Organization of College and University Libraries

WITHINTHE L A S T fifteen years, college and university libraries have been led by a number of factors to recognize the importance of sound organization.Perhaps the most obvious of these factors is the growth in the size of collections.Whereas in 1900 no library in the United States had a book collection of over 1,000,000 volumes, by 1937 there were thirteen such libraries, and by 1951, twenty-eight, of which fourteen were university libraries.Whereas there were only 79 libraries with 200,000 or more volumes in 1937, there were 239 in 1950, 103 of which were college or university libraries.At what point organization begins to emerge as a problem and to be recognized as a separate element of administration can only be guessed at, but a fair estimate seems to be when a library collection reaches 200,000 volumes.Other developments of the last fifteen years that might well be expected to influence library organization are: ( 1 ) growth in the campus population and changes in its composition, ( 2 ) changes in higher education and in research, ( 3 ) rising costs and tightening finances, ( 4 ) changes in the rate and in the forms of publication, ( 5 ) advances in technology, ( 6 ) increased institutional coordination and cooperation, and ( 7 ) the growth of professional knowledge.The general outlines of these developments are well known; most of them are discussed at length in other articles in this issue, and are not elaborated upon here.Familiarity with the elements and principles of administration and with the fundamentals of sound administrative organization is also taken for granted.However, one pertinent factor, namely, the increase in the fund of professional knowledge available to the librarian, should be discussed, especially as it relates to organization.Studies conducted during the