College and Research Libraries


Letters 
To the Editor: 

In "Scholars, Librarians, and the Future of Primary Records" (College & Research 
Libraries, 54 [Sept. 1993]: 397-406), Phyllis Franklin has used my book, The Librarian, the 
Scholar, and the Future of the Research Library, as a foil to mount a forceful argument for 
the preservation of primary print records in libraries during the electronic era. Unfor-
tunately, in doing so, she has construed attitudes that I do not hold and assertions that 
I did not make. She has also, I believe, distorted the basic thrust of my book. 

Franklin is quite correct that my book focuses on the "record of scholarship" and 
largely ignores "primary records." She infers from this that I have "missed ... the role 
that libraries play in collecting and providing access ... to [such records]." Yet the very 
quotation from my book that precedes and is apparently intended to support Franklin's 
statement notes that research libraries conserve not only the record of scholarship ("the 
written, printed, and now electronically encoded information generated by the schol-
arly process") but also "other information of immediate or potential value to research." 
This "other information" necessarily includes primary records. Moreover, I am clearly 
and consistently on record, in a variety of other writings, with respect to the importance 
of primary records in research library collections, as well as the need to maintain them 
in the electronic era. (See, for example, p. 392 of my article, "How to Survive the Present 
while Preparing for the Future: A Research Library Strategy," that precedes Franklin's 
article in the same issue of College & Research Libraries.) 

Similarly, Franklin infers, from the discussion of librarians' and scholars' differing 
and even contradictory objectives in my book, a view that librarians find scholars to 
be "difficult-even ornery" and "disagreeable." This personalizes and trivializes my 
effort to analyze dysfunctions in the critical relationships of librarians and scholars to 
the record of scholarship and to each other. It also enables Franklin to conclude that 
my book emphasizes "tensions" and deemphasizes "positive connections." I do not 
believe that a careful reading of the book can support such a conclusion. 

Actually, I am convinced that Franklin and I are in considerable agreement on the 
fundamental issues of the librarian-scholar relationship in both the print and the 
electronic eras. I share her view of the importance of continuing to preserve print 
primary records in special collections, alongside the pre-print manuscript records that 
have been maintained through the print era. I also hope that we agree about the need 
to shift the "record of scholarship," as defined above, from print to electronic format 
as quickly and completely as we can. Such a shift, I am convinced, is in the interest of 
all participants in the scholarly process. 

To the Editor: 

ELDRED SMITH, Professor 
Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost 
.University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 

We were gratified to see that California State University, Long Beach was listed 
among the ''Leading Academic Institutions-Those with the Most Author Submis-
sions" in the article "Publication in College & Research Libraries: Accepted, Rejected, and 
Published Papers, 1980-1991" (College & Research Libraries, 54 (July 1993): 303-21, 308). 
As the only university ranked that does not have as its primary focus the conduct of 

372 

- l 



Letters 373 

research (and one of only two not holding membership in the Association of Research 
Libraries), we are plea5ed that our efforts to contribute to the literature of librarianship 
were recognized. By our count, however, four of our articles, "Evaluation of a Self-
Paced Bibliographic Instruction Course" (Nov. 1983), ''The Academic Ubrarian and 
Faculty Status in the 1980s: A Survey of the Uterature" (May 1987), "Ubrarians and 
Faculty Members: Coping with Pressures to Publish" (Nov. 1987), and "Bibliographic 
Instructors in the Sciences: A Profile" (May 1988), were accepted for publication within 
the period studied, rather than just the two indicated. 

To the Editor: 

WENDY CULOTIA, JAMES NEAL, JORDAN SCEPANSKI, 
MARIA SUGRANES, and JOY THOMAS 
University Ubrary and Learning Resources 
California State University, Long Beach 

Eldred Smith and Peggy Johnson have written an interesting article, ''How to Survive 
the Present while Preparing for the Future: A Research library Strategy'' (College & Research 
Libraries 54 [Sept. 1993]: 389-96), but it does not offer an adequate strategy for preparing 
research libraries for the future. Like others who have addressed this topic, these authors 
assume they can see the shape of the future and prescribe accordingly. Unfortunately that 
assumption does not apply in the current environment. In the world in which academic 
research libraries are struggling, the future is not predictable. Too many variables are 
changing too rapidly for predictions to be reliable. 

There are strategies that do not require futuristic predictions. Research libraries can focus 
their efforts on those organizational components which will contribute to the transition and 
be an essential part of any information future. Three components come quickly to mind: 

Staff: Whatever the shape of the eventual electronic information environment, staff 
will need a more sophisticated understanding of hardware, software, and the construc-
tion of information resources. A budget commitment to staff education, in addition to 
the usual staff training, is a primary target in a strategy for preparing for the future. 

Equipment: Technical changes come quickly in the early part of a development curve. 
Couple that with our existing need for more reliable and powerful computing and 
communications equipment to handle the amount of traffic and the size and complexity 
of information resources and a budget commitment to periodic upgrades of equipment 
and the communications infrastructure becomes a second target in a strategy for 
preparing for the future. 

Information resources: Smith and Johnson are right when they state that academic 
libraries don't have everything now and won't have everything in the future. But they 
offer a mechanism (delivery on demand) for provision of information with only the 
hope that ARL, a voluntary organization, can develop it in the future. A more useful 
strategy is for research libraries to maintain strong information resource budgets, 
buying the print collections they need, adding electronic resources as need and interest 
dictate. A series of alliances, each targeted to specific curriculum of research needs and 
based on the long-term priorities of participating institutions, can supplement high-
demand, campus-based resources of all formats. Rigorous experimental investigation 
of emerging resources is the final essential part of the third target in a strategy for 
preparing for the future. 

Staff, the technical infrastructure, and information resources are the building blocks 
of research libraries now and will be integral parts of the research library of the future, 
whatever form it takes. Research libraries should give up the use of speculative futures 
as the basis for planning and concentrate on using the tools at- hand to renew and 
recreate our resources as we move toward the future. 

L. YVONNE WULFF, Assistant Director for Collection Management 
University Library 
The University of Michigan