The Management of College Library Book Budgets

LIBRARY PRACTICES are often tough and ' stubborn. Once established, they tend to become inhospitable to change. Traditions are built up, whose sacrosanct character is soon taken for granted by all practitioners, and any skeptic who dares to question the usefulness of a tradition is likely to be looked upon with suspicion and distrust. This is not surprising since every modification of an established rule involves—beside the inevitable initial expense—readjustments of habits on the part of the library staff; and it is a well-known psychological fact that the breaking of old habits and the adoption and incorporation of new patterns of action is usually upsetting and painful. Professional meetings of librarians miss their main function, however, unless they deliberately encourage and cultivate a progressive and critical attitude among the participants—a critical attitude toward established library practices, a critical attitude toward the objectives which such practices are designed to fulfill, a critical attitude toward remnants of the past as well as toward innovations. It is in this spirit of open-mindedness and hospitality toward new ideas that the topic of college library book funds will be approached in this paper. Let us begin with a very brief historical sketch. In their colonial days American college libraries did not have to cope with the problems in connection with the necessity of controlling book expenditures, for there was practically no money available for the purchase of new publications. Shores found that "the proportion of accessions acquired by direct purchase was probably less than a tenth of the total." As was stated in the special report on American libraries, issued by the Bureau of Education in 1876, up to about the middle of the nineteenth century there were "few colleges [that] possessed funds to build up libraries on a scientific plan." Only very gradually, as the needs and objectives of college libraries became more sharply defined, were funds provided for the purchase of current books. Doubts began to be raised as to whether a haphazard conglomeration of private libraries was suitable for the use of college students.