The Library Revolution
The responsibilities of College Librarian will change hands at a time when greater resort to technology may be the only answer to huge problems
WHEN Richard W. Morin '24 retires on June 30 he will end an 18-year career as Dartmouth College Librarian, a post for which he had no formal training, which he did not seek, and yet one which he has filled with ability, efficiency, and great dedication.
A former Foreign Service officer and a lawyer by training, Dick Morin left a law practice in Minnesota to return to the U. S. State Department during World War II, and there became a close friend and associate of John Dickey, prior to Mr. Dickey's appointment to the presidency of the College. In 1948 President Dickey asked him to come to Dartmouth and serve as his executive officer, a post now occupied by Gilbert R. Tanis '38. Two years later Dick Morin became College Librarian, and this is his account of how it came about:
"The late Don Morrison was then Faculty Dean and he occupied the office next to mine in Parkhurst Hall. One of Don's jobs was to find a librarian to replace Nat Goodrich who was scheduled to retire in June 1950. Don kept introducing me to the men he was interviewing that spring, and after they'd left we would compare notes. We saw a number of able people, including men who now head major university libraries.
"But suddenly and unexpectedly in late April, John Dickey said to me, 'Don Morrison thinks you should be the new head librarian.' I had no experience in this field at all, but I told the President I'd be willing to give it a try and that's how it happened."
Some idea of the dimensions of the job Mr. Morin has done as "custodian of Dartmouth's library resources" may be had by examining the record. In 1950 the Dartmouth libraries held 660,000 volumes; this year's total will be 950,000 volumes, an increase of one-third. Total library expenditures in 1950 amounted to $250,000, and these increased just over four times to last year's $1,010,000. Staff salaries and acquisition costs were the major factors in this sharp increase, with the salary budget rising from $150,000 to $600,000 (four times), and the costs of books and binding going from $60,000 to $344,000 (nearly six times) during this period from 1950 to 1968.
Librarian Morin offers these comments in analysis of these figures:
"The 18-year changes in the College's library which these figures imply have been extensive. The library does not exist apart from the College but only within it and as its servant. Thus our changes have primarily reflected those in the in stitution itself.
"Outstanding among these are the transformations in the Dartmouth educational program, since roughly the midfifties, arising from a combination of a revised curriculum with emphasis on independent study requiring wide recourse to library materials; a highly motivated student body resulting from the opportunity for the College to make highly selective choices in its program of admissions; and a transformed faculty composed largely of more research-oriented teachers, quick to model their instruction on the use of library materials.
"These factors have caused a dramatic decline in the use of the old library device of the 'class duplicate' reserve book, purchased in multiple- copies to meet identical assignments for large numbers of students. Ten years ago, expenditures for 'class duplicates' were running around 5% of total expenditures for library books and binding. Today this figure has dropped to between 1% and 2%.
"The more than doubling of the library staff over the past 18 years has been brought about by the augmented need for manpower that inexorably follows a larger annual rate of acquisitions, a larger total collection, and a greater demand for skilled guidance in the use of library resources."
WHEN he assumed his new post in 1950, the College's affable new Librarian clearly had no idea of the revolution in library practices, procedures and demands that was brewing in higher education. Baker Library was universally recognized as the nation's finest library in the service of an almost exclusively undergraduate program. The annual income from library endowment funds was sufficient to meet all demands for book purchases and even permit the accumulation of a modest reserve fund. However, the opening years of Morin's administration saw the beginnings of rising acquisitions, staff additions, and greatly increased costs for books, periodicals, and operating expenses. By 1956 the library had to turn to the College and request that some of its general funds be made available to supplement endowment income for book purchases.
But the budgetary concern has been only one of the major challenges faced by Librarian Morin during his administration. Another has been the gradual consolidation of all of the College's library resources and programs under one central administration. This includes the libraries at Tuck and Thayer Schools, the new Dana Biomedical Library, the John Brown Cook Mathematics Library, and various departmental libraries.
The increased demands placed on the College's library resources by undergraduates and faculty have been compounded by the gradual move into graduate education at both the master's and doctoral levels. The Dartmouth libraries are gearing to meet this challenge on a selective basis, but much more remains to be accomplished as other graduate-level programs added.
Mr. Morin pays high tribute to the able and dedicated library staff who have, during his 18 years, played a decisive role in handling problems confronting the Dartmouth library complex.
"I think my greatest pride," he says, "rests in the quality of the staff we have gathered. It is a very strong and dedicated group, assembled under conditions that have often precluded really attractive salaries; but as elsewhere in the College, we have found that we have been helped in our recruitment by community attractions and the pleasant working conditions here."
One of Morin's earliest and most portentous recruitments was that of Edward C. Lathem '51, who joined the library staff in 1952, and who will succeed him as Librarian of the College this summer. Morin and Lathem have long worked very closely on library concerns, and both men are in agreement as to the major requirements facing the Dartmouth libraries in the immediate years ahead.
Most of these requirements have been signaled in a recent and thorough-going study of the Dartmouth libraries, mounted by the Trustees Planning Committee with a sub-committee made up of faculty and library staff members. This two-year study (1964-66) resulted in a number of specific recommendations which now are reflected — at least financially — as a major component of Dartmouth's Third Century Fund.
Specifically, the sum of $1 million is being sought as an expendable fund for immediately increasing new acquisitions in support of graduate programs, while an additional $6 million is needed to bolster library endowment funds to support book purchases in the future.
What are some of the plans and aspirations for the Dartmouth libraries in the decade ahead?
First, there will be some obvious physical changes and rearrangement of facilities. Mr. Morin says, "We now assume that Baker will become largely a humanities and social sciences library. There is an opportunity to add more levels to our present stacks to provide shelving space for some 200,000 more volumes. We also plan some new construction in one of the courtyards, which will give us additional shelving and work space. But even this space addition may not be sufficient to house the library materials required as developments in the College's educational programs occur in the social sciences and humanities."
Two other new library facilities are now under serious planning at the College, one a physical sciences library (a biological and medical sciences library already exists) which may be constructed in the neighborhood of Steele (Chemistry) and Wilder (Physics) Halls. The Tuck and Thayer School libraries will also be consolidated in a new building proposed for the end of Tuck Mall.
MR. MORIN is quick to point out that automation and rapidly developing technological advances may help solve some pressing housing problems and could also revolutionize traditional library practices.
"One cannot know," he says, "how rapidly these technological applications will take place; for example, the possibilities include tapping into regional collections through computers and facsimile electronic transmission between libraries. The technology has already been developed, but the big question is whether it is applicable at a bearable cost to academic libraries. When it reaches that stage, and it most certainly will, academic libraries, including Dartmouth's, will probably grow in volume at a much lesser rate than they have in the past. This is not to say they will have lesser resources - they are going to have far more through almost instantaneous access to collections remotely held."
The technological revolution in library services and programs is already well advanced at Dartmouth, thanks to the foresightedness of Dick Morin and his staff. Of course, Baker now houses a sizable microfilm collection with viewers and machines which simultaneously project and copy microfilm material.
Three years ago William B. Meredith, Assistant Librarian, was designated to investigate and study all phases of automation for the College's library complex. Under his direction a program for automating book-lending routines and records is taking shape. This will next be extended to acquisition procedures. These developments are occurring through a cooperative arrangement with Thayer School and the Kiewit Computer Center. Automation for other programs and services are also under study.
Long-range, both Mr. Morin and Mr. Lathem believe that an answer to everincreasing demands for access to all sorts of specialized resources - obscure journals, documents, manuscripts and other specialized papers - may well rest with the kind of inter-library mechanized exchanges indicated above.
Efforts are now being made to have all the nation's major libraries - governmental, university, state, and even local - adopt the same cataloguing and classification system and follow other practices in common. There are already advanced proposals for central, or area, depositories which could be drawn upon — by computers, by facsimile transmission, or by other technological methods.
Until recently, Mr. Morin points out, each university library was primarily dependent upon its own collections and resources. He now observes: "The process of emerging from that kind of self-dependency is taking place at a rate un- dreamed of as recently as ten years ago. But even though the technology for this emancipation is developing rapidly, problems of conversion cost and of human adjustment tend to slow up full acceptance of the technological implications. It is this transition which will constitute the library revolution in the next twenty years."
He goes on to add: "The Dartmouth libraries will be energetically playing their part in this deliberate transition to greater reliance on resources held (or at least available) commonly, by helping to develop regional and national cooperative programs for sharing. Progress in this will greatly benefit all university library users, but is unlikely to do more than partially offset the staggering increases in library costs which characterize the present. Perhaps the greatest saving will come from a reduced rate of space consumption for the housing of library resources."
As new library facilities are constructed at the College and as present facilities are rehabilitated, the library planners are providing space for the complicated machinery and gadgetry that soon will become as meaningful, or perhaps more meaningful, than the current stacks which now house nearly one million volumes at Dartmouth.
But these are the dreams for tomorrow. Right now, both Mr. Morin and Mr. Lathem face the library demands of the next five or ten years. Mr. Morin estimates that library acquisitions must double between now and 1975 to support increased graduate programs and to supply the basic professional and research requirements of Dartmouth's teacher-scholars.
Like many other active and enthusiastic men, Dick Morin does not intend to lead a sedentary life upon his retirement from his library post. He will spend the first few months of his "retirement" finishing up a work on the Dartmouth College Case which will be published in connection with the 150th anniversary of that famous Supreme Court decision. An amateur painter of ability, he also looks forward to having more time to devote to this avocation.
From his home in Norwich, Vermont, Dick Morin can see the spire of Baker Library against the sky. This daily sight will be most appropriate in his case, because his interest in library developments at Dartmouth and in the intriguing new methods of meeting space, acquisition, and financial problems is not going to be any less after June 30 than it has been during his very productive regime as Librarian of the College.
College Librarian Richard W. Morin '24 (left), who retires on June 30, with AssociateLibrarian Edward C. Lathem '51, who has been named to succeed him.
Prof. Clyde Dankert uses the newspapermicrofilm viewer, a great space saver.
Assistant Librarian William B. Meredith, in charge of library automation, examinesproduct of an IBM magnetic tape system for producing full sets of catalogue cards.
Bakers catalogue drawers will soon contain cards for one million volumes.
