Report on Farmington Plan Program

Report to Council on Library Resources on grant received by the Association of Research Libraries for its Farmington Plan Program " I M M E D I A T E L Y PRIOR to receipt, in July J1959, of the Council on Library Resources' second grant for the support of certain Farmington Plan studies and activities, there was a complete reorganization of the FP Committee. As reconstituted, the general committee has responsibility for the over-all development and implementation of the Farmington Plan, but delegates the actual field operations for the most part to seven regional subcommittees covering the worlds: Western Europe, Middle East, Far East, South Asia, Slavic and East Europe, Africa, and Latin America. The reorganized committee was able to make more effective use of the council's grant than would otherwise have been possible. Several specific investigations were included in the request for the council grant, and these were satisfactorily completed by the terminal date. The studies in at least two instances were preparatory to possible extension of the Farmington Plan into new areas. The first study to be finished (Jerrold Orne, Report on the CIA Library Acquisitions Program, 1959) was a survey of the relationship of the Farmington Plan to the Central Intelligence Agency's procurement program. The investigation was made for the committee by Jerrold Orne, Library of the University of North Carolina. On the basis of Dr. Orne's findings, it was the consensus that, though the CIA and FP overlap to a certain extent, the scope and purposes of the two agencies are entirely different and both should be continued. A second investigation was undertaken by Dale Barker, associate director, Georgia Institute of Technology Library, to determine the degree of completeness with which U.S. libraries are covering current foreign periodicals in the social sciences. The assumption was made that the periodical literature of the world in chemistry, physics, biology, and other major sciences is adequately represented in American libraries, but that holdings are much less complete in the humanities and social sciences. Based upon checking the UNESCO World List of Social Science Periodicals, Mr. Barker found that more than 95 per cent of the titles in this field are now known to be available in the United States. (Dale L. Barker, Foreign Social Science Periodicals Received in American Libraries, [Urbana, 111., Farmington Plan Committee of Association of Research Libraries, I960].) It was concluded, therefore, that periodical publications should continue to be excluded from Farmington Plan operations, other than for the limited program for new periodicals already functioning.