A Regional Loan System

T HE writers on the New Deal in economic and social planing made prognostications fashionable. In order to keep in the swim, librarians are predicting the ideal library plant for I954. No sensible person will criticize long-range planning for libraries, but if the future set-up is to be described in general terms-a characteristic common, so far, to most of the writings on the subject-it is likely to be accepted by all as a be nice to have sort of thing and then promptly be forgotten. And yet, if we continue as wishful theorists and refuse to face realities, we shall find ourselves in the same muddle as the economists. The obvious plan is to deal with practical matters not too far removed from the present function of libraries: we are thus more likely to make rapid progress toward the ideal library program. As a small contribution in this direction, I attempted to outline a plan of co-operation for college and university libraries in Ohio. The unrecorded and fragmentary condition of periodical holdings in college libraries, reduced book budgets, and the increasing demands for interlibrary loans are only a few of the reasons for promoting a regional plan of library co-operation. To take one or two concrete illustrations: doubtless the recent announcement of the publication of Mellor's Comprehensive Treatise on Inorganic and Theoretical Chemistry, in thirteen volumes and costing $20, brought numerous requests for library purchase from the heads of chemistry departments in most of the institutions embraced by the proposed Ohio regional plan. In the writer's opinion, ten copies would be more than sufficient for all libraries in the co-operating group. A government depository library, with gaps in its early issues of the Congressional Record, might easily secure the missing numbers from an incomplete file in a neighboring library, thereby serving both institutions with a complete file. The decision of an overzealous department head to purchase a file of Liebig's Annalen der Chemie might be avoided if the librarian could show him that a complete set is located in a near-by library and that volumes of it might be secured on interlibrary loan. Sufficient examples been given to show that the ultimate objective of my plan would be to stimulate co-operation in purchasing, selecting, lending, and exchanging printed matter among colleges and university libraries within a definite region. Now as to procedure

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