College Librarians and the University-Library Syndrome

Of the various types of academic libraries, college libraries should find it easiest to achieve their purposes. Their manageable size should permit a focus on the kind and level of materials they acquire and distribute, and the relative clarity of institutional goals should point out more or less precisely the services they perform. Their personnel is almost always deeply dedicated, not merely to the profession and to the needs of their immediate clientele groups, but to the academic and social objectives of the parent institutions. Their students and faculty comprise a clientele who are, for the most part, captive, and with whom the library can establish almost any relationshipin kind and in depthit wants. And yet . . . is there any knowledgeable observer who can say that college libraries are really doing the job they should? That the undergraduate library in the large university has shortchanged the university undergraduate is fairly common knowledge. For those unaware of the situation, it has been documented in Billy Wilkinson’s Reference Services for Undergraduate Students. He studied two of the more prestigious undergraduate libraries, those of Cornell University and the University of Michigan, and compared them with libraries in two liberal arts colleges.