College and Research Libraries


By R . D . J A M E S O N 

Consultant Service and the 
College Library 
Mr. Jameson, Administrator of Con-

sultant Service, Library of Congress, pre-

sented this paper at a meeting of the Col-

lege Libraries Section of the Association 

of College and Reference Libraries> De-

cember 29, 1941. 

TH E C O N S U L T A N T S E R V I C E o f t h e L i -brary of Congress looks toward the 
solution of two of the major problems and 
a very large number of minor but im-
portant problems confronting the research 
libraries of this era. T h e first of the 
general problems might be referred to as 
the bibliophobia of scholars. T h e second, 
the wild book, has been discussed by 
Ortega y Gasset in his significant article, 
" M a n M u s t T a m e the Book." 

T h e bibliophobia of scholars is a prob-. 
lem well recognized by all of us who have 
to do with research libraries. It may be 
the fault of the older school of librarians 
who liked to keep their books on the 
shelves, but I think the cause lies deeper. 
It seems to be a law of nature, like one 
of the laws of thermodynamics, that there 
is a repulsion between librarians who keep 
books and research men who use books; it 
seems to be a war which is without truce 
and without prospect of peace. W e all 
know that librarians want to know where 
their books are in order to keep the record, 
and that the record (in theory at least, 
though now and again librarians sin) is 

not kept for the sake of the record but 
kept simply to make more books available 
to more people more frequently. There 
are few scholars who will not concur with 
this reasonable view when it is explained 
to them. T h e r e are many, however, who, 
having concurred, continue placidly to take 
the books off the shelves and into their 
offices without making a record. T h e r e 
is goodwill on both sides but unfortunately 
a difficulty in implementing the goodwill. 
Consultant Service, which brings research 
men into the library for a year or longer 
as members of the staff, gives them an 
opportunity to survey their field in its 
entirety, and an opportunity to talk to li-
brarians as colleagues rather than as 
enemies, may, in the course of time, bring 
to research workers an understanding of 
what our problems are and why they are 
problems. 

T h e wildness of books is the second 
large problem this generation is facing. 
It is not necessary for me to remind you 
of the enormous speed with which printed 
matter is being produced or of the difficul-
ties experienced in deciding with budgets 
always too small which of the materials are 
likely to be of the greatest use. Ortega 
y Gasset has warned us that if we do not 
tame the book our culture will revolt 
against it. T h e books will overwhelm us. 
T h e r e is, in fact, evidence that the present 
generation of undergraduates is already 

230 C O L L E G E , AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



turning against books, that the present 
generation is becoming increasingly illiter-
ate; that even where the college libraries 
are good libraries, with collections thought-
fully selected and attractively displayed, 
undergraduates, and in some colleges even 
faculties, continue to avoid the library. 
T o put research people in libraries as part 
of the library staff (providing always they 
are men or women with scholarly vision), 
to request them to guide the undergradu-
ates in their reading is one way of taming 
the books. 

Librarians of Congress and other librar-
ians long before the Library of Congress 
was established, have dreamed of associat-
ing with themselves subject specialists who 
will assist them in their many tasks. In 
1806 Senator Mitchill, in a report from 
the Senate Library Committee, said the 
aim of purchasing books was 

to furnish the library with such materials 
as will enable statesmen to be correct in 
their investigations, and by a becoming dis-
play of erudition and research, give a higher 
dignity and a brighter luster to truth. 

In 1897 Melvil Dewey, in hearings before 

the Joint Committee on the Library, ob-

served that 

. . . specialists would be simply invaluable. 
You could begin with a few who would 
divide the field among them; one in history, 
another in science, another in art, another 
in social science, in law, in literature, in 
philosophy; but I predict that the public use-
fulness of such officers will be so great that 
within a few years their number will be 
largely increased and that the National Li-
brary will become in fact a bibliographic 
university. 

Realization of Ideal 

Progress in the realization of this ideal 
has been slow. According to law, until 
1925 any money received by the Library of 

Congress was paid into the Treasury of 
the United States and had to be reappro-
priated by Congress for any special under-
taking. Consequently, the librarian was 
unable to engage in experiments which, 
though they had every promise of being 
successful, could not be demonstrated to 
fulfill a need of the library. Moreover, 
private individuals and foundations were 
loath to deposit funds in the Treasury of 
the United States inasmuch as the librarian 
could, on his own word, give no formal 
assurance that the funds would be used for 
the purpose desired. In March of 1925 
a joint resolution was passed establishing 
a trust fund. T h e officers of the fund are 
ex officio, the Secretary of the Treasury, 
the Librarian of Congress, the Chairman 
of the Joint Committee on the Library, 
and two citizens. T h e trust fund is a 
quasi-corporation. Its funds are deposited 
in the Treasury of the United States and 
the Treasurer of the United States has 
undertaken to pay on them 4 per cent in-
terest in perpetuity. 

Although from time to time Librarians 
of Congress have succeeded in associating 
with themselves research men of great bril-
liance, the Consultant Service as such was 
not formally constituted until about a 
decade ago. A t that time D r . Putnam was 
enabled to invite to become consultants of 
the library a number of subject specialists, 
most of them professors emeritus, who 
would spend half their time in the library 
at a nominal honorarium and advise the 
librarian on his collections. These schol-
ars worked faithfully within the terms of 
this agreement. Shortly after M r . M a c -
Leish assumed office, however, it became 
clear to him that more was needed. He 
needed not only consultants to give him 
occasional advice, he needed fellows of the 
Library of Congress who could give their 

JUNE j 1942 231 



full time and full energy to the enormous 
tasks facing them. Consequently in the 
summer of 1940 five scholars were ap-
pointed as Resident Fellows of the Library 
of Congress. 

Make-Up of Consultant Service 

T h e Consultant Service of the Library 
of Congress as now constituted consists 
of five Resident Fellows of the Library of 
Congress, five Fellows of the Library of 
Congress (not in residence), four Con-
sultants, a number of Honorary Consult-
ants (for the most part not in residence), 
eleven Associate Fellows, a clerical staff, 
and the Administrator. T h e Resident 
Fellows of the Library of Congress are 
scholars in midflight on leave of absence 
from their universities. T h e fields repre-
sented for this year are: technology and 
library science, chemistry, folklore and 
Americana, naval history and contempo-
rary Europe, and French literature. T h e 
stipends of the Resident Fellows of the 
Library of Congress equal the stipends 
they receive in their universities and their 
full time is devoted to the study of the 
Library of Congress problems as seen by 
research men. 

T h e Consultants are, with one excep-
tion, displaced European scholars who 
have been stationed in the library through 
the kindness and generosity of foundations. 

T h e eleven Associate Fellows are mem-
bers of the Library of Congress staff who, 
because of their advanced study, are ap-
pointed to assist the Resident Fellows of 
the Library of Congress. T h e Associate 
Fellows are granted one day a week from 
their regular duties to survey the collec-
tions. 

T h e Fellows of the Library of Congress 
were last year's Resident Fellows of the 
Library. T h e i r appointment is honorary 

and the Librarian hopes that in the course 
of years a corps of Fellows of the Library 
of Congress will be built up throughout 
the country who will continue to give him 
advice on their special subjects. 

Functions of the Fellows 

A s experience has accumulated with the 

Consultant Service it has become increas-

ingly clear what functions these men can 

perform. In his letter of appointment in 

the summer of 1941 M r . MacLeish de-

fined these as follows: 

T o survey and evaluate the collections in 
the library in his particular field. 

T o recommend the acquisition of individual 
items in his field, and to recommend an ac-
quisition policy for the Library of Congress 
taking into account the position which the 
Library of Congress should assume in rela-
tion to other libraries. 

T o make recommendations calculated to im-
prove the accessibility and the service and 
to extend the knowledge of the materials in 
his particular field in the Library of Con-
gress. 

These three fundamental duties raise 
problems which have not yet been entirely 
solved. T h e first is how to survey collec-
tions as large as those of the Library of 
Congress. It is, of course, no task at all 
to report that we have " X " number of 
shelves in the classification covering nine-
teenth century French authors, that there 
is an average of " N " number of books on 
each shelf and consequently that we have 
some fourteen thousand books in this class* 
T h e problem that faces the research 
worker is to discover whether these are 
the fourteen thousand books we want or 
just fourteen thousand books. It is obvi-
ous, for example, that through the opera-
tion of the copyright law the Library of 
Congress has collected an enormous num-

232 C O L L E G E , AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



ber of textbooks of interest perhaps to the 

future student of inter-cultural relations 

but of little interest to the research special-

ist. T h e discovery that in a number of 

cases we have duplicate sets for exchange, 

unique in the country, is gratifying. Less 

gratifying is the discovery that though we 

may have the latest critical edition of an 

author's work we do not have supplemen-

tary volumes which appeared a few years 

after the critical edition was published. 

Checklists 

In order to make these discoveries, to 
decide what is needed, the Resident Fel-
lows of the Library of Congress prepare 
annotated, evaluative checklists of the one 
or two thousand books which would con-
stitute a definitive basic collection for a 
research library. Indications are given for 
each item as to whether it would be needed 
in a library which would use it for oblique 
reference or in a college library where the 
subject is taught but where no advanced 
research is contemplated or in a large ref-
erence library. T h e lists are then searched 
to discover whether the items are in the 
Library of Congress and references are 
made to other places where they may be 
located. T h e items not in the Library 
of Congress constitute a desiderata list. 
T h e lists are made accessible to the general 
public and it is hoped that the special 
knowledge of the Resident Fellows of the 
Library of Congress may be used by li-
braries for purposes of checking and 
evaluating their collections. T h e judg-
ment displayed in these lists is not the 
judgment of an isolated individual scholar; 
the lists are built up through consultation 
with the forty or fifty most distinguished 
members of the field in universities and 
elsewhere. 

A second type of list now being prepared 

is the encyclopedic reference list, for ex-

ample, the hundred to hundred and fifty 

books in English which will cover authori-

tatively all aspects of the U.S.S.R., con-

temporary politics, etc. These are being 

annotated by men who know their subject 

thoroughly and will serve, we hope, as a 

useful reference guide. 

Recommend Books for Purchase 

T h e second duty of the members of the 
Consultant Service is to recommend books 
for purchase. T h e national bibliographies 
in their subject fields as well as their tech-
nical journals are made available to them 
as soon as they arrive in the library. By 
means of reviews and their knowledge of 
the personalities in their field they are 
thus able to recommend for purchase non-
copyright books. In addition to these 
sources of information there are of course 
the usual sources, dealers' catalogs and so 
on. T h i s duty is being performed con-
scientiously both by the Fellows of the 
Library of Congress in Residence and 
those not in residence. 

T h e duty of improving the accessibility 
of the books resolves itself into conferring 
with members of the divisions of the 
Process Department, suggesting changes in 
the schedules or in added entries. W h e n , 
for example, the Fellow of the Library of 
Congress in Population, whose specialty is 
differential fertility, found himself re-
ferred from "fertility" to "fecundity" in 
the catalog, he indignantly reported that 
should he use that term in any population 
convention he would be hooted off the 
platform. Conferences on these problems 
usually begin after the Fellows of the Li-
brary of Congress have been in residence 
for six or seven months and have familiar-
ized themselves with problems of the Li-
brary. 

JUNE j 1942 233 



In addition to these duties the Consult-
ant Service takes care of a very large 
amount of reference work, an amount 
which is increasing rapidly as the emer-
gency increases. 

T o what extent this sort of service 
might be useful in a college library college 
librarians know better than I. T h e y 
know, too, that libraries not attached to 
universities are apt to cherish an amiable 
illusion in that they imagine that college 
and university faculties are constantly at 
the librarians to improve and balance the 
collections. T h i s is, unfortunately, not 
true in very many cases. W h e r e there are 
library committees, presidents are apt to 
appoint good and able scholars but not to 
appoint men of the very first brilliance. 
Other library committees resent meeting 
with the librarians unless there is money 
to be spent and still others just don't func-
tion. Experience in the Library of Con-
gress has shown that the training received 
by the Resident Fellows of the Library 
of Congress is of enormous value to them 
and the question arises as to whether it 
would not be wise to station members of 
the several departments in the college in 
the library for a year, reduce their teaching 
loads to the point which would enable 
them to confer actively both with librarian 
and student. T h i s is the more needed, it 
seems to me, because of the need to tame 
the books. Although advanced research 
men fondly hope that before they die they 
will have read everything that has been 
written on their subject, none has realized 
that hope. H o w much more desirable, 
then, in an undergraduate college where 

students do not even have the wish to read 
everything that has been written on their 
subject, would it be to have available for 
several hours a day a man who has gone 
farther in his reading than the undergrad-
uate and can assist the undergraduate in 
the wise selection of his books. 

Benefits from This System 

A t least three benefits might be found 
to result from this system: 

1. T o the library. T h e librarian would 
have a specialist available at some regular 
time during the day who could advise him 
on purchase policy, cataloging problems in 
his field, arrangement and accessibility of 
his part of the collection, and other prob-
lems of importance. 

2. T o the faculty member. By becom-
ing acquainted with the problems charac-
teristic of a research library as a member 
of the staff he will be able to make better 
use of the collections than he has made. 
In addition, he will be given a certain 
amount of leisure which, it will be under-
stood, he is to devote to the reading of 
his technical literature. Finally, by deal-
ing with all of the students in his depart-
ment he will get a better understanding 
of their needs and difficulties than is pos-
sible when he is principally in the class-
room or in conference. 

3. T o the student. He will have the 
advantage of specialized advice from a 
faculty member who knows not only the 
special field of study on which the student 
is engaged but also the collections of the 
library and the problems faced by librar-
ianship. 

234 C O L L E G E , AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES