Intercollegiate Library

As every professor knows, U.S. university libraries are suffering from growing pains. They are doubling in size every ten to 15 years, collections are scattered and uncoordinated, storage space is running out, and budgets getting thin. But last week, at the University of Chicago, something was finally done to better the trend.

There, the big new Midwest Library Center, four years in the making, opened for business, was soon jangling with orders from campuses in a dozen states. Built with money from the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations, it is a combination warehouse, distribution and information center for 14 Midwest universities* and the famed John Crerar science library in Chicago.

From now on, the 15 libraries will no longer have to worry about finding room for their little-used but necessary books. They will pack them off to the center for storage. Pooling their budgets, they will now be able to buy books in common, building up great collections together they could never have afforded alone.

The center's master catalogue will cover all the libraries, and a copy of it will be placed on each campus. From now on, a scholar at one university will have access to the treasures of many. All he will have to do is to look up what he wants in the catalogue, send a message by teletype, and the center will mail it out.

In time, the 15 members hope, such super-libraries will be erected all over the U.S., forming a giant network with Washington at its center. By last week, the idea was spreading. In Massachusetts, Amherst, Smith and Mt. Holyoke Colleges--all within 15 miles of each other--were planning to set up an interlibrary center of their own.

*Chicago, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Northwestern, Illinois, Illinois Institute of Technology, Indiana, Purdue, Cincinnati, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Wayne, and Notre Dame.

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