College and Research Libraries


By R O B E R T W . M c E W E N 

American College Libraries 
in the Postwar Era 

Mr. McEwen, librarian of Carleton Col-
lege, read this paper at the meeting of the 
Association of College and Reference Li-
braries , June 23, 1942. 

PR O P H E C Y concerning the future of any profession or institution is always 
hazardous. T r a c i n g the history of the 

college library in America can be done 

with much greater objectivity and with 

much greater assurance than suggesting 

what one thinks will be the trends in a 

coming generation. And prophecy is es-

pecially difficult in times like these. 

It happens that I had occasion to make 

a similar attempt somewhat earlier this 

spring. A few days preceding that occa-

sion I was sitting in the faculty lounge at 

Carleton with two colleagues and the con-

versation turned to the future of college 

librarianship. It was the seventh succes-

sive cloudy morning and my mood, as 

usual, reflected the weather. I said, " B u t 

who knows anything about the future of 

the liberal arts college library?—or the 

future of the liberal arts college, for that 

matter?" T h e instructor in classics set 

down his cup of coffee and said, " W h o 

knows anything about the future?" And 

my second colleague, who is a philosopher, 

ended the conversation. " W h o knows 

anything?" he inquired. 

T h e problem of prophecy, of course, is 

to reach some assurance that the future 

will not be utterly unlike the present, that, 

in this case, the problems and programs of 

college librarianship in the postwar era 

will have a sufficient continuity with the 

past through the present to permit our 

positing some directions with assurance. 

There are values in our present programs 

of library service and in our present con-

ceptions of college librarianship which we 

want to carry forward into the postwar 

era. W e do know, however, that the com-

ing years will be considerably different. 

For us simply to reaffirm our confidence in 

our present programs might be only 

whistling in the dark. Even if it is 

hazardous and necessarily subjective we 

need prediction, we need what foresight 

into the nature of the situation we must 

all face that may be possible. And it is 

just as true for the problems of college 

librarianship as for the broader problems 

of building the framework of a free world 

that this is the time to begin, not when 

the war is over. 

W e must assume, in our thinking, that 

America will continue to be free, that 

Americans will continue to believe in free-

dom and, therefore, in freedom of inquiry. 

W e can assume that we will want and 

will see that we have such freedom of 

inquiry in higher education directed at 

preparation for the life of free men. W e 

see no lessening of the traditional Ameri-

can faith in education as the basis for 

SEPTEMBER, 1942 2 77 



democracy but rather a rapidly growing 

awareness that the complexity of modern 

society requires more education than we 

have had if democracy is to function ef-

fectively. There will be colleges and uni-

versities in the postwar era. 

A n d there will, therefore, be college 

and university libraries. T h e principal 

thesis of this paper is that, increasingly, 

there will be college and university li-

braries rather than libraries on college and 

university campuses. T h i s trend may not 

be hastened as a direct result of the war 

but it will, in my opinion, be the dominant 

trend in the postwar era. T h e r e will be 

a sharper definition of the function of 

print and near-print materials in the pro-

gram of higher education. T h e relation 

of reading to various types of courses will 

be more fully studied. T h e result cannot 

but be a demand for library service planned 

to meet the reading needs of the college 

program. W e have often heard the state-

ment that the library is the heart of the 

college. T h a t is good sentiment but not 

sufficiently specific. T h e college library 

must be the workshop of the college—the 

laboratory of the humanities, to a great 

extent the laboratory of the social sciences, 

and an auxiliary agency to the laboratories 

of the physical and biological scientists. 

T h e college library will be increasingly an 

integral part of the teaching process. Its 

goals will be the goals of the college. It 

will have no other purpose. 

Handling Technical Problems 

T h i s may all sound a bit trite and 

platitudinous. I wish it were. But the 

unpleasant facts which D r . Branscomb 

brought to our attention in his book pub-

lished two years ago point in another 

direction. He properly found the most sig-

nificant characteristic of college and uni-

versity librarianship during the past forty 

years in the handling of technical problems 

created by the phenomenal growth of book 

collections. T h a t expansion necessarily 

centered attention on books, not on stu-

dents, on accessioning and marking and 

classifying and cataloging and shelving 

books, not on curricula or teaching meth-

ods or reading for honors projects or read-

ing habits. 

It was inevitable that there was a tend-

ency to think of a college library as first 

of all a library. College libraries shared 

these technical problems of the organiza-

tion of books with public libraries. T h e 

same routines could commonly be used 

and were. T h e qualifications of a li-

brarian seemed to be about the same. 

Even library buildings expressed this point 

of view. One college library with which 

I am familiar is housed in a building iden-

tical with that of the public library of a 

Midwestern suburb. T h e two buildings 

were built at the same time and were both 

products of the generosity of the same 

family. 

W e have been moving away from these 

attitudes for some time. But I am con-

vinced that we will move farther and 

faster in the next generation. And it seems 

important to call attention to this trend, 

to predict its furtherance, because there is 

no little resistance to it. Part of the re-

sistance is sheer inertia. It is always 

easier to continue the administration of a 

set of routines inherited from the past, 

routines which seem to work fairly 

smoothly, than it is to maintain a con-

tinuing analysis of those routines in view 

of their purposes, with the continuing 

study and changes that such an analysis 

requires. 

294 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



Libraries Are Routine-Bound 

O n a few occasions when I have been 

a hospital patient I have had reason to 

inquire why it was necessary for a patient 

to be awakened at five-thirty in order that 

his face be washed. T h e explanation al-

ways was that the task was assigned to 

the night nurse and that she went off duty 

at six. T h e answer never quite satisfied 

me. If the hospital exists as a healing 

agency it would seem that the patient's 

rest would be more important than any 

particular staff schedule. But after a few 

years as a college librarian I don't think I 

can criticize the hospitals for being routine-

bound. I know how hard it is to modify 

routines. 

T h e r e is also resistance to this trend 

from those who feel that the college li-

brary, as a library, has justifiable objec-

tives and aims and interests of its own. 

W e still have with us the genteel tradi-

tion of librarianship which thinks of the 

librarian as a booklover, one of whose 

natural tasks is to promote an esoteric in-

terest in early printing, fine presses, first 

editions, illustrators, bookbinding, and the 

rest. A s a hobby for the librarian, even 

the college librarian, such interests are 

probably at least as desirable as chess or 

stamp collecting. But they will have no 

more place in college librarianship than 

any other hobby—except in such institu-

tions as include these interests in the scope 

of their curricula and look to the librarian 

for instruction in that field. 

T h e goals of the college library in the 

postwar era will be the goals of the col-

lege. It will have no other purpose. W e 

are already giving lip-service to such state-

ments as these. But in future we're going 

to have to mean it. T h e size of the col-

lection of current novels, for example, will 

not depend on the librarian's interest in 

promoting the "general reading" of the 

student but on the extent to which the col-

lege feels that such reading is a legitimate 

or important part of a student's program. 

Whether a particular rare book shall be 

purchased will be determined, not on the 

basis of its rarity or its bargain price, but 

on its current importance or potential use-

fulness in the curriculum. W e will de-

cide whether general circulation should be 

limited to fourteen days or one year, not 

on the example of current practice in pub-

lic libraries, but in the light of the size 

of the student body, the degree of de-

pendence on reserve collections for cur-

ricular reading, the location of the library 

building on campus. Some of us may 

even circulate bound periodicals to under-

graduates ! Displays will more frequently 

relate to current campus studies. And we 

will even consider the degree of intelli-

gence required for admission to the college 

in deciding on the amount and kind of 

cataloging required for our libraries. 

A l l that has been said thus far is that 

the next generation will see a redefinition 

of objectives and reorganization of proc-

esses in the college library directed at iden-

tification with the goals of the college. 

Indicated Trends 

W e can't proceed much farther without 

another essay at prophecy. Can we fore-

see the direction of changes in college pro-

grams in the postwar world? Certainly 

not very clearly. Y e t three trends may be 

suggested, which will influence our policy-

making in the college libraries. 

( I ) I believe we can see that there 

will be less provincialism, fewer local or 

national boundaries in the interests of the 

various college courses. 

SEPTEMBER, 1942 
2 77 



( 2 ) I think we can safely predict that 

the postwar era will be a period of econ-

omy in the colleges, of economy if not of 

retrenchment. W e can expect that ex-

penditures will be even more closely scru-

tinized than at present and that luxury 

purchases and luxury services will be 

fewer. 

( 3 ) There is good reason to foresee a 

continuance of the present trend toward 

differentiation in the programs of the vari-

ous institutions of higher learning with a 

resulting lessening of competition. 

T h e first trend requires relatively little 

comment. W e and our teaching colleagues 

will see to it that the materials needed for 

education for world citizenship are se-

cured. Both the necessity of economy and 

the growing differentiation in college pro-

grams will urge on us the simplification of 

library processes, the elimination of mar-

ginal interests and activities, and concen-

tration on the central functions of the 

particular institution of which the library 

is an agency. 

In the nature of the case, therefore, it 

is impossible for anyone to draw up specifi-

cations for our college libraries in the 

postwar era. Only after we identify the 

college can we specify the program. 

W e may conclude, however, with some 

general implications of the situation as we 

foresee it for two aspects of our programs 

—book collections and library staffs. 

Size of Book Collection 

W e can expect that the size of the book 

collection will receive less emphasis in the 

postwar era. T h e important thing, as the 

North Central Association already recog-

nizes in its accrediting procedures, is, not 

how many books there are in a college 

library, but whether it has the books 

needed for the program of the college. 

T h e junior college need not have as large 

a book collection as the four-year college. 

College libraries will leave to the univer-

sities the building of specialized subject 

field collections for graduate study. T h e 

university libraries will look to special 

reference libraries for collections in cer-

tain fields. 

Book collections will continue to grow, 

of course. But the calm assumption of 

the past generation that in planning a new 

library building one should assume the 

doubling of the book collection every 

twenty years won't fit many institutions in 

the next twenty years. 

In our book selection, the cooperation 

of a larger number of our teaching col-

leagues will be secured. And we will do 

well to trust their judgment above our 

own in the building of subject field col-

lections even while we watch their selec-

tion for evidence of fads and occasional 

prejudice. It will be necessary, too, for us 

to look gift horses squarely in the mouth. 

Cataloging and storage costs for gift col-

lections that don't fit, that aren't needed, 

will not be as readily justified as in the 

past. 

T h e predicted trend toward a complete 

identification of the library program with 

the instructional program suggests certain 

directions also for our thinking about li-

brary staff problems. W e have long 

talked of the necessity of a sharper defi-

nition of professional library service. W e 

will have to do more than talk about it, 

at least in college librarianship. I think 

the time will come, is already here in some 

institutions, when the first qualification 

for a professional staff position will be a 

real interest in education—the same kind 

of interest that leads one to teaching. Col-

296 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



leges would not often employ an expert 

kindergartner to teach in the college. 

Should we not expect the same discrimina-

tion to be employed in selecting profes-

sional college library personnel ? O f course 

the college librarian should be interested 

in the problems of bibliography and classi-

fication—but he should see those problems 

as part of higher education. He should 

be a person who is deeply interested in 

students and their studies. 

Routine Processes 

W e are not, in the postwar era, going 

to be freed from the responsibility for the 

routine processes which have so largely 

filled the time of library staffs in the re-

cent past. Books will still have to be 

marked and classified and cataloged and 

shelved. T h e necessity of economy will 

lighten the burden a bit. But we must 

lighten it further by recognizing the fact 

that the carrying out of many of our rou-

tines, once they are established, is simply 

not a professional task. 

Some colleges and universities have a 

practice of expecting every administrative 

officer to offer one course in a field in 

which he is trained. T h e purpose of such 

a policy is obvious—to keep the adminis-

trative officers in direct touch with stu-

dents' thinking and attitudes, to keep them 

constantly aware of the principal function 

of the college. I recommend the equiva-

lent of that policy as a means toward the 

kind of library staff which the coming 

years will require. N o professional li-

brarian in a college should be without 

some direct educational contact with stu-

dents. T h i s need not always be the formal 

relationship of teaching a course. It can 

be done in reference work, if the reference 

work is correlated with instruction. It 

can be done in assisting the students in us-

ing the catalog, if the catalog is recognized 

as the college's index to its library hold-

ings. 

W e have been devoting considerable at-

tention to educating the faculty and stu-

dents in the resources of our libraries and 

this is all to the good. But the other side 

of the picture is equally important—for us 

as librarians to learn more about the cur-

ricular goals and the educational methods 

of the college. 

Trends such as these will, I believe, 

characterize the American college library 

in the postwar years. T h e y may appear 

to limit the freedom of college librarian-

ship, to suggest the acceptance of an in-

strumental if not subservient function 

rather than an independent one. I believe 

they will require just that change. But in 

that change lies the way to real freedom 

for college librarianship, freedom through 

genuine participation in the program of 

higher education which is our basic func-

tion. 

SEPTEMBER, 1942 
2 77