To begin with, we may have to examine why departmental libraries exist, or

alternatively, what the advantages offered by these libraries are.

(I) Accessibility
The first and foremost argument which has been put forward in favour of a
departmental library is the convenience of accessibility. Books are acquired and
processed for the ultimate means of having them available to the readers. Libraries
and books will be of benefit to nobody if they remain unused. To encourage usage of
books, easy accessibility is a great incentive. This is essentially why seminar libraries
in the nineteenth century German universities were preferred to the main library by
professors and students.
In the universities, or, as some people may call them, "multiversities" of modern days,
the campus is usually huge, and spread out, resulting in the geographic remoteness of
individual units from the main library. This "renders use of the main university library
comparatively difficult."11 A great deal of time is wasted if professors and students
have to travel to the main library to consult or to borrow a book. Therefore, it comes
as no surprise that faculty members, for this and other reasons which will be detailed
later on, usually support the establishment of departmental libraries. A report reveals
that "in the small ones [universities and colleges] the teachers questioned were two to
one... in favor of maintaining departmental or faculty collections in addition to the
main university or college library. In the larger ones they were nearly six to one in
favor... They gave a variety of reasons for their preference, but one that was often
mentioned was the distance of their department from the central library." 12
Departmental libraries save time directly, and money indirectly. If a scientist has to
travel, say, two miles to obtain information for his experiment from a laboratory
manual stocked in the main library, the experiment is then held up. Therefore, toing
and froing between the department and the main library does incur a great loss to
teaching and research work.
Therefore, even those who may not favour the idea of departmental libraries, would
concede that the geographic spread of the campus makes it justifiable. As Frederick
Wagman comments: "the only possible justification is remoteness of campus units
from the main university library building."13

(II) Ease of use

A small collection consisting of books and periodicals in the same subject field is
easier to use than a gigantic library. Parenthetically, this is the major reason for the
establishment of undergraduate libraries where undergraduates will not be daunted by
a massive and complex collection.
In a general library, due to the classification scheme used, many facets of a discipline
will be separated and books on these facets scattered. This creates great difficulty for
the user. For example, according to the Library of Congress Classification,
"Journalism" is located under PN4700-5650. Faculty members and students of
journalism would like related subjects such as communication, radio broadcasting,
television, advertising, etc also to be placed at this point in the schedules, but they are
astonished, and sometimes frustrated, to find that communication is located at P90,
radio broadcasting at TK6570 B7, television at HE8690-8699, and advertising at
HF5801-6191.
In a departmental library, however, a custom-built classification scheme is frequently
devised and used and this scheme would almost certainly be oriented to the way the
researchers and students use their special collection.
(III) Special services
A departmental library is like a special library in which readers benefit from special
services. In a departmental library, librarians frequently have a fair amount of relevant
subject knowledge. For example, librarians working in a medical library may have a
degree in a science subject which helps them understand the special terminology used,
and how the medical literature is organized.
Being familiar with the collection, special librarians are in a better position to select
and acquire materials. They are more responsive to the research and instructional
needs of the faculty and students, and are therefore able to develop the collection most
satisfactorily. Moreover, they are well acquainted with the publishers and book-sellers
in their particular subject field, which very often helps in speeding up the acquisition
of materials.
Being familiar with the clientele and their individual research areas, the special
librarians are well-placed to provide a more effective and personalized service.

Features available to the users of special libraries such as current. awareness bulletins
and selective dissemination of information can be provided for the faculty and
students in that particular discipline.
(IV) Relief for the main library
There are instances where the physical facilities of the main library are strained to
such an extent that siphoning off part of its collection and some of its services to a
branch becomes necessary. In these circumstances, separating the materials relating to
a certain subject, which should ideally be a distinct entity from the main collection,
and putting it elsewhere appears to be a sensible thing to do.
In this connection, it is interesting to note what Robert Walsh calls "the pattern of
pulsation in academic library growth."14 At one point, before the early twenties, owing
to the inadequacy of university library buildings in the United States, the tendency
was to divert books away from crowded central libraries. 15 Than, following the
construction of larger American university library buildings, books could be moved
back to the main library. An example quoted by Walsh is that of the construction of
the Widener Library at Harvard which permitted a number of collections, including
the Business School Library, to be brought together.16 However, as years go by, the
main library becomes crowded again and the forces toward decentralization begin to
work.
There are other advantages in having departmental libraries, apart from the abovementioned four points. One is that there is more active participation in, and
involvement with, the operation of departmental libraries on the part of faculty
members, because they feel that the libraries are their own. The other is that
departmental libraries such as an Asia library, fine arts library, etc. can more easily
attract donations, either money or books, because donors tend to donate to what they
are most interested in.
On the other side of the coin, there are a number of disadvantages in establishing
departmental libraries.
(I) Cost
Cost is undoubtedly the greatest disadvantage. As far back as 1901, William Bishop
stated that the one unanswerable argument against departmental libraries was the great

cost of purchasing duplicates and of maintaining many libraries instead of

one.17 Rogers and Weber estimated in 1971 that "at present level of cost, a full-fledged
departmental library can easily require [U.S.] $50,000 annually for books, processing,
and staff, plus extraordinary costs for creating basic collections and providing suitable
space."18 Nine years have gone by, and the cost required has no doubt spiralled. The
budget for libraries is usually tight, and if a substantial part of it has to be diverted to
building up a departmental library, then the main library which caters to the majority
of the university community will suffer.
Duplication of materials is bound to take place. Essential bibliographical and
reference tools have to be provided in both the main and departmental libraries.
Moreover, teaching has gradually become more and more cross-disciplinary and it is
impossible to withdraw books from the main library without depriving members of
some departments of their use. Therefore, duplicates have to be purchased. This cost
of procuring duplicates can be very considerable. "For example, with the
decentralized facilities at Rutgers nearly 35 percent of the total book fund is used to
purchase duplicate materials for its various libraries." 19 Consequently, the breadth and
depth of the main collection suffers at the expense of maintaining departmental
libraries.
Further, there is cost for extra staff. In order to provide an equal standard of service
for both the main and departmental libraries (although it should be pointed out here
that it is difficult to exactly replicate the standard of service in the main library for the
departmental library adequate numbers of staff have to be employed. The minimum
opening hours for a departmental library are cited by the Standards of the Southern
Association of Colleges and Schools in the U.S.A. as sixty.20
Providing staff to work in the departmental libraries represents a considerable drain on
the main library's budget. Frederick Wagman has emarked that "fully 30% of the
personnel budget of my library system [at Michigan] is spent in staffing the many
branches in less than adequate fashion."21 If acquisition and processing of materials is
done separately in the departmental libraries which maintain separate catalogues this
means a duplication of effort adding to the costs of the libraries.
In the face of increases in book prices, staff salaries, and in many cases a shrinking
budget in recent years, the question of cost should be seriously considered before one
sets up departmental libraries.

(II) Handicap to university-wide research

As remarked previously, interdisciplinary studies and research have emerged in recent
years to such an extent that there is scarcely any discipline which has no relation to
other disciplines. Even back in the thirties, books were rarely written for the exclusive
use of a well-defined group of readers. A case is quoted by Lawrence Thompson to the
effect that "a book formerly shelved in the old Veterinary Library at Iowa State
College has been used in the last twenty years by a bacteriologist, a botanist, a
nutritional chemist, a geneticist, several entomologists, and members of nearly all
departments in the present Division of Veterinary Medicine." 22
Today, the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge is even more pronounced and
widespread. For example, we now have such combinations as bio-chemistry, biophysics, bio-psychology, chemical engineering. The field of business administration
must draw heavily on materials in the disciplines of sociology, economics,
psychology, mathematics, statistics, English, and other fields.
Therefore, if books and periodicals of a certain discipline are diverted to a
departmental library which might be located one or two miles from the central
campus, users from other disciplines will be greatly inconvenienced. The only
solution to this problem is to purchase duplicates, but the question of cost often
prohibits this practice.
Another factor which might stand in the way of other segments of the university
community using the materials in a departmental library is the parochial attitude
developed among faculty members and graduate students of that department. They
might think that the departmental library is their own and disallow or discourage other
people from using it.
(llI)Unsatisfactory standard of service
Although it has been pointed out as one of the advantages of the branch library that
special services can be provided, in practice it is not always the case. There does not
seem to be a shortage of professional librarians nowadays, yet to employ them to run
each and every single departmental library often proves economically impossible.
Instead, part-time library assistants and students are employed to man these libraries

in some cases. In general, they are incapable of providing a professional service to the
clientele.
The hours of service are often shorter than those in the main library, thus hampering
the utilization of the library facilities. This can be very frustrating to those in other
departments who may have travelled one or two miles, and yet find the library closed.
(IV) Administrative difficulties
Problems of coordination, cooperation, and communication among the main and the
many scattered departmental libraries very often arise. It may be difficult for the main
library to transmit instructions on, say, revised cataloguing practice, or new circulation
procedures to its branches promptly, because of the geographic distance. Further, due
to the parochial attitude on the part of departmental libraries, they may sometimes
refuse to accept or implement these instructions, thus creating non-uniformity of
service in university libraries.
There are other disadvantages, perhaps of a less serious nature than the abovementioned ones, in having departmental libraries. Students should ideally be exposed
to a comprehensive collection and should be told that reliance upon the departmental
library will not make them successful researchers or scholars in their later lives. They
should also be taught the various techniques of using the main collection in the
university library. However, students will not have these benefits if they merely
depend on the departmental collections.
Space utilization is less effective in the departmental library than in the main library.
Ten separate departmental libraries may need ten lobbies, ten elevators, twenty rest
rooms and so on, whereas one main library ten times as large may need only two
elevators, one large lobby, etc. Moreover, expansion always poses a great problem to
the departmental library. As Robert Walsh comments, "a small library of 20,000
volumes with space for an additional 25 percent is less prepared to accommodate the
sudden influx of 7,00 volumes because of a gift or new collection demands than is a
library of 200,000 volumes, even if the latter had space for only a 15 percent
increase."23

Security is another problem for the departmental library. Probably due to the shortage
of staff resulting in less strict supervision, the percentage of missing books in
departmental libraries tends to be high.
The foregoing has shown that departmental libraries have both advantages and
disadvantages. The focus of the debate is between accessibility on the one hand (it is
worth pointing out, though, that the advantage of departmental libraries benefits only
a limited number of other sectors of the university community), and economy and
efficiency on the other. Both sides have merits and should be taken into consideration
before establishing or dismantling a departmental library. Indeed, centralization or
decentralization is "one of the most persistent and difficult organizational issues for
academic libraries."24
Library administration is essentially based on the principle of compromise. Perhaps,
this principle could also be applied to the issue now under examination. On the one
hand materials should be placed as close to the users as possible; on the other, less
fragmentation of resources (including books, periodicals, and staff) is desirable, and
greater central control should be exercised. Consolidating departmental libraries,
some of which are sometimes too minutely fragmented, into larger divisional libraries
seems to be a good compromise - representing partial centralization and partial
decentralization. Examples of such consolidation abound in recent years. During the
late 1930s, Brown University combined its science departmental libraries into two
large divisions - a biological science library, and a physical science library. Cornell's
reorganization was completed in the 1960s with a relocation of all science and
technological material into three large divisions with separate facilities: agriculture,
engineering, and the physical sciences. In Canada, Dalhousie University has two
divisional libraries for its science departments, one covering the physical sciences and
the other the biological sciences.
To make this system effective, a greater measure of central control should be adopted.
All libraries in the university should come under the administration of the director of
libraries who, in consultation with a university-wide library committee, would be
responsible for their operation.
Central acquisition should be practiced if it is practical, because it can cut down
duplication of expensive general reference works such as bibliographies, and avoid
too many copies of individual periodical titles being bought. If central acquisition

proves impractical, coordination among various units should be put into effect so that
every unit knows what is available in the general pool.
A union catalogue of the holdings of all the libraries in a university should be
compiled and made available for use by all sectors of the university community. One
of the greatest disadvantages of departmental libraries is the lack of information about
their holdings. Consequently, many valuable items are unknown and therefore test to
other segments of the university community. With the establishment of a union
catalogue this deficiency can be remedied.
To help establish and maintain the union catalogue, cataloguing should be carried out
in the main library if possible. This can maximize the expertise of the professional
staff in the main library. The staff in the departmental libraries, having been relieved
of this duty, can devote more time to readers' services.
To conclude, some departmental libraries (especially law and medicine), just like
necessary evils, will remain a permanent feature of the academic library scene despite
their faults. Other departmental libraries may be consolidated according to their nature
into divisional libraries to provide a more economical and yet a more effective service