College and Research Libraries


Book Reviews 
Can N e w Principles of Administration Be Formulated to Meet 
the Enlarged Opportunities of the College Library? 

Principles of College Library Administra-
tion. Second Edition. William  M . 
Randall and Francis  L.  D . Goodrich. 
American Library Association and T h e 
University of Chicago Press, 1941. xiii, 
249p. $2.50. ( T h e University of Chi-
cago Studies in Library Science) 
T H E P U B L I C A T I O N of a new edition of 

an indispensable book is an event of impor-
tance in any field. In no field is it more 
important than in that of the literature of 
the college library, where authoritative 
books of f u l l stature have never been 
abundant.  I t is, therefore, with especial 
interest that the second edition of the 
Principles has been awaited. 

T h e publishers, in a descriptive note 
on the new edition, say: 

The revised edition of this important text 
includes recent developments in the field, 
new statistical material concerning salaries, 
book expenditures, and other items impor-
tant in the administration of college libra-
ries, extensively revised bibliographies, and 
detailed instructions for the making of 
library budgets. 

Using this statement as a point of depar-
ture, the review will endeavor, first of 
all, to show in summary fashion the extent 
of the revisions made by the authors. 

T h e second edition reproduces in for-
mat, chapter headings, and statistical 
tables the satisfactory organization of the 
first edition. Edition one is printed on 
245 Pages; edition two, on 249 pages. 
T h e first edition gave 117 bibliographical 
citations; the second edition gives 131, 
of which 28 are new. A random selection 
of chapters two, three, five, and nine has 

been made to indicate changes in subject 
matter.  I n the earlier edition, these chap-
ters fill slightly more than ninety-one 
pages; in the new edition, they amount 
to ninety-five pages. Additions, revisions, 
and omissions in lines and paragraphs of 
these chapters result in a combined total 
of slightly more than nine pages of new 
material. All of the tables in the work 
are set up in revised figures. 

O n page seventy-four, a sample library 
budget showing the distribution of a total 
budget of $16,500 appears as a new fea-
ture. T h e list of "Library Plans Sug-
gested for Study," printed at the end of 
chapter seven, includes nineteen plans in 
both editions; of these, four represent new 
names, and there is a corresponding elimi-
nation of four names from the original 
list. 

Passing from the consideration of me-
chanical features, one is glad to find still 
present the economy and precision of state-
ment that characterized the presentation 
of materials in the first edition. As be-
fore, urbanity and tact are present, with-
out sacrifice of forthrightness. T r e n c h a n t 
statements, greatly valued in the first 
edition, could hardly have been improved 
upon, and they are wisely repeated ver-
batim in the new edition. Authoritative 
opinions on library costs (p. 34) ; on the 
competency of librarians (p. 28) ; on 
"muddling along" with insufficient budg-
ets (p. 46) ; on the college librarian as 
scholar, educator, professional by right of 
attainments and hence worthy of suitable 
rank (p. 56-57) ; and on the library build-
ing as a tool designed for a purpose 

350 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH ) L I B R A R I E S 



(p. 192)—all these favorite passages are 
repeated, as they well deserve to be. 

Since it is the ungracious task of the 
reviewer neither to bury Caesar nor to 
praise him without discrimination, it be-
comes necessary at this point to consider 
how much water has flowed under the 
library bridge between 1936 and 1941, 
and what reservoir of it has been made by 
the authors.  A t the earlier of these dates, 
which is the date of the first edition, D r . 
Randall's Carnegie Corporation survey of 
college libraries had been in print only 
four years. G r a n t s of money, by which 
the corporation followed the survey, 
brought the power of $1,011,000 into the 
administration of eighty-three four-year 
liberal arts colleges, so that by 1941 the 
fructifying influences of the two events 
have had a history of nearly ten years. 

D u r i n g the last five of these years, the 
literature of the college library has bur-
geoned. Today, this literature finds a 
new focus in College and Research Li-
braries, since 1939 the official organ of 
the Association of College and Reference 
Libraries. An examination of Readers' 
Guide, Education Index, Library Liter-
ature, and Public Affairs Information 
Service, between 1935 and 1940, shows as 
much as seventy-six pages of bibliography 
devoted to the college library. T h e 
Principles now being reviewed have taken 
strangely little account of this growing 
body of knowledge. 

Even more important, perhaps, than the 
literature of the library itself, is the litera-
ture that records what has been a period of 
sturm und drang for the colleges of which 
the libraries are a unit. C u r r e n t issues 
in higher education fill the Proceedings of 
an important institute.1 T h e influence of 

1 I n s t i t u t e of A d m i n i s t r a t i v e Offices of H i g h e r I n -
s t i t u t i o n s . Proceedings. Vol. g. U n i v e r s i t y of 
Chicago P r e s s , 1937. 

government on education; professional 
education in liberal arts colleges; election 
and prescription in relation to college 
education; the survival of the four-year 
college—all these and other vital issues 
have been faced by colleges with courage 
and candor.2 M r . Butts has projected a 
chart for the course of the college, de-
signed on historical principles that have 
been built up after a reconsideration of 
the curriculum as far back as the time of 
its domination by the seven liberal arts.3 

Miss Beesley has proved the revival of 
the humanities in American education.4 

M r . A r n e t t recommends a comprehensive 
study of the total resources of the coun-
try, as these are available for higher educa-
tion, and as they relate to the plans and 
procedures of privately supported colleges 
and universities, now facing diminishing 
returns on investments, possible shrinkage 
in gifts, and increased competition from 
publicly supported institutions.5 

Another significant study reports on 
57 types of educational change and ex-
perimentation, involving 1322 cases of in-
stitutional participation, among 315 col-
leges of liberal arts. All of these in-
novations are directed toward the solution 
of problems caused by the extension of 
the normal period of formal education; by 
the assumption that graduation from high 
school and college is the right of the many, 
rather than the privilege of the f e w ; by 
"the growth of an inexorable demand for 
education beyond the twelfth grade" 
which "puts a very heavy strain upon 
established procedures at the college 

2 Ibid., Vol. 11, 1939-
3 B u t t s , R.  F . The College Charts Its Course. 

McGraw-Hill, 1939. 
4 Beesley, P a t r i c i a . The Revival of the Humanities 

in American Education. Columbia U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 
1940. 

B A r n e t t , T r e v o r . Recent Trends in Higher Edu-
cation in the United States: with Special Reference 
to Financial Support for Private Colleges and Uni-
versities. New York, G e n e r a l E d u c a t i o n B o a r d , 
1940. (Occasional P a p e r s N o . 13). 

SEPT EMBER, 1941 351 



level."6 And, finally, one great state 
has made a study of the relation of second-
ary and higher education throughout its 
borders, and has found that the self-educa-
tion of each student should constitute the 
controlling object of any educational 
agency that deals with him. Incidentally, 
it may be significant for the future ad-
ministration of college libraries that 
among the four recommendations made 
for reaching this desired goal, the section 
referring to libraries requires that they 
shall be organized and administered pri-
marily for the student's convenience in 
learning.7 

These selections from the literature of 
the college today, infinitesimal as they 
are in view of all that is being written, 
serve to show that " T h e gap between 
American faith in education and satisfac-
tion in its results is sufficiently great to 
give rise to a continual stream of diag-
nosis and cures."8 In this cure, it is not 
impossible that the library may have a role 
of far greater importance than has been 
thought. Guidance in planning this role 
would have been welcome from the au-
thors of the Principles. 

If excellent libraries are an index of 
institutional excellence, as investigators 
have found, the survival value of a col-
lege may be greatly advanced by the su-
periority of its library. Colleges may find 
that in the quest for such value it is later 
than they think. At least one commenta-
tor on the subject, who speaks with un-
usual authority, has intimated that this 
is the case when he says: 

6 N a t i o n a l Society f o r t h e S t u d y of E d u c a t i o n . 
The Thirty-Eighth Yearbook. P t . I I . B l o o m i n g t o n , 
111., P u b l i c School P u b l i s h i n g C o m p a n y , 1939, p. 42, 
351-52. 

7 L e a r n e d ,  W . S., and Wood, B. D. The Student 
and His Knowledge. T h e C a r n e g i e F o u n d a t i o n f o r 
the A d v a n c e m e n t of T e a c h i n g , 1938, p. 46. ( B u l l e t i n 
2 9 ) . 

8 C a r n e g i e Corporation of New Y o r k . Report of 
the President and the Treasurer. T h e C o r p o r a t i o n , 
1 9 3 9 , P. 36. 

There are today in the United States far 
more universities, colleges, and other operat-
ing institutions, and far more voluntary or-
ganizations for worthy purposes than the 
nation can possibly afford. In the years to 
come many of these are bound to disappear, 
and one of the most difficult duties that face 
the foundation is that of so directing its 
grants that its influence will be directed to-
ward the survival of the fittest.9 

It is, then, in relating the library to the 
survival of the fittest colleges that the 
college library administrator finds his 
greatest opportunity at such a critical 
hour. As M r . Branscomb has intimated, 
" T h e answer to a number of academic 
problems is to be found in a greater em-
phasis on the reading aspects of college 
work."1 0 In 1932, one of the most brilli-
ant of the schoolmen said the same thing 
in a different w a y : 

The college does not build up maturity by 
the same methods as those employed in a 
mill or an office. Its chosen material is 
literature; its chosen instrument is the book. 
The intention of the college is that, in the 
case of these favored young people who are 
allowed to study after the high school pe-
riod, minds shall be fed, and trained, and 
strengthened, and directed by the use of 
books. The whole procedure points forward 
to a mode of life in which persons, by the 
aid of books, are enabled to live in ways 
which are not open to their nonreading fel-
lows, are trained to practice special forms 
of intelligence in which the use of books 
plays an essential part . . . we must ask in 
every case, What effect will this arrange-
ment have upon the eagerness and capacity 
of a student to use books in the right way 
and for the right purpose?11 

At least a few college libraries in the 
country are studying their responsibilities 
in the light of the pressure being put 

9 Ibid., 1940, p. 32. 
10 B r a n s c o m b , B.  H . Teaching with Books. Asso-

ciation of A m e r i c a n Colleges a n d A m e r i c a n L i b r a r y 
Association, 1940, p. 62. 

11 M e i k l e j o h n , A l e x a n d e r . The Experimental Col-
lege. H a r p e r , 1932, pp. 34-35. 

352 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH ) L I B R A R I E S 



upon their institutions to be so excellent 
as to deserve not only continued existence, 
but also gifts leading to ever-increasing 
opportunities f o r s e r v i c e a b l e n e s s  t o y o u t h . 
Certain efforts of this kind are reflected 
in the financing of far more spacious li-
brary programs than those made possible 
by a t o t a l annual budget of $20,000, the 
Randall and Goodrich estimate of the 
cost of good service. T h a t these efforts 
a r e n e i t h e r f a r f e t c h e d n o r U t o p i a n  is i n -

dicated by available statistics. Fifteen 
miscellaneous colleges, serving from 336 
to 1259 students are offered as examples 
of generous library support. T h i s sup-
port rises, in one case, to $40,000 more 
than the Randall and Goodrich estimate 
of reasonable adequacy.12 

From the February issues of each 
A.L.A. Bulletin, beginning with that of 
!937) the "Small College Library General 
and Salary Statistics" yield a composite 
list of twelve additional libraries, even 
in the class of small institutions, that enjoy 
an annual budget of more than $20,000. 
In none of these twenty-seven cases is the 
college anything but a college, nor is en-
rollment in excess of that suitable to a 
college, rather than to a university. 

Is it possible that the time has come for 
all college libraries to reconsider their 
calling and the potentialities inherent in 
them for cooperating in the ideal of col-
leges today—the ideal of self-education for 
students, education independently acquired 
under guidance, but not through indoc-
trination? T h e director of a famous re-
search library has said: " T h e hope of the 
f u t u r e lies, I think, in the college li-
brary."1 3 Such a statement is an invita-

12 U . S . Office of Education. Biennial Survey of 
Education, 1934-36. 2 vols. U . S . Government P r i n t -
ing Office, 1939, Vol. 2, pp. 208-51. (Bulletin, 1937, 
No. 2 ) . 

13 Adams, R. G. Address at the Dedication of 
the Stockivell Memorial Library, Albion College, 
June Fourth, 1938. p. 26. 

tion to librarians to reconsider their prin-
ciples of administration, not in view of 
practices at 66 or 95 or 200 colleges, but 
in the light of educational needs brought 
into sharp focus by this hour of self-
examination on the part of colleges. 

Have college libraries been too well 
content to use principles of administration 
derived from majority practices, rather 
than from observation of library excel-
lence, wherever found? M r . Randall 
and M r . Goodrich have warned librarians 
that the way to increase the willingness 
of the colleges to pay for library service 
is to demonstrate the value of that service 
(p. 4 6 ) . W i l l not the principles upon 
which such service depends be more con-
vincing if based on the genuinely good 
as well as on the reasonably adequate? 
Is it not possible that new principles, as 
new truth, may emerge from "thesis, 
antithesis, synthesis" derived from prac-
tices in many grades of college libraries, 
among them the very best as well as the 
reasonably good ? It is to be hoped that 
the joint authors of Principles of College 
Library Administration will find such 
wishful thinking on the part of their 
readers an inspiration to the early prepara-
tion of a third and much enlarged edition 
of their invaluable book*—Blanche Prich-
ard McCrum, Wellesley College. 

The Literature of Junior College Ter-
minal Education. Lois E. Engleman 
and W a l t e r Crosby Eells. American 
Association of Junior Colleges, W a s h -
ington, ( i 9 4 0 - 322p. $2.50. 
T H E G R O W T H of the junior college re-

flected in the increase in its numbers and 
its enrollment leaves little doubt regard-
ing the significance and permanence of this 
new institution. T h e name "junior col-
lege" describes fairly accurately the educa-

SEPT EMBER, 1941 353