(5) The growth of the departmental libraries beyond a convenient size and the incidental disadvantages of inadequate shelf space, disorder, lack of accommodation for students, the relegation of less used books to garrets and cellars.
(6) To provide fairly complete catalogs, author, title, and subject, for a large library is becoming more and more difficult as the collections increase in size. To provide these catalogs also for a number of departments, or to furnish copies of the sections likely to interest a given department, would require an expenditure of time and money quite beyond the means of any university, and entirely out of proportion to the advantages to be gained therefrom. The absence of satisfactory catalogs in departmental libraries will therefore have to be reckoned with and must be emphasized as one of the most serious disadvantages of the system.
I realize that no argument is likely to change the conviction of certain professors and departments, that the departmental system is the only one which merits consideration, or the view on the other hand of other professors and students, perhaps also the librarian, that a strong general library with small working collections in the departments, largely duplicating books in the general library, is in the interest of the great majority and offers the only reasonable solution. It may, nevertheless, be convenient to have at hand a summary of the question with references to the literature on the subject, especially if governing bodies should be called upon to regulate the issue as has been the case in Italy and Prussia.
The development of the departmental, problem in university libraries dates back to about 1870. While a great many seminar collections, especially in Germany, were started prior to that year, they had not as yet reached a size which called for funds, special administration, or space, to a degree sufficient to embarrass the general library and the university.
It may have its interest to give a brief outline of the development of the system in Prussia. It should prove suggestive as furnishing a parallel to our own situation.
In his "Eine Reise durch die Grösseren Bibliotheken Italiens,"[10] Dziatzko speaks of the Italian government regulations of 1885-1889 governing the relation of the departmental libraries to the general university library. The Italian regulations specified among other points the following:
[10] Beiträge zur Theorie und Praxis des Buch—und Bibliothekswesens. Sammlung Bibliothekswissenschaftlicher Arbeiten. 6. heft. p. 106-109.
Departmental collections are to be considered as part of the university library. The library commission of the university is to superintend the departmental libraries through the director of the university library. Second copies of books already in the university are to be purchased only in case of the most pressing necessity, and periodicals are not to be duplicated. Books are to be transferred from one library to another according to definite agreement. Books are to be accessioned in the university library and to be entered in its author catalog and stamped with the university library stamp. The approval of book appropriations on the part of the ministry depends on compliance with these regulations. The library commission had apportioned the annual book appropriations as follows: six-tenths to departmental libraries, laboratories, clinics, collections, etc., four-tenths to the general library.
Whether the Prussian ministerial regulations adopted soon after were based on the Italian is not known; but the similarity of the problem has undoubtedly led to considerable uniformity in the measures adopted.
It was in 1891 that the situation in the Prussian universities had reached a point where some government intervention seemed called for in order to regulate the relations between the university libraries and the so-called institutsbibliotheken. The regulations formulated (printed in the Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, 1897) specified in part as follows: Departmental libraries cannot dispose of their books; when no longer needed they are to be turned over to the university library. They are reference libraries and no books can be loaned except by order of the university council, or at Berlin which has no council, by the ministry. All students of the university are admitted to the use of the departmental libraries. The university library shall make an author catalog of the books in the departments, one copy for the departmental library, the other for the union catalog in the general library. The university library can loan books to the departmental library for a semester, provided they can be spared.