College and Research Libraries


By R A L P H R . S H A W 

The Department of Agriculture 
Library and Its Services' 

Mr. Shaw is librarian, U. S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture. 

A L T H O U G H the Department of A g r i -
culture Library is more than 100 years 

old, its present scope and responsibilities 
date f r o m the act which established the de-
partment, on M a y 15, 1862. T h i s act 
states, " T h e r e shall be at the seat of G o v -
ernment a Department of Agriculture, the 
general design and duties of which shall be 
to acquire and to diffuse among the people 
of the United States useful information on 
subjects connected with agriculture, in the 
most general and comprehensive sense of 
that w o r d . . . . T h e Secretary of Agriculture 
shall procure and preserve all information 
concerning agriculture which he can obtain 
by means of books and correspondence . . . 
by the collection of statistics, and by other 
appropriate means within his power . . . " 
and, finally that, " T h e Secretary of A g r i -
culture shall have charge . . . of the L i -
brary " 

T h i s act, which recognized the import-
ance of the knowledge contained in litera-
ture, and of library services, is probably 
unique in federal legislative history, and it 
defines the national responsibility of the 
Department of Agriculture Library. 

In addition, since we serve as the L i -
brary of the Department of Agriculture, w e 
must provide literature which is required 
f o r the day-to-day work of the staff in many 
other fields. A n organization like the U . S . 
Department of Agriculture, with a staff 

1 P a p e r presented at the C o n f e r e n c e of E a s t e r n Col-
lege L i b r a r i a n s , C o l u m b i a U n i v e r s i t y , N o v . 29, 1947. 

ranging between sixty thousand and a 
hundred thousand people, scattered all over 
the country, has personnel officers w h o must 
be equipped with current personnel litera-
ture, budget and fiscal officers w h o must 
be helped in performing their jobs, and 
many related service functions which re-
quire supporting library services. 

T h u s , in its departmental relationships 
the Department of Agriculture Library has 
the two-fold j o b of supporting the biblio-
graphical needs of a program of research 
which averages approximately $30,000,000 
a year, and an administrative program of 
about $1,000,000,000 a year. 

A s noted in the current Yearbook of Ag-
riculture, w e cannot separate agricultural 
science f r o m other sciences. Agricultural 
research workers use the principles de-
veloped in the fundamental sciences, such 
as chemistry, geology, or botany, and also 
contribute to them. T h e term agricultural 
science is useful; it means, generally, all 
scientific principles as they apply to farming 
and to rural living. But w e cannot have 
an agricultural chemistry apart f r o m chem-
istry, nor an agricultural economics apart 
f r o m economics. T h e fundamental prin-
ciples of production economics are the same, 
whether applied to farm organizations or 
the manufacture of automobiles. In striv-
ing f o r solution to agricultural problems, 
then, it is often necessary to carry on re-
search in the basic natural and social sci-
ences to develop principles f o r application. 

These factors provide our frame of ref-
erence. W e are required by our charter: 

APRIL, 1948 133 



First, to collect all the knowledge about 
agriculture which can be obtained f r o m 
publications and to make that knowledge 
available to the country as a whole, and, 
second, to provide the staff library services 
needed in the day-to-day operation of the 
country's greatest civilian research institu-
tution. 

Library materials and services falling 
within the first category are considered our 
primary research field. M u c h of the ma-
terial and service required by the second 
category of responsibilities does not differ 
f r o m what we are required to provide to the 
nation as a whole. Provision of materials 
and services not included in our national 
responsibility is considered supplementary 
service functions o n l y — a n d in this area w e 
rely upon other libraries for research col-
lections and services. 

In view of the scope of agriculture as 
defined and of the related sciences which 
are a fundamental part of agricultural re-
search and administration, it is obvious that 
some limitation had to be self-imposed if 
the department library was to avoid dupli-
cation of all other great research libraries. 
A s a practical matter since the country has 
never supported even one national library 
adequately to provide f o r complete coverage 
of the w o r l d ' s literature on a current basis, 
it would appear uneconomical and unwise 
to attempt unnecessary duplication of re-
search facilities. 

T h i s was recognized early. For example, 
although the department library has legal 
authority to publish and sell catalog cards, 
and actually performed that function until 
1906, it has been considered more econ-
omical to supply copy to the Library of 
Congress, limiting the stocking of catalog 
cards and the servicing of such cards to 
only one agency. 

Likewise, there appears little point in 
competitive bidding f o r rare books among 

the three great national libraries, and the 
Department of Agriculture Library has 
specifically foresworn that field. 

T h e scope of our w o r k is broad, but it 
does not defy definition, and the fields in 
which we attempt to acquire everything, 
are fairly readily defined. W h i l e w e do 
purchase in other fields, such purchases are 
limited to working collections needed for 
current work, because w e have found that 
we can rely upon our neighbors for research 
collections in related subject fields. 

F r o m its very beginnings, Agriculture's 
library has been slanted toward procuring 
and supplying knowledge rather than to-
ward dealing with books or periodicals pri-
marily as physical objects. 

F o r this reason you will find that our 
subject treatment of material is based on its 
intellectual content rather than on its for-
mat, and we are likely to make as many or 
more subject headings for a slight mimeo-
graphed separate as we do for a textbook. 
O n the other hand, since w e are concerned 
with the dissemination of knowledge rather 
than with bibliophilic considerations, you 
will find that our descriptive cataloging is 
more informal than that in many other schol-
arly libraries, in which the detailed descrip-
tion of a particular copy of a book has been 
considered an absolutely essential part of 
the cataloging process. 

In a library like ours, consulting the lit-
erature is just another way of consulting 
all the experts or alleged experts, of all 
times and places, w h o have written down 
what they know about the subject under 
consideration. T h u s our book stock, in-
stead of being considered in terms of a 
given number of books, becomes a corps of 
five or ten million or more experts w h o 
stand prepared to provide facts and j u d g -
ments about all aspects of our w o r k . 

U n d e r this c o n c e p t — " T e c h n i c a l P r o c -
esses" involve bringing these experts to-

134 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



gether and hooking up a communications 
system so that the desired specialists may be 
called up to testify as required. "Reference 
Services" bring the expert and inquirer 
together ( f o r feeless consultation). " B i b -
liographical Services" convert the testimony 
into more usable f o r m by selection of the 
evidence that bears on the question, organi-
zation of the knowledge, conversion of the 
knowledge into more usable form, and, in 
some cases, by interpretation and evaluation 
of the testimony. A n d , " L e n d i n g Services," 
including our system of field branches, as 
well as auxiliary methods such as photo-
graphic reproduction, are means for bring-
ing the expert's testimony to his clients at 
points other than his permanent office in the 
library stacks. 

O u r dependence upon the A r m y M e d i c a l 
Library f o r medical literature and upon the 
Library of Congress f o r general materials 
has increased our own research potential in 
two ways. First, it has made available to 
those w h o m w e serve the total potential of 
all three of these great collections, and sec-
ond, it has freed our own resources for more 
adequate collection, organization, and dis-
semination of the knowledge in our own 
basic research fields. 

T h e extent of our use of the Library of 
Congress collections is indicated by the fact 
that we have stationed a staff member at 
that library half or full time to use its col-
lections to supplement our o w n . 

T h e most important result of our em-
phasis in cooperative use of resources is the 
extent to which it has left our own re-
sources free f o r bibliographical research and 
service. O u r Division of Bibliography, 
consisting of 35 to 40 staff members, most 
of w h o m are professional librarians with 
strong subject or subject-literature back-
grounds, provides a steady flow of special-
ized subject bibliographies and of new and 
important tools of research such as the 

Index to the Literature of American Eco-
nomic Entomology, the Plant Science Cata-
log, and the Bibliography of Agriculture. 

Each month the Bibliography of Agri-
culture provides a classified list of some 
5,000 to 7,000 articles or separates. T h i s 
bibliography is sent to all the offices of the 
department and is available to all of the 
staff. By using the author and subject 
indexes which appear in each month's issue, 
a member of the staff of the department is 
able to determine in fifteen or twenty 
minutes each month substantially all that 
has been published any place in the w o r l d 
that affects his work. A postcard or call to 
the library, or to any of its branches, brings 
to him any item of interest either in the 
orginal or in photographic reproduction. 

T h e same service is available to everyone, 
except that those not employed by the depart-
ment may have to subscribe to the Bibliog-
raphy of Agriculture. If the literature in 
which they are interested is not available in 
their local libraries they may have to pay the 
cost of photographic copies. In effect, this 
places the world's agricultural literature on 
the desk of every man w h o is willing to exert 
a minimum amount of effort to get it. 

Additional bibliographic services include 
the preparation of some one hundred special 
bibliographies annually, ranging f r o m air-
plane dusting for insect control, to use of 
milkweed floss as a substitute f o r kapok, as 
well as such popular tools as our rural read-
ing list and our list of standard agricultural 
books. In addition to bibliographical re-
search services, this library provided an-
swers to some 200,000 reference questions 
and loaned 1,750,000 volumes, largely by 
mail, during the past year. 

T h e Department of Agriculture Library 
is a great national resource. It is not merely 
the library of the Department of A g r i -
culture, but it is your library and that of all 
the people of the United States. 

APRIL, 1948 135