Standards for College Libraries

THESEARCH FOR STANDARDS for American college libraries can boast a venerable and distinguished history spanning almost four-score years and challenging the intellects of some of the premier worthies both within and outside of the profession. Marked concurrently by considerable zeal on the one hand and by chronic frustration on the other, it has been likened to the Quest for the Holy Grail, although its partial success probably renders that simile inapt. Much of the persistent frustration at the academic library community’s inability to fashion tenable standards for itself can probably be attributed to the fact that i t looks so deceptively easy. Like defining “pornography,” the unwary falls easily into the trap of assuming that, given a little time and motivation, any modestly informed person could do it. Many knowledgeable librarians have tried unsuccessfully tomake standards, however, and the very high failure rate among these efforts bespeaks clearly the formidable character of the task. Although a definitive history of academic library standardsmaking remains to be written (indeed deserues to be written, probably as a dissertation), several helpful rksumks have been prepared of the experience.’ Although i t is not a chore to be undertaken as a part of this paper,2 a brief enumeration here of the early landmark efforts is useful in placing more recent labors and concerns into a time perspective.