College and Research Libraries


50th Anniversary Feature-

''The Future of the Research 
Library'' by Fremont Rider: 
A Reprint of a C&RL Classic 

"As early as 1940, Fremont C. Rider pre-
dicted unprecedented growth for Ameri-
can university libraries, based on a nation-
wide survey of collection data. His 
subsequent book-length elaboration of 
these data, which also included a plan for 
the control of growth, has served since 
that time as the point of departure for any 
discussion of collection size, growth, and 
the many implications of these. In that 
seminal work, [The Scholar and the Future of 
the Research Library] Rider examined some 
of the past efforts to control size, such as 
weeding and resource sharing, and found 
them wanting . His recommended solu-

48 

tion to the problem rests on a combination 
of uses of microform. An underlying as-
sumption, however, is that humanists are 
the primary users of libraries, that their 
sources are vast, but that a solution to the 
problems of meeting the humanists' 
needs would, by and large, also solve the 
problems of growth and size more 
generally." -Charles B. Osburn, Academic 
Research and Library Resources: Changing 
Patterns in America (Westport, Conn.: 
Greenwood, 1979), p.92. 

"The Future of the Research Library," 
by Fremont Rider, appeared in College & 
Research Library 5:301-8 (Sept. 1944).-Ed.