IRANIAN VS. AMERICAN LIBRARYSERIAL SELECTION POLICIES

A comparative stwiy ta mad.e of the aerial aelectioJl.pollclea of the Ilbraries of the Dr_el Ul1lverslty,Fhlladelphia and the Iranla1l. Docwnentatlon Centre(lrandoc), Tehran. 'Dl£ferencea 111 the aelectionpollcy and the factors responsIble for theee dille-rencell are brought out. Some slmilarItle6 In pollcyare aho brought out. It lp concluded 'that In£luenceof nattonallam on aerial selectlon pollcle. ~f the twolnatltutlon8 la qulte evldent,

This es say attempts to compare andcontrast certain Iranian and American libraryserial selection policies. It assumes manysimilarities to exist between the selectionpolicies of the two' countries, but that specialproblems and contrasts exist in each one, also.The paper concentrates on the policies of twospecific institutions, Drexel University, pre-viously, Drexel Institute of Technology, Phi-ladelphia, . USA, and the Iranian DocumentationCentre [Lran doc ), Tehran, Iran. One was anacademic library, the other a governmentagency documentation center. They were alikein some striking ways but were very differentin others. The author was an administrativestaff member of both organizations thoughseveral yea rs separated his service in them.The data were gathered by observation and thepersonal experience from which this essaysprings.

Drexel was a private technical universitywith schools of engineering, science, businessadministration, library science, home econo-mics and evening studies, the latter concentra-ting on engineering, It had eleven thousandstudents and one thousand faculty and staffmembers. Doctoral programs had been start-ed recently in seven engineering and sciencedepartments, but the institution was primarilyundergraduate. The Drexel Library had fiftyfull-time staff members and an annual budgetof $ 700,000.

The Iranian Do cu m ent at ion Centre wasa national scientific and technical informationcentre s uppo rt e d by the Ministry of Scienceand Highe r Education. Its, seventy full-time

Vol 20 No 1-4 Mar vDe c 1973

John F Harvey

University of New MexicoAlbuquerque, U. S. A.

staff members provided library plus documen-tation and publication services with an annualbudget of $ 400,000. Developing a large na-tional re se a re h library in science and socialscience was one of its important tasks.

The two rnat e r ia l collections were v<;rydifferent in size. In its seventy five yea'rsDrexel had accumulated over 255000 volumes,while in its two years Irandoc had collectedless than 20000 volumes. Drexel received5100 current serial titles, and Irandoc receiv-ed about 4000 serial titles, in both cases, bygift or exchange, but mostly by purchase.Drexel's 'annual serial budget was $ 167,000and Lran doc l s serial budget was $ 130,000.

One of Irandoc's first serial selectionsteps was to work o ut its material collectionemphases. In a formal statement, approvedby its executive committee, Irandoc's materialneeds were established for all subject fieldsin terms of the Library of Congress subjectclassification. Four levels of collection sizeor need were shown: 1) Graduate researchcollection, 2) Undergraduate major level col-lection, 3) Introductory collection for univer-sity freshmen, 4) No material. These. cate-gories applied to both serials and monographs.The following is a list of the fields for whichone or two level collectj.ons were felt to beneeded:

AEAG 5-191

500-571

Encyclopedias (1)Minor encyclopedias (1)Information Bureaus (2)Indexes (1)Periodicals (2)Academies, Directories (1)Biography (2)Geography (2)Cartography (2)Atlases (1)Oceanography (1)Anthropogeography (2)

AlAPASCTG

101-23961001-3035

GCGF

81

GN 51-686 Anthropology (2)GV Sports (2)H Social Science (2)HA, HB, HE-HJ Economics (1) and (2)HM-HX

J-.TX

Sociology except HN 30-39,HT 851-1445, HV 4701-5720(1) and (2)Political Science exceptJL (2)Law (1)Education except LA (1)Arc hitecture (2)Home Dec or atron (2)Textiles and Woodwork (2)Science (2)Mathemahcs, Physics, Che-mistry, Geology,· Botany,Zoology, Physiology (1)Medicine and Related Fields (I.)Agriculture (1)Technology (ljMilitary Science (2)Naval Science (2)Typing and Shorthand (2)Book Industry, LibraryScience (2) and (1)Bibliography (1)

KL-LHNAND 1700-3505

8800-9950QQA-QR

R-RTS-SKT-TXUVZ 49-100

) 16-980

1001-9000

Drexel had no such formal policy state-ment, and interpreted its collection interestsand intensities broadly from the curricula randresearch emphasizes of its parent institution.For many years. these interests had been sim-ple and little change d, so they were not diffi-cult to learn and remember. Each institution'sserial budget was too small to permit strongcollection development outside its primary 'andsecondary interest fields.

Serial selection was organized different-ly U1 the two organizations. Iz-an doc routedlarge numbers of bibliogI'aphic a~d reviewtitles to its reference staff members for usein book and serial selection. Drexel did thisal so, but in a somewhat different manner. •Serials were sent from the serial record sec-tion to the reading rooms by way of the Drexelsubject refe rence libra rians' office s, 1£ theywished to read and do selection before sendingthem to the shelves. they could. Usually. theserials were used for this purpose. at leastcertain titles among them.

lrandoc had a formally organized serialev~luation committee. also, consisting of thechief reference librarian, who was chairmanthe technical advisor, and the subject biblio-'

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graphers. Each committee meeting was heldwith one of four subcommittees organized bysubject: the physical sciences including engi-neering. the biological sciences includingbusiness and law. and finally. the fields ofeducation. library science and general sub-jects. Eac h subcommittee consisted of twoprofessional subject bibliographers with bache-lors. masters, or doctors degrees in theappropriate subject fields. In addition, twoassistant referencr: librarians and anothersubprofessional wer~ occasional committeemembers.

Sample copies of specific titles wereselected for the committee's considerationfrom the serial stacks or else from gift and'exchange items recently arrived. The commi·ttee met weekly in the chairman1s office toevaluate a stack of titles in one of the foursubject areas. Each title was inspected bythose present who voted democratically onthem. They voted to keep and bind the titlesthought to be essential (KB-l); importanttitles. indexed in a serial indexing serviceand reporting research results, but not consi-dered essential, were rated somewhat lower(KB-2); leSS lInportant materlal was keptwithout binding for one or two years and thendiscarded (K-2 or K-l)i and unimportantmaterial was cancelled (cd).,

The KB-2 category was established withthe expectation of future budget cuts whichmight require cancelling all subscriptionsexcept those in the KB-1 category composed ofindexing and abstracting services and sourcetitles indexed widely. Most "keep one year"or "keep two years" material was of marginalresearch value but was free and containedshort research papers or useful news. Mate-rial'cancelled was out of scope, ephemeral, ina language not widely understood 1n Iran un>indexed. expensive, or duplicated else~~erein Tehran. A copy of Ulrich, InternationalPeriodical ·Directory, was kept handy forcommittee consultation. Unfortunately, cor-relating serial subscription decisions with theserial budget was almost impossible.

Drexel serial selection organization wasmuch more informal and relaxed. lrandocmade a deliberate attempt to seek out andevaluate every title currently on. hand as wellas a large number of titles not readily availa-ble, but no such attempt was made at Drexel.Probably, this contrast relate to the two

AIlIl Lib Sci Doc

IRANIAN VS, AMERICAN LIBRARY SERIAL SELECTION

countries' character and personality differen-ces and to the differences between two yearold and seventy year old organizations. Dre-xel had a good serial collection already anddid not feel the need to select large numbersof new titles. The r e was no separate serialor book evaluation committee. 'Nor was aformal recorded decision availalble on anyserial title, though an annual check of serialrenewal lists provided the occasion for addingor dropping a few titles. Selection was inthe hands "of the seven reference librarians,one of each covering the humanities, socialspheres and home economics, business admin-istration, engineering and science, libraryscieilce'and finally, general reference. When-ever one of these librarians saw a 'desirabletitle listed, he ordered it. Selection might bemade after checking serial index lists, readingadvertisements received in the mail, or check-ing the citation in a new monograph. Certaintitles required conversation with faculty mem-bers, and sometimes they suggested titles,also. The order was for.warded to the serialrecord section, and if the budget permitted,the title was added to the subscription list forthe coming year.

Lrandoc+s five most important broadsubject areas were medicine, engineering,agriculture, education and bibliography.Within these fields, civil engineering, andparticularly, road building were much moreimportant than aeronautical or chemical engi-neering, just as gastroentrology was moreimportant than psychiatry for instance. Be-cause of Irandoc's location in the Ministry ofScience and Higher Education, higher wasmore important than elementary or secondaryeducation. Sociology, statistics and economicswere of some interest, but generally, as inother developing Asian nations, the socialsciences were of much less concern thanscience and technology and involved far fewerstudents, faculty members, government andbusiness people. Since Irandoc was part ofan institute of research, also, many titleswere selected in research management, legis-lation and techniques. Generally speaking,any aerial with the words, international,developing or comparative in its title wasmore interesting than one with merely nattonatscope. With international titles, Iran had a -chance of learning something directly helpfulfrom the contents, whereas most of thEf"arti-c1es in national titles seemed to be less direct.

Vol ZO No 1-4 Mar-Dee 1973

ly related to Iran. Since "the University ofTehran Department of Library Science hadlittle or no budget for material, and sincestaff and profession-wide education was amajor responsibility, Irandoc needed to pu r » :

chase strongly in bibliography, library andinformation science for the benefit of Iran'snew library profe saion,

Several other subject emphases or limi-tations related closely to the national persona-lity characteristics of Iranians. Subjects inwhich they had a special interest included (a)carpets, though serials on machine-made orsynthetic car-pets were vetoed, (b) roses, infact a strong interest existed in gardens andhorticulture in general, (c) adult literacymaterial, important in a half literate nation,(d) planned parenthood, vital for a high birth"rate oriental country, (e) petroleum, becau seof Iran's heavy economic dependence on it,(f) West Asia in general. of considerable con-cern if not interest, (g) irrigation, dams, andwater power, vital topics to an arid agricul-tural nation, (h) rice, tea, dates, pistachios,and sugar, if only because they were Iraniandiet staples, (-1)desert studies of all kindswere important to desert dwellers, as was (j)land reform, while [k} wool was an Impo-rtantexport commodity, and (1) handic caft s weretourist trade items, but only those which weretraditionally Iranian. None of these subjectswas of any significant concern to Dzexef, how-ever.

Many subject-s were of little interest toIran, "sometimes of surprisingly little interest.One of these subjects was oceanography. Fora nation with seas at both ends, Iran had sur-prisingly little concern for marine subjects.Material was selected in this field anyhow,against the awakening of interest in the future.Much the same picture held for mining, also,a subject for the future. The pure aspects ofsuch subjects as physics, cberm st ry, mathe-matic s, economic s, political science, andastronomy were much less interesting anduseful than their applied aspects. Meteorologywas more useful than astronomy, engineeringthan mathematics, seismology than physics,industrial testing than design theory, pesti-cides than botany, commerce than economics,law than political science. Iran was verypragmatic. Public administration, one ofIran's great problem areas, was of littleinterest. -Horne economics and nutrition werelittle known fields in family-centered Iran.

83

Likewise, physical education was poorlydeveloped, modern business administrationnot much better. Drexel agreed with some ofthese negative views, but disagreed stronglywith others of them.

In general, the subject emphasis con-formation was surprisingly similar at Drexel,humanitie s being of little inte re st, soc ia Iscience of more interest, while science, andparticularly applied science, were of para-mount interest. Drexel was basically anengineering school, more than ha lf of its stu-dents being in such day or evening curricula,and its engineering material holdings wereextensive. It had no medical, agricultural,education, or law curricula, nor any majorsin history, physical education, theology. Onthe other hand, business administration wasof strong inte rest - - personnel, accounting,finance, management, investment, - - since aprofessional school existed in that field. Thebasic sciences of chemistry and physics wereof strong interest, too, because research-oriented departments had developed there.Biology and mathematics were of developingDrexel interest as were such social sciencefields as sociology, political science and eco-nomics where small departments existed.

Considerable material was selected forthe other professional schools, also, those inlibrary science and home economics. Drexel'scollections therein were expected to be thebest in Philadelphia, one of North America'slargest book centers, because no other strongPhiladelphia sc hool s existed in the se subjectfields. Library science students used the'lib-rary heavily and required some duplication ofmaterial, even serials. Most of the titlescovered in Library Literature were on thesubscription list. For home economics, theclothing, design, nutrition, cook book, foods,consumer, and personal finance collectionswere extensive. Even a few expensive artperiodicals were purchased for home econo-mics use, though no art major existed.

Among more specialized and peripheralfields, Drexel purchased some local Philadel-phia titles in order to keep current with acti-vities in its immediate area, the same reasonbeing valid for Iran doc "s loca 1 titles. However,Philadelphians had a greater interest andpride in their home area than did most educat-ed Tehranis, even though the latter were quitenationalistic. Irandoc subscribed to almost

84

HARVEY

no recreational serials, the sober and formalapproach to be expected of Iranians. Philadel-phians, living in a more relaxed and leisure-oriented nation, felt an obligation to providerecreational material for students and facultymembers. Therefore, it selected a numberof popular American and British humor, spo rt s,fashion, picture, and literary titles, most ofthew in the humanities.

Irandoc selected a very few humanitiesand historical titles because they containedsome science or social science interest, also,but Drexel included some historical materialfor its students taking history electives, study-ing .the history of science and for others wish-ing to read general interest material • Arne+rica's high literacy rate and strong intere~tin communication brought forth a flood ofserials of all kinds and de sc r ipt ion st.o chosefrom, in contrast to Iran's thin collection.

Drexel's individual characteristics em-phasized (a) a collection aimed at men, since3. majority of the students and faculty memberswere male, (b) generally; a practical collec-tion, since all of Drexel's schools emphasi-zed applied rather than theoretical fields, (c)a serial col le ction of medium size, sinceDrexel's budget was still modest, and (d) acollection of rria jo r and minor gaps as itfollowed the Drexel curriculum, with humani-ties being poorly represented, social sciencesskewed strongly toward business administra-tion, and engineering topping the other scien-ces and technologies. Irandoc reflected asimilar picture as that given in (a) above be-cause of the male -dominated Iranian society,certainly agreed with Drexel on (b) practicali-ty, reluctantly on (c) for the same reasons,and on (d) as well, though not quite in thesame way, agriculture, medicine, and educa-tion, for instance, being among Irandoc' smost important fields.

A librarian was always inclined to thinkof local serials and of those aimed at usersmuch like the local group as being essential tohis holdings. Irandoc and Drexel agreed withthis generalization. In each country, interestwas directed fi r st toward the serials of thelibrary's own country. It was assumed thatmost of Drexel's serial titles would be Ameri-can, although the author cannot rememberdiscussing the problem at any time. Arne rt c anserials were most easily accessible, assumedto be of excellent quality, and best represented

Ann Lib Sci Doc

IRANIAN VS. AMERICAN LIBRA·'Y SE;dAL SELECTION

in the se da 1 indexe 5 at hand. A Ia rge num-ber of useful and good quality American titleswas assumed to exist in any field, in fact,usually more than Drexel could afford. Onlythe most important foreign titles were pur-chased and little money could be spared forthem.

Most of Irandoc's staff believed Asiantitles to be universally poor, African, Oceanicand South American titles almost non-existant,European titles excellent, American title sgood and Canadian titles medioc.re. Neverthe-less, Irandoc was much less provincial thanDrexel in seeking titles from a variety ofcountries. Its holdings included representa-tives of all continents and of countries fromtlte capitalist, socialist, and developing\.Jrlds. Ir-andoc+s first interest was in select-

,'·tug Iranian serial titles or at least those aimedat an Iranian audience, however. Its collec >

tion of Iranian science and social scienceserial titles was quite comprehensive, infact, a vast majority of all such Iraniantitles published were on its shelves, 350 al-together. The fact that it was part of Iran-doc's mission to index and abstract the betterIranian serial material, the low or else freeprice attached to most titles, and the respon-sibility ·of a central national government agen-cy to collect, preserve and service local mate-rial comprehensively, since no othe r agencywas doing this, were aU reasons for Irandoc'scomprehensive coverage of it.. Of course,Lrandoc+s coverage of local Tehran titles waseven more comprehensive than was its covera-ge of Iranian titles as a whole. This intra-national selectivity was caused by the lowerquality of many provincial titles as well as bythe difficulty of identifying and obtaining them.

Drexel had titles from thirty countries,mostly capitalist countries plus the SovietUnion, other count rte s provided about 50/. ofits total subscription list. The correspondingfigures for Irandoc were 55-60 countries and90%. Drexel's coverage of American titles·was poor in terms of percentage, pe r haps 1%being represented, presumably the best of theappropriate titles being included. On the otherhand, Irandoc subscribed to almost 1000/. ofthe appropriate Iranian titles.

Language was an important selectioncriterion in both countries. At Drexel, theEast ABian languages, were almost complete-ly unknown, so few titles were received in

Vol 20 No 1-4 Mar-Dec 1973

them. African languages were given littleconsideration, also, Russian was almost asmysterious, and material in that language wasthought to be useable by few on campus, exceptin cover-to-cover translations. French andGerman, on the other hand, were assumed tobe intelligible to many users and were seldomregarded as deterents to selection. Severalsignificant titles were received in these lan-guages and given some use. Eastern Europeanlanguages were seldom considered, thought tobe rather remote and unintelligible, and torepre sent t hird rate lite rature. The Scandina-vian countries and the Netherlands were thoughtto publish primarily in French, German orEnglish,· 50 representation in their own lan-guages was consfde re durmec e saa ry, Spanishwas considered suspect for the quality of itsscientific literature, but the language itselfwas not regarded as a selection. det e r ent , Even50, little interest existed in Latin America orin Spain, so few titles were received. Italianand Portuguese were less useful and werethought to include few first class scientifictitles. Such West Asian Ianguage s as Hebrew,Turkish, dreek, and Urdu were not even consi-dered. Arabic and Persian were uninrefl.lgibfeto staff members and users, their serial titlesunknown, unrepresented and unrnie se-d,

At the Iranian Documentation Centre,language was an even greater limiting factor.Persian serial material was of top priority,although its quality was said by Irandoc biblio-graphers to be third rate. This low opinionof its usefulness was al most universal and ledmany Iranian scientists to publish abroad andread foreign serials on:y. Afghan~Persianlanguage titles, on the other hand, were bothhard to locate and even harder to defend toIranians qualitatively. Surprisingly, Arabiclanguage serials were considered to be use-less, since only a very small minOrity of edu-cated Iranians could re"ad them. The writingscript closeJy resembled tha~ of the Persianlanguage, and some wor de w'ere recognizable,but most of them were not. Of course, Arm~-nian , Urdu, Kurdish and Turkish were spokenby small Iranian minorities, al so , but exceptfor Turkish, their scientif~c literature wasalmost.non.existeitt, and the demand for mate.rial in these languages was nil. No other Eastor West Asian languages were rea do r spokenwidely in Iran, so none were representedmore than minimally in serial selection. Af-

. r ic an languages ditto.

85

As for European languages, severalstaff members and users read French, somany serial titles were selected in that lan-guage, in which scholarly titles were numer-ous. In addition to research serials, theCNRS ab st r act bulletin series was well rep-resented in the index and abstract room. Noother European languages were understood byeven a tenth of the users or reference staffmembers, however, Spanish, Portuguese,Dutch, Russian, the Scandinavian languages,and the East European languages, all being inthis category. Only German and Italian wererepresented by more than a few titles, perhaps10-20 for each one of them. German wastaught regularly in certain secondary schools,was popular with some technical students andwas Iran's fourth or fifth ranking language.Italian was the foreign language of many Iran-ian architects and was represented in thatfield.

Of course, these negative statementsabout their languages do not mean that Asia,Europe, Africa and the Americas were un-represented in Lr andoc l s serial collection.Surprisingly, numbers of English languageserials were published on these continents,and son e of them were consideved usefulenough to be included in serial indexes. Thelargest number of titles approved for Irandocsubscription, perhaps three fourths of thetotal, were in English, and roughly half ofthem were neither American nor British, butcame from any of fifty different countrie s,

Reading level was a matter of concernin both places, though in somewhat diffeientways. The Tehran situation was more com-plicated than the Philadelphia situation, asshould be expected. In Philadelphia, the read-ing level of most material was high, aimedat researchers. The faculty and student bodywere assumed to be capable of understandingit. Of course, most recreational materialwas pitched at a popular level, and certainuseful title s were available at an inte rmediatelevel, but the latter two title groups were inthe minority.

At Irandoc, the percent of serious andscholarly material was even higher. In addi-tion, three other reading level problems exis-ted. First, Lr andoc t s user group, the groupwhose reading level was in question, washarder than Drexel's to identify and under-stand. Drexel had a user group of affiliated,

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HARVEY

easily definable, and surveyable faculty mem-bers and students. While the majority maynot have been even moderate users, at leastthey were formally affiliated and looked toDrexel whenever they needed library service.In contrast, Irandoc had no user group of anykind in close affiliation. In fact, its usergroup was almost entirely potential ratherthan actual. Though the Centre had instituteand ministry staffs to serve, they were locatedin other buildings and seemed to have littleint e re st in info rmation se rv ice.

Secondly, Iranian students and facultymembers had a language reading level prob-lem. Few of them could read any foreignlanguage well, yet mo st of the useful tec hili-cal material was avai lable, only in a foreignlanguage. Iranians who had the patience andability to read long, abstruce English orFrench language technical articles could beexpected to read them at about one third toone half the speed of a native English orFrench reader.

Thirdly, almost no Iranians had thestrength of interest or the capability of under-standing the more advanced research materialin any field, since few people were doingadvanced graduate research. Hence, therewas no point in buying it. As a matter of fact,very little r espe ct able research was beingcarried on at any level. Therefore, Irandocwas required to balance the present situationagainst the need to start acquiring journalsof scholarly respectability to support theresearch anticipated in a decade or two. Acompromise was necessary to exclude thosejournals which would be too advanced evenfor the next generation, but to include thosejournals pitched at more nearly an interme-diate level, moderately scholarly, and onmore general rather than on very specializedtopics. Not only was this compromise difficultto understand and apply to scholarly journals,but convincing Irandoc bachelors and mastersdegree level bibliographers that their profes-sors were capable of using only elementarywestern research material was almost im-possible, also.

As a matter of fact, thousands of under-graduate Iranian students could hardly under-stand elementa ry profe ssiona 1 pape rs in theirmajor subject fields. They were seldom re-quired to do very much reading, however. Ofcourse, to some extent, it was true at Drexel,

Ann Lib Sci Doc

IRANIAN VS. AMERICAN LIBRARY SERIAL SELECTION

also, that many students had difficulty inunde r st an ding their assignments, but it seem-ed not to have been considered there.

Ascertaining the "rightness of fit" bet-ween each title and users' needs in subjectmatter and reading level, was difficult in bothcountries, and matches with define able groupsnot always easy to locate. Generally, inboth countries, academic and special libra-ries preferred scholarly to popular levelmaterial, so determining the content's scho-larliness and even the quality -of its scholar-liness were part of the selection task. Inthis way, the National Geographic sufferedin co mpa r is on with the American Journal ofGeography, for instance. Publ lc: libr~riesmight select the National Geographic, partlyfor its popularity as well as its easy readinglevel, but these factors rarely affected selec-tion positively in either of the two organiza-tions discussed here. Such American titlesas Time, Newsweek and ~ were early Iran-doc selections, but they were indexed in itsserial indexing services, also. They could beobtained easily by airmail through a localnews agent, though in turn, this was due tothe popularity of their news-stand sale.

Data on user needs and interests wasnot collected thoroughly in either place, norwas it easy to predict their future shifts • Atlrandoc, to some extent this was a matter oftrying to predict what the users would growup to understand. lv.i:ore short run changemight have been expected here than in Phila-delphia, as the developing country strove tocatch up with its western benefactor. However,upon more reflection, probably the oppositewas more likely to be true. Tehran was mo-ving forward in scientific knowledge, resear-ch and de.velopment, but Philadelphia wasmoving forward much faster and moving evenfurther away from Tehran. Probably it wouldbe many years before their increasing t e c hni «

c at sophistication came into pha se , and manyyears after that before Tehran started to over-take Philadelphia.

Irandoc gave strong emphasis to indexand abstract services and to serial bibliogra-phies, e verrtua Ily several hun dr e d of thembeing on the subscription list. Its collectionof current index and abstract titles and biblio-

\

graphies must have become one of the mostextensive in West Asia. Irandoc needed widecoverage, since its subject scope was so b r oa d

Vol 20 No 1-4 Ma.r vDe c 1973

and abstract and index services were not onlythe most basic and useful types of material inthese fields, but, at least for certain purposes,each of these fields was reasonably well rep-resented by this type of material. Further,if Lr an do c l s serial budget was to be restricted,as it probably would be sooner or later due tomercurial Iranian govej."Ilment policies, thesewere the titles to which subscription must beretained, after all else had been cancelled.The reference librarians could carryon lite-rature searches and SDI projects from thismaterial only. International library loan pho-tocopies of entire papers could be obtainedeasily by airmail from CNRS in Paris, theAmerican NLM, NAL, and the British NLL.The Tehran Book Processing Centre nationalbibliography collection supplemented this ab-stract and index collection for book material.

Drexel did not pa rt ic ul a r ly emphasizebibliographic. index or abstract titles, thoughcertainly several dozens are of the chief titlesin the fields of primary interest were to befound on its subscription list. Basic andheavily used indexes were housed on specialindex tables in the reference and public cata-log area where they could be located easily.However, there was some suspicion on thestaff that certain of the new index and abstractjournals each year ove r'l appe d considerablywith existing indexes. Several of them werethought to cost too much and others in certainspecialized science fields were expected toreceive so little use from students and facultymembers as not to be hardly worth acquiring.

Coverage of a serial's contents in thelibrary's serial index or abstract journals wasvery important and determined purchase status,fo r many title s, Index se rvice Li sting in c rea s -ed the use to be expected for a title. Further,such a listing separated oat one title fromothers in indicating an editorial b oa r d l s goodopinion of i.ts usefulness. Analyticar Che m is -!2JC.. was surely useful to more chemists thanwas the news bulletin of the New York ChemistClub. Since literature searches were carriedout primarily in serial indexes, the non-index-ed title had little chance of being listed, evenfor a bibliography in its own subject field. Ti-tles not so covered were to some extent lost.Abstracted material, and, to some extent evenindexed material, could be "read" quicklyjust by reading the listings and abstracts.

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HARVEY

Where the journal stood on citation countlists was significant, also, in showing theimpact or citability of its pape r s Both indexstatus and citation count ranking were usefulitems of information in the two countries,though they were given more attention in Iranthan in the USA. Each library needed biblio-graphic material because it was of such basicimportance in selection, acquisition, andreference work. In fact, this was probablythe most basic serial material: of all.

Accuracy and dependability' of the serial'scontents were important in each country, butwere difficult to evaluate in each country,also. Both Drexel and Irandoc had reasonablywell trained subject specialist refe"rence andbibliographic staff members to carry out theevaluations. Drexel's subject specialist saveraged more than a bachelors degree intheir subject fields, and a masters degree inlibrary science, while Irandoc's subjectspecialists averaged a masters degree intheir subject fields and no course work inlibrary science. The national contrasts couldbe seen most clearly when we attempted tochoose American serials for use in Iran andIranian serials for the use in America. Each lib-rary had an advantage aver the other in eva-luating the accuracy and dependability oftitles in its own country. Obviously, this leftIrancioc the worse off of the two organizations,however, because it needed hundreds of Ame-rican titles, while Drexel needed very fewIranian title s,

The representation of a variety of yiew-points, conservative and liberal, historicaland modern, for and against, international andlocal, poular and scholarly was often an im-portant factor for consideration at Drexel,seldom at Lrandoc, American democraticprinciples emphasized book selection freedomand the importance of full representation forboth sides of any argument. In Iran, a varietyof viewpoints existed on many social and poli-tical subjects, but they were not much discus-sed, conformity to official views being expect-ed. For instance, varying attitudes existedtoward communist countries, and the ideas ofserial selection fairness toward them andcuriosity about them were present but wererather dimly perceived. Foreign politicalproblems did not conqe rn Iranians very much.

Censorship was never invoked in eitherlibrary, but strongly pro-communist material

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was officially frowned upon by the nationalgovernment in each country. Generally, Dre-xel was freer than Irandoc to select materialbut seldom felt that it needed such freedom.Its parent institution and student body wererelatively conservative, and faculty membersseldom assigned controversial material. Iran-doc, on the other hand, had a security policeofficer on the staff to check activities, butcensorship of all kinds was more potentialthan actual. We had no trouble retaining afew pro-Chinese communist title subscriptions.However, nationalistic Kurdish material waspiled on the discard shelves rather than beingmade available to the public. Censorship ofsexually sophisticated material was not aproblem in either city, though little of it wasreceived.

Publishers' reputation was a frequentconce rn in the USA. Some titles were refusedwhere this reputation was poor and other tit-les purchased automatically where it was ex-cellent. Since most of its titles were Ameri-can, Drexel stood a good chance of being ableto evaluate publishers. The reputations offoreign serial publishers were much harderto evaluate, though of less consequence, also,because so few foreign titles were obtained.Serial publishers' reputations were muchbetter in the USA than in Iran. High levels ofae rt al content accuracy and dependability werefactors in any title's favor, and were commonin the USA, just as sensationalism and proofreading errors were common in Iran. ManyIranian t isle s compounded their own poor repu-tations by appearing at irregular and undepend-able intervals.

The publisher's reputation seemed lessdiscriminatory for Iran than for the USA,however-, because of Lr andoc+s ~omprehensiveselection of Iranian serial titles. Here" pub-lishers' reputation was more important forforeign titles. In many countries, it wasdifficult for Irandoc to guess repute, sincefew of its staff members knew the Polish pub-lishing world, for instance, or the UAR scho-larly journal situation. Usually, guess workwas necessary. Of course, at Irandoc andDrexel, most university, research center andnational documentation cente r publicationswere assumed to be reliable and probably sig-nificant. Government agency publicationswere assumed to be reliable. For the USA,

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IRANIAN VS. AMERICAN LIBRARY SERIAL SELECTION

the UK. and to some extent for France. somepublisher's repute information was availableor; the Irandoc staff. so selection took thisknowledge into consideration.

Deliberately. Irandoc stopped retrospec-tive serial purchasing with 1960. except forimportant index and abstract titles. Drexelhad no policy against retrospective purchasingand did some of it. Though most of the oldervolumes needed were already on its shelves.In this instance. institutional. practice wasquite similar between countries. but fordifferent reasons. further. Drexel tended tct hrnk in terms of complete retrospective filesfor every serial title. perhaps reflecting theinfluence of American accreditation standards.Irandoc at<Iffmembers knew they were Unlike-ly to have the budget to acquire thousands ofolder backfi le volumes. so restricted the vastmajority of their purchases to subscriptionsbeginning with the current year. usually 1969to 1970. Lr andoc emphasized breadth and cur-rency of coverage with little depth. whereasDrexel emphasized depth in certain fields ofstrong emphasis. Irandoc assumed it wouldbe able to supplement its holdings by obtain-ing back issues not on hand from other Iranianor foreign sources in its inter-library loansystem participation. To some extent. Drexel.assumed the same thing. of course.

As its budget was reduced. p zice wasincreasingly important in Lrandoc l s considera-tions and was not overlooked at Drexel. either.Price was always a factor to me asu re useful-ness against. both for an expensive title likeChemical Abstracts and for a free title likeBorden Reviews. Each organization refusedopportunities to subscribe for this reason.Those titles published by Springer Verlag. forinstance. were noted in both cities always tobe expensive and often concentrated on specia-lized research topics. though they were alwaysof good quality. also. Generally. Americanand German titles were most expensive. andIndian. Pakistani. and Iranian cheape st.

A much higher percent of Irandoc's thanof Drexel's titles were received free of charge.perhaps 40% vs. 101e , Both local and foreigntitles came in this manner. However. in thisconnection. it must be pointed out that therewas a significant difference in the quality ofthe two serial collections. also. Not only didDrexel have many more expensive basic sour-ce titles of high quality than did Lr andoc, but

Vol 20 No 1-4 Mar-Dee 1973

it had a much richer back file collection. also.Drexel and Irandoc overlap in specHic serialtitle subscriptions was hard to estimate butmay have reached one third. Neither libraryhad exc hange serials of high quality to offerother libraries. though lrandoc exploited itslonger exchange list much more heavily thanDrexel did.

Most titles were obtained on paper inboth places. though each organization hadsome microfilm subscriptions for currentvolumes. Drexel had the larger number ofthem and had some serial back files or film.also. Only Drexel had microcard and micro-fiche serial subscriptions. however.

Of course, periodicals were the mostnumerous of serial types in both institutionsand were the most valuable, also. Cont inu.avtions were represented in both places. how-ever, and made up perhaps two fifth of Dre-xel's and a fourth of Lr andoc+s serial titles.There seemed to be little difference betweenthe continuations of the two 0 rganizations.The total ~umber of serials about equal. thoughIrandoc's come from a greater variety ofcountries, and from fewer subject fields.also. The generalizations already given forserials in general applied to them equally.

Drexel received newspapers from threeor four European capitals as well as Philadel-phia, New York and two or three other Ameri-can cities. Irandoc received Kabul. Karachi,London, Paris. Rome, Berlin and New Yorknew spape r s, in addition to a dozen or so pa-pers in three languages from Tehran. Eachlibrary had a satisfactory foreign representa-tion in this category of material, but Irandochad a much stronger local representation thanDrexel did.

In their government publications collec-tions, the two cente rs we re quite different.Drexel was a partial depository for USgovernment document s and took a minority ofthem. Aside from several British HMSO andUN publications. few other government publi-cations were obtained. Irandoc, on the otherhand, made a strong effort to acquire allIranian government documents and started toprepare a comprehensive inrl':'x to them. Infact. its collection was expe ct ed to be Iran'smost comprehensive. and its index to be theonly one in exi stance. Irandoc purcha sed orsecured for"" of charge several hundred HMSo,

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GPO, Australian, South African and UN gover-nment publication series fitting into its sub-ject fields.

Now that the description and juxtaposi-tion of Drexel University Library and IranianDocumentation Centre serial selection policieshave been completed, their analysis and com-parison may begin. We must select from thedata given above on the two organizationsthose similarities which seem significant.Contrasts are useless here and insignificantor derivative similarities little better • Also,the important similarities should be explaina-ble in terms of the social and cultural back-grounds from which they spring,· or else interms of the professional theories rlominatingthe two organizations. Similaritie s not ex-plainbale in such general terms will be oflittle value to scholars wishing to search forthem in other situations or to generalizefrom these findings. Also, we must subtractthe author's influence from both organizationssince it was temporary and personal.

Only a glance over the data presentedabove is needed to reveal that the two libra-ries' serial se lect.ion policies were moredifferent than alike. Of course, their spon-soring organization'! were different in manyways, also. Plentitude of differences makescomparative analysis simpler, but leaves fewsimilarities for serious consideration, also.

It is easy to pick out a few minor areasin which Drexel-Irandoc policies were simi-lar, but often it is unclear whether or notthese areas were professionally or sociallysignificant. An example is the importance oflibrary and information science serial mate-rial to both organizations. Each one was con'cerned with serving a library school andwith providing a good collection of materialin its professional staff members' own field.Both felt obligated to develop the best libraryand information science collections in theirgeographic areas. In neither case was thereanother such strong and active collectionnearby. What serial or professional variab-les was this factor associated with? It seemsto have related to the absence of any otherorganization which could be depended on toprovide this literature. Further, since theirown subject field was increasing rapidly incomplexity and breadth, each set of staffmembers felt a practical need to acquire itsliterature conscientiOUSly and maintain con-

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tact with new professional ideas. In eachcountry, most libraries were specialized bysubject field or else by scholarly level, andlibrary science was not one of their immedia-te concerns. Finally, it is clear that somemodern librarians tended to look after theirown interests first when building a serialcollection.

Another similarity worth noting waseach organization's consciousness of the im-portance of depending on other organizationsfor serial service assistance. They carriedon some inter-library loan activity and werereasonably content to allow serial selection tobe limited budgetarily in the knowledge thatmany titles could be borrowed from other, lib-raries. Each organization was aware ofmodern information systems and netwo rkthinking and 'Ofthe increasing dependence 011

each other of nations and people generally aswell as libraries individually. Of course,such ideas can be found in every country andorganization where cooperation and moderninformation thinking are well-known. Probab-ly Drexel and Irandoc were influenced general-ly by the Anglo-American library conceptsdominant in both countrie s;

In surveying other minor similarities,we might mention the rather remarkable esti-mate for the serial subscription list overlap,33'10. In this respect, probably the desire forAmerican serials in many of the same subjectfields brought the two institutions together.American serials were of relatively high quali·ty, and most of the serial index and abstractservices in which they were covered wereArne r ican title s, also. No doubt the pre senceof American influence in both organizationswas a cause of further similarities.

Finally, we corne to what seems to bethe most significant Drexel-Irandoc similarity,that, first and foremost, each library boughtlocal serials. By local serials is meant pri-marily material from each library's owncountry, but secondarily, material from eachlibrary's own city. Within its subject fields,Irandoc's coverage of Iranian, particularly ofTehran titles, was comprehensive, while atthe same time Drexel's coverage of Americantitles was as comprehensive as its budgetwould allow. Certainly, Drexel's coverage ofPhiladelphia titles was quite good, also, pro-bably better than that of any non-Philadelphialibrary.

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IRANIAN VS. AMERICAN LIBRARY SERIAL-SELECTION

Why was such localism a common chara-cteristic between these two organizations?This similarity must relate to the librarian'sconcern for serving his local clientele well,and part of such service required selection ofa large number of local serial titles. Probab-ly such 'a concern was common in many coun-tries. In most libraries, certain local serialscould be expected to rank among the mostpopular titles. Often, this popularity was dueto user familiarity with them and to their in-clusion of interesting local personal and insti-tutional papers and news. The desire to keepup with events and people in the immediatevicinity was an important motive. Of course,localism was a part of heritage preservationand of the nationalistic approach to .librarian-ship generally. In each country, familiarityrelated strongly to language fluency, also, andperhaps even, to some extent, to the highercost and delayed receipt of most foreign mate-rial. The ease of obtaining local material ascontrasted with the difficulty of obtainingforeign material was another influential factorin both countries. Drexel would have haddifficulty defending the idea of bringing inla rge numbe rs of foreign title s in prefe renc eto high quality American subscriptions. It

Vol 20 No 1-4 Mar-Dee 1973

was the opposite in Iran, however, with theIranian librarian's lack of pride in contem-porary Iran sometimes leading him to ignorethe much lower quality local material. Inspite of this ambivalence toward Iran, therewas a logical reason why many Iranian titlescould be found in Irandoc's collection. Iran-doc's exhaustive coverage of them was not duea high opinion of their quality but to its assum-ption of responsibility for indexing, abstract-ing and preserving them, in the absence ofother libraries carrying out this function.

What can be the final conclusion of thiscornpa r ison ? Regrettably, the absence ofthe data and analyses needed to support anobjective study have severely limited itseffectiveness. Briefly, however, two conclu-sions may be listed. The influence of nation-alism on serial subscription policies in Iranand America must be recognized. Probablyit is common in Ilb ra rae s overthe world tofind large numbers of local titles on hand.Also, whenever local pride or nationalismand strong library service ideas are con-bined, then a rich representation of localse.ri al.s may be expected, as a way of provid-ing good service to local users.

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