 10. Grannis, " Updated Book Output Statistics, 1978;" p.47. 11 . "Standards for College Libraries ," p.299. 12. Ibid. , p .293