Upon the request of the Committee of the Booksellers' Association, your committee made a statement of the situation, which was delivered to them in October, 1911. The booksellers' committee prepared a reply to this statement, which was delivered to your committee in April, 1912.
A meeting of the two committees was held on Thursday, May 6th, 1912, in Cleveland, but it was without any definite result. It was agreed that the two committees report progress to their respective associations and that they submit to their executive committee the statement and reply referred to, with a report upon the present situation and to ask to be allowed to continue the negotiations if the executive committee thought it wise to do so.
WALTER L. BROWN, Chairman,
C. B. RODEN,
C. H. BROWN.
COMMITTEE ON CO-ORDINATION
The following report is the result, in part, of a question referred to the Committee on Co-ordination by a meeting at the Pasadena conference.
The question was, Whether libraries are justified in making a moderate charge in connection with every volume lent, sufficient in the long run, to cover the administrative expense involved in looking up and sending the volume asked for: not as payment for the use of the book, but to relieve the lender of an undue burden of expense, unavoidably attendant upon the system of lending with some freedom to other libraries.
In the opinion of the committee this question could be most profitably discussed only in connection with the whole subject of inter-library loans. It is clear, both from past and present developments, and from the direction these developments are taking that inter-library loans are, as yet, merely in their infancy. It is clear, too, that such loans increase the efficiency of libraries which participate in them. Finally, it is evident that there is a marked tendency not simply to multiply library loans, but to enlarge the field within which it is considered appropriate to effect them—taking "field" both in a geographical sense, and as relating to different classes of borrowers. Accordingly, it is not surprising that additional machinery and new methods should be required, and that some at least, should already have been devised. Also, it is safe to predict that this growth in machinery and in methods will continue.
Therefore, the Committee on Co-ordination has thought that it might be helpful, at the present time, to attempt a discussion (which will partake of the character of a symposium) in regard to the purpose and scope of inter-library loans. It is hoped that, as a result of this and subsequent discussion, it may become practicable to formulate some general rules for the conduct of inter-library loans. If a code of such rules could be framed, even granting that the provisions would, of course, bind no library against its will, one more step would yet have been taken in the direction of systematizing and extending a process which has already produced excellent results, and bids fair in the near future, to modify library practice in important particulars.
While the purpose of inter-library loans is uniform in the main, it varies to some extent, with the nature and duties of the participating libraries.
Neglecting minor differences, such libraries fall into two groups: Reference libraries, including libraries of colleges and universities; and libraries whose work is of a more popular character; or, to state the matter in terms of readers: Libraries, most of whose readers are "serious," and libraries, some, at least, of whose readers are not so very serious.