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Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, Vol. 12, pp. 139-147, 1988 0364~6408/88 $3.00 + .OO Printed in the USA. All rights reserved. Copyright 0 1988 Pergamon Press plc

CHARLESTON CONFERENCE 1987

THE LIBRARIAN AS SYNTHESIZER

RICHARD ABEL

Timber Press

9999 Southwest Wilshire

Portland, OR 97225

In discussing a theme for this meeting the observation of Alphonse Karr, writing of the revolutions which wracked early nineteenth century France, “the more things change, the more they remain the same,” continually recurred. Looking back over the more than 30 years since my involvement in supplying books to academic and research libraries began, Karr’s dismal, sobering, and pithy summary of the outcome of 50 years of upheaval, involving not just France but virtually the whole of Western European civilization and culture, seems particularly apposite. The world of learning has since World War II both created and experienced upheavals of similar moment though happily without an equivalent loss of life. And because the matrix of most serious writing is found in the world of learning, the world of books, journals, and libraries has shared in these upheavals.

So much for broad generalities and grandiose analogies offered simply by way of elucidat- ing and defending the theme of what follows. Let me now turn to the particulars which I advance to support the case that despite all the change, the world of books, journals, and libraries remains much the same as I first came to know it 35 years ago when I moved from the front rooms to the back rooms of libraries by virtue of becoming a bookseller to libraries.

The delivery of knowledge as incorporated in books and journals remains simply too expen- sive. Let me here compare two clearly basic costs of living in the U.S., food and housing, to the cost of serious books-but as always some definitions:

1. By serious book, I mean the original publication of a book the author of which conscien- tiously set out to convey knowledge about one topic or another in the broad mainstream of the generally accepted body of things and affairs which constitute the world of learning;

2. Mass market paperbacks are excluded; 3. The figures for food are derived from the U.S. Department of Agriculture budgets for

a “liberal diet” -the top of the spending heap- for a family of four; 4. The figures for housing are the nationwide average of the costs of putting shelter over

one’s head-not heating, cleaning, furnishing, or maintaining the space-again for a family of four.

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As you well know, the list price of the kind of book defined here and the stock in trade of libraries is approximately $30. The weekly individual expenditures for food and housing are virtually identical-$30 per week for each. In short, our average book must be purchased by the average U.S. citizen at the expense of a week’s food or a week’s shelter.

Incidentally, the purchase of books and journals is in these statistics lumped with R.V. vehi- cles, movie tickets, video rentals, vacation spending, etc. in a “recreational” category which in total is only about 20% of national spending for either food or housing.

The comparison with the “average” journal is more unfavorable-approximating two weeks’ food or shelter.

Clearly books and journals are elitist commodities sold only to the well-to-do or those whose need for knowledge is of sufficient magnitude that they will make hard economic deci- sions by reallocating their resources to depart from the typical spending patterns.

Why are books and periodicals so dear?

1. Clearly the “twigging” effect coincident with the growth of knowledge and first articulated by Curtis Benjamin is a part of the problem.

2. However, I submit that the greater part of the problem derives from inappropriate means of advising those with a need to know of the availability of that knowledge and then delivering it to them.

This is a structural problem resulting from the comfortable but ill-founded view that traditional 18th century means of providing notice of publication still suffice in the vastly changed world of 20th century learning. This structural defect is endemic to every organization and group of organizations in which knowledge is a fundamental component - from research organizations through the book and journal trades to libraries. To illustrate, about 25 years ago, we were asked to set up a “turnkey” library for a major new research facility being set up by a major high-tech company. I interviewed the newly hired “information manager” to establish the guidelines and parameters within which we were to select the books and periodical backfiles and how the materials furnished were to be cataloged and processed. Because we were beginning to feel our way to a cataloging program much more strongly oriented to subject cataloging- about which more shortly- I asked, as a means of establishing the value they would assign more extensive catalog subject entries, about the cut-off levels for literature searches. He replied that if a research project were estimated to cost no more than $75,000, the research direc- tor would allow it to go ahead without a literature search. Despite those heady days of heavy federal spending in this area, I was stunned. I was as severely taken aback 10 years later, after our thinking about additional subject approaches to the catalog was better defined, when asking the same question at the same place to learn that the new cut-off was $150,000.

This is clearly a dear price-one which fairly screamed of the structural problems inherent in moving knowledge from someone who knows to someone with a need to know. The same structural flaw in the book and journal trade is clearly evident on your desks daily in the form of the endless piles of catalogs, brochures, and announcements flowing from publishers advising you of their wares. The same piles can be found in the mailboxes of every one of your faculty members. And as telling is the publishers’ satisfaction with a 2% sales return on such undertakings.

Now to put some numbers to this practice, let us assume that the typical piece you receive costs about 4OC including in-house and printing costs plus about 20@ for mail list acquisition and postage, you are looking at 6Oe pieces all over your campuses. One hun-

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dred pieces cost $60. Clearly, sales to the two customers who it is hoped will buy must each bear a $30 cost of acquiring the sale.

Now I know as well as you that this is an analysis at the margin- every publisher expects and usually receives an order for several books from the purchasing entities. So let us turn to average overall marketing costs to discover what orders for several titles do to our first case which was made largely to set the argument as to outmoded advice structures in the trade. Depending upon which study is used, you will find marketing/distribution costs in publishing to range from 3040% of the list price with the mean hover- ing around 50%. In short, advising those with a need to know of the availability of a publication and delivering it costs $15 of the $30 list price of a typical book.

If you are not as stunned by this analysis as by the first example I can tell you that I, as a publisher, often reflect on my sanity or my mental powers for ever having com- mitted my time and resources to such a marginal social/economic sector. To the best of my knowledge, Lyman Newlin was the person who first clearly focussed on this structural discontinuity in the book trade. I recall to this day his phone call disclosing this analysis-surely a model for the theater of the absurd. I sat speechless as he poured a torrent of figures into the phone and then proposed a means by which we might seek a way of reducing, if not completely rationalizing, this insanity using the mechanism underlying the approval plan. While Lyman’s intentions in the event were frustrated, its basis in fact was and remains a heavy tariff on knowledge levied against those with a need to know.

Having now roasted and so alienated one of the major players in the knowledge business on the spit of the cost of advising of and delivering knowledge, let me try my hand on this convocation of librarians.

The contribution to the cost of delivery of knowledge by libraries is not so readily quan- tifiable as in the case of publishing since these costs are imbedded in cost structures other than the costs of materials. The hidden costs I have in mind are overtly included in capital and operating budgets and covertly in the time and frustrations of your clientele.

Having been away from the tiny world of libraries for some years, I lack hard financial data, but permit me only to point to the functional areas of budgets for which libraries are the authors of unreasonable tariffs on users of and the delivery of knowledge:

1. Library capital budgets-constructing and equipping physical plants-in a time when technology is so abundant are simply too high. We have made not a single gain on the storage of the tools of knowledge since the great library of Alexandria. We continue to construct massive buildings at extraordinary cost of which only a fraction of the inter- nal volume actually houses books and journals. What a massive impact the diversion of a fraction capital funds would have on materials acquisition and reader services budgets. In an age of computers, bar coding, conveyor belts, and industrial inventory systems- and here I do not have in mind glorified filing systems sometimes being installed as a poor substitute- the present Alexandrian library is little short of a scandal. Where is the vision to devise a system to store and disburse printed materials from a cheaply con- structed, dense storage, system?

2. Operating budgets. This body of costs is in some ways closely related to the archaic capital costs already noted. Vast sums are spent yearly in every library to heat, light, and maintain such buildings. But even more costly is the time and energy devoted to retriev- ing and shelving materials. Assuming a modern library system incorporating the man-

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agement and technical features required of a truly cost-effective, integrated library system, I submit that budgets of present proportions could better be used to: a. Greatly enhance collection building, and b. Free librarians of clerical and supervisory chores, allowing them to take a fully active

role in promoting the use of books in what is education’s fundamental purpose- training people in

I. how to locate information and knowledge II. how others have thought about this information and knowledge both for the

conclusions reached and also as models of how they might think about it. In short, to revitalize the role of the librarian as an educator and a full-fledged

member of the intellectual community. 3. The third burden which libraries continue to place on the cost of disseminating knowl-

edge relates to the second, for it involves costs presently imposed upon users- both in terms of the time they must spend to locate the knowledge they seek and the many frustrations they experience in this task. Here I have reference to the skimpy and i&defined subject guides presently provided in the catalog. The subject information both in the headings and call numbers borders upon being medieval. To illustrate, some years ago proceeding largely out of our own frustration with the limits of subject cataloging, and a gut sense that others less involved with the problems of getting a handle on the store of knowledge available shared the same frustration, we commissioned a study of patrons’ approach to a library. Let me hasten to add that this was far from a scientific survey. We simply: a. Obtained the consent of a group of university libraries to station a surveyor by the

card catalog. b. The surveyors were in place various and different days of the week for an eight-hour

period over a period of five weeks so that every day Monday-Friday was sampled. c. As many patrons approaching the catalog as the surveyor could deal with were ques-

tioned. d. The initial question asked was, Are you seeking a book by

I. author or title II. subject?

e. They were then requested to check back with the surveyor on their way out to advise on whether they had been successful in finding what they were seeking.

The results confirmed our gut feeling: a. Over 80% of the patrons, mostly students, were in search not of a book by a par-

ticular author or with a specific title, but rather a book dealing with a specific subject matter.

b. Over one-third or nearly a half of those approaching the catalog seeking specific knowledge failed to find what they were seeking and had given up.

Now I fully recognize the shortcomings of our survey design and analysis, so please don’t hammer me about that aspect of the project. We were not planning to publish a scientifically defensible paper, but rather were seeking a heuristic to guide us in augmenting conventional subject cataloging against the day when we could find a librarian prepared to give our pro- posal for radically increased subject approaches a trial-and then let him/her write the paper.

Let me sum up the point I am trying to make by asking you to reflect on the savings in costs of transferring knowledge if the enormous sums spent by users were reallocated to mate-


rials and public service, all the result of radically rethinking the operation of the library as a system, in the light of the knowledge and technology available today.

“The more thinks change, the more they remain the same” is the clear conclusion when looking at the allocation of library materials budgets as between books and journals.

We first began looking hard at this problem in the mid-1960s after the growth in the number of journal titles, and the costs of subscriptions had already begun to explode. In earlier years, the relation between the scholarly uses of journals and books established in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seemed to prevail in a relatively well ordered and predictable way. New experimental results, new lines of evidence, new theoretical approaches, etc. were first presented or given a trial run in a journal. The body of new experimental results or new evidence in a particular field was accumulated for a period of two to five years and was then folded into a larger writing, a book, summarizing and synthesizing the new results into the theories in the field. In the case of new theoretical approaches, the wrangling over and con- sequent modifications of the theory as needed went forward in journals for several years, after which a book was written, usually by the creator of the new approach or theory which recast the body of knowledge in that particular field in terms of the new synthesis. Again and equally obviously, a large body of journal articles become fundamentally useless. Clearly some archival bookfiles had to be retained in a handful of key libraries, but most librarians had little cause to store accumulated tons of journals.

Interestingly, in the late ’50s and early ‘6Os, when the costs of air travel and the costs of telephony fell drastically, the number of learned meetings devoted to a specific topic and invis- ible colleges depending upon a network of telephone conversations and correspondence all dedicated to communicating new results and/or new theoretical approaches exploded together with the explosion of journals.

I was not alone in perceiving all of this as some kind of scholarly sea-change. By 1970, I had accumulated an entire file case of correspondence and memos resulting from interchanges with the editors of a large number of scholarly journals in a wide variety of disciplines. Vir- tually all of them had commented editorially on what they felt was an unhealthy development. Virtually all felt that the bench scientist, archive historian, survey social scientist was replacing the scholar in his study who synthesized and brought order into the jumble of articles and disparate findings or approaches. They repeatedly called for according the library scholar, as most referred to the synthesizer, a position and regard equivalent to what they called the benchman. But their pleas and arguments were written in increasingly discouraged tones and finally fell by the wayside as an entirely new breed of journal editors succeeded them.

Now it is perfectly clear that the growth in numbers and extent of journals is in part the result of twigging and in part the result of the explosive growth of information which charac- terizes the last half of the twentieth century. But equally as clear, a major factor is the low esteem into which the library scholar has fallen. The decline of the library scholar can be traced not only in the declining ratios of library expenditures relative to total institutional expenditures but also in the federal funding patterns which so clearly favor the benchmen.

An anecdotal account may well illustrate this imbalance in the intellectual enterprise. About six months ago, I signed an author to write a book he and I feel will be very significant in a field that is currently on the threshold of momentous change. We both view it as a book that will do much to set the agenda for the impending changes. He advised his Dean of his undertaking. The Dean initially frowned on the idea and subsequently insisted that the writing of the book was not to take any time from the writing of articles. Any departure was to be judged by deviation from the three articles per year which had been the man’s average pro-

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duction over the past five years. To so low an estate has the writing of what may well be a seminal book fallen.

The unhappy and unhealthy outcome is that knowledge is becoming fractured-bits and pieces scattered widely in diverse publications-almost Yeatsian in the manifest centrifugal forces at work. And what is the poor learner to do? This is hardly a rational way to proceed.

Now some may say that mine is a hopelessly outdated view of the scholarly enterprise and that I would best join the ranks of retired journal editors who once shared this sense of the matter.

By way of falsifying this argument, I would like to recount another unscientific but in my judgment telling experiment conducted by a librarian whom I hold in the highest regard. Quite dissatisfied with the disastrous effect burgeoning journal subscription costs were having on their materials budget, she determined to probe the basis of the insistence of two of the fac- ulties of science that those budget allocations were justified. Resorting to the very clever but obvious device of not renewing any subscriptions to the journals requested by these two departments and then tracking complaints, she established that one faculty member in the eleventh month of the empty subscription year complained that he could not find one issue of one journal (the fifth of that year) in the library. She provided it via interlibrary loan incidentally.

So I hold that the question not only remains alive and that the view articulated has some substance but that the matter is plainly more frightening than appears. For if the benchmen aren’t reading the benchmen’s articles, who’s keeping the store?

What is to be done? The remedy I propose places upon librarians a burden many times heavier than that proposed earlier in assisting in the reduction of the cost of moving knowledge to those who need to know.

Let me approach the matter in a somewhat circuitous way. In the first instance, the profession must confirm to its satisfaction that the imbalance in budget allocations between journals and books in fact reflects the genuine imbalance between benchmen and library scholars which has been proposed.

I suspect most of you fundamentally endorse the view that a first-rate book synthesizing the current body of knowledge in any particular field is the capstone of the scholarly, intellectual enterprise. My grounds for suggesting that librarians share the sense of the rational order- ing of the knowledge transfer function arises out of untold conversations with librarians as to why they entered the profession: the intellectual stretching first experienced as a child in the free public library, typically a Carnegie library. The objects which stretched your minds compelling you beyond the parochial concerns of a child located in a particular setting and which opened vistas of a wider, older, more meaningful world and because wider and older a powerful symbol of what the future could be were books-those integrated writings expos- ing one body of knowledge or another, and so clarifying a complex and little understood world.

If such reflection fails to support the view begin presented here, all well and good-the limits of your professional responsibility for the totality of the intellectual enterprise remain largely as presently defined. If, on the other hand, you conclude that the views advanced here have some substance, the boundaries of your professional life must be stretched. The direc- tion in which I suggest they must be expanded is that of the formulation and expression of knowledge-the logic of epistemology if you will.

I have no very clear ideas about how to undertake this task, but I am certain that it requires a more active and direct involvement in the intellectual life of the campuses and communi- ties in which you work.


After years of viewing yourselves as members of a service organization planning for and delivering the artifacts of knowledge to patrons, this may sound a radical and disturbing proposition. It is in a sense radical and will certainly surpass in some cases the genuine human limits of time and energy. But I submit this direct involvement in the scholarly enterprise is not all that radical. In times past, the post of librarian was offered only to acknowledged masters of some branch of knowledge. Only such persons could be entrusted with the deli- cate business of controlling such a powerful cultural engine-after all, rational civilizations do not entrust children with the control of fire.

It is true that in earlier days neither the numbers of publications nor the numbers of readers even remotely approximated the daunting deluge of paper and bodies with which the profession must now cope. The construction and operation of the complex mechanisms which had to be put in place to acquire, house, and dispense collections growing exponentially to patrons also increasing exponentially has, I submit, removed the profession from that direct and active role in the scholarly enterprise which it once played. And I suspect that most and surely the best of you harbor a profound frustration in pulling and pushing the levers of the library machine, having been inspired to work with books as a result of the intellectual excitement engendered by books in your youthful years. In short, sheer numbers have in the last three- quarters of a century forced both the profession and the people in it out of an intellectual and scholarly role to that of support staff to those involved in what librarians would really like to be involved in-intellectual pursuits.

I ask you now to recall my earlier observation that the mechanics of the library are now amenable to rationalization thanks to the advances of high technology-if only someone will carefully think through a system presently based on eighteenth century models of technology in terms of late twentieth century technology. If this task were undertaken in a thoughtful and considered way and then rationally implemented, the library profession could at great benefit to itself and even greater benefit to its clients have the time, position, and resources to reenter the arena of intellectual, scholarly work.

And should this happy outcome be realized, I suggest that the point of entry be that of the logic of epistemology. So basic yet grand an enterprise requires people possessed of a prac- tical and broadly based overview of the fruit of scholarly work-publications. Furthermore, by virtue of the sympathy growing out of direct knowledge and experience of libraries, librarians would find the role of library scholar, the synthesizer, particularly satisfying. I think it clear that the mode of publishing articles in journals is so ingrained in present-day scholarly practice that only an entirely new body of scholars devoted to the broad outlines of scholar- ship rather than to the parochial outlines of subject disciplines is required to redress current intellectual imbalances. Where better to look for this body of new generalists, late twentieth century synthesizers, than to the ranks of a profession dedicated to intellectual pursuits and possessed of a broad overview of the landscape of accumulated knowledge but liberated by a systematic rethinking of the operation of libraries?

Bookmen as intellectuals and scholars-that is, I submit, a challenge which you as a profession either take up or stand by as meek servants and note unhappily that the capstone of the intellectual venture, the book, is being eaten alive by parochial discipline journals, leav- ing only a babble or Babel of disjunct articles widely scattered which are of little utility save through the endeavors of the library/synthesizer/scholar.

The final point I’d like to raise in this inventory of change without change is that of the disjointed and scattered efforts to deal with and resolve the critical problems common to all segments of the knowledge distribution process: cost and accessibility.

I believe most reflective observers would concur that these problems have reached major

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if not crisis proportions. In addition to the specifics to which I have adverted earlier, I would call your attention to a diverse but worrisome short list of items:

1. The improvement in reading campaign which sputters along largely preaching to the con- verted with snappy slogans and free ads,

2. Related to the first, and indeed probably the root cause, is the dismal performance of our educational establishment at every level,

3. The continuing disdain for knowledge developed elsewhere in the world despite the manifest waning of U.S. primacy in a number of fields.

Can all these different and unwanted orphans be placed on the doorstep of the knowledge establishment? No, not entirely, but we are also clearly a part of the problem. In support of this indictment of the knowledge establishment I offer the following:

1. The willingness to undertake research up to $150,000 in cost without a literature search. Clearly such extravagance results from both the intellectual imbalance in present scholar- ship and the inadequacies of subject approaches to literature,

2. An equally striking example occurred about three weeks ago. My brother is a consult- ing industrial designer involved principally in designing electronic systems, some of which some of you might have used in an educational setting. He was recently retained to design a system calling for some leading-edge electronic technology. Not being completely up to the mark on some elements of this technology, he called me to learn how he might get up to speed. When I advised him of the bibliographic and document delivery resources available today, he was simply astounded but shortly thereafter dismayed with the difficulties of using them.

The two conclusions I want to draw from this story for today’s purposes are: a. An intelligent, leading-edge designer is not aware of available knowledge resources, b . And despite working in a high technology environment is daunted by the difficulties

incident to their use.

In short, people often do not know of the knowledge tools available and when they do, they find them too hard to use.

Now the library profession cannot alone be changed with these shortcomings, but as this is a meeting of librarians about libraries, it is only appropriate to relate them to libraries. So to recast these propositions in terms of libraries:

1. Libraries are hiding their light under a bushel, 2. Knowledge resources are too hard to use.

These conclusions bring us back to where we started: the root cause of difficulties cab be found in the fact that the library has not been carefully and rigorously thought through in terms of a twentieth century system.

And isn’t this strange for we have “this net, ” “that net” and “the other net,” all developed at extraordinary costs both in terms of money and effort. None of them provides a total answer and most are so costly to operate they are close to if not hanging on the financial ropes.

So logic forces me to conclude despite all the protestations of cooperation repeatedly expressed in library literature, most libraries want to go it alone- which after this long walk


around Robinson’s barn brings me back to the third issue I raised: namely, the diffuse and scattered attempts to solve the major problems of knowledge transfer. The efforts to ration- alize library practices have been largely confined to mechanizing the backroom functions of particular libraries. Transferability of systems, the needs of patrons, the dictates of cost effec- tiveness have largely escaped the attention of their creators.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Despite all the changes the same problems remain.

How to break out of what seems a treadmill in a prison cell? I would urge:

1. Libraries, in company with library book and journal dealers and with publishers, to cast their net wider to capture not only backroom problems but also the problems of those whom we serve and upon whom we depend- namely book buyers and library patrons.

2. Librarians to return to an active scholarly role and assist in redressing present imbalances in knowledge sources. Users are not well served by bits and pieces of knowledge scattered in diverse publications- the day of the library scholar who draws together and syn- thesizes the new evidence and theories in virtually every field of human knowledge is long overdue.

3. Librarians must get out of the backrooms and out front promoting their wares and ful- filling a peddgogic role.

4. Lastly, the structural problems in the knowledge transfer domain are so critical and so crucial to any kind of a decent future, a variety of one-of-a-kind local, parochial solu- tions will not work-a total rethinking in terms of modern technology is the only option open.

In closing, forgive me if my remarks have seemed an exercise in library bashing. I hope it is clear that I view the library as a central and critical element in a healthy culture with a future. I hope I have made it equally clear that in my opinion there is a way out of the change-without-change scenario which I have reviewed here. But it demands that librarians break out of their demeaning service orientation and reassert an active, participatory role in the intellectual life of our culture.

Thank you for this opportunity to share these thoughts with you.

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