The Farmington Plan Survey: An Interim Report

E S I N C E it got under way, the Farmington Plan has been regarded, and has repeatedly been cited, as one of the most important, most enlightened, and most hopeful instances of interlibrary cooperation in the history of American libraries. Throughout its ten years of operation, however, there has been a relatively small but persistent stream of complaints from participating libraries together with expressions of doubt from various quarters as to the Plan's actual success or, indeed, its value. Consequently, the Association of Research Libraries, which administers the Plan through its Farmington Plan Committee, decided some months ago that a major survey was in order. Mr. Robert Vosper, director of libraries at the University of Kansas, was asked to undertake the assignment, and I was accepted as his assistant. T h e Council on Library Resources granted funds to ARL to cover costs of the study, and the project got under way in late November. T h e final report and our recommendations will be ready in October, when they will be submitted to a national conference on the Farmington Plan. By 1939, scholars and librarians had long been aware of the lack of any comprehensive American coverage of foreign