The University of California Libraries: A Plan for Development (1977)

124 The University of California Libraries
areas of library activity, and several particular concerns are noted
below as they pertain to specific areas:
Branch. Projections of the growth of individual branch libraries
are not given, because many will remain at a relatively constant size,
transferring materials less frequently needed to the main campus collection,
or to a regional facility. However, if the system is to meet
its performance objectives at this level--that is, to provide access
to materials needed immediately--a significant portion of the book
funds must be spent for branch library collections. An indication of
the need is given by statistics kept on the Berkeley campus in connection
with the processing of materials. Over a two-year period, 25 percent
of the book purchase orders processed were accompanied by a request
that the material be forwarded immediately to the ordering unit
without cataloging; in other words, the material was needed immediately,
and even the delay imposed by the cataloging process was unacceptable.
It is also clear that some of the need for materials in branch
libraries cannot be met at current acquisition levels. This becomes
an especially serious problem when the branch library is physically
remote from related collections. A letter from the chairman of the
Division of Mental Health in the Sacramento Medical Center to the
UC Davis Health Sciences Librarian, quoted in part below, provides
a specific and poignant example:
Your memo highlights one of the major problems of a split campus
between the basic sciences and the clinical sciences. The
lack of adequate library facilities at Sacramento has been a
major disadvantage to education programs for medical students
and for house officers. In our own field, we have, in any giv-
en time, 30 psychiatric residents, 4 child psychiatry fellows,
6 clinical psychology interns, 12 medical students, 25 social
work and nursing students, and somewhere between 75 and 90 students
on other electives. The collection in the mental health
sciences at Davis is magnificent. The collection at Sacramen-
to is pitifully small. We have tried to make up for this with
a tiny Departmental library (assembled at our own expense),
the psychoanalytic index (generously funded by you) and by the
psychiatry collection in the health sciences library here...
Although we cannot hope to duplicate the total Davis campus
health sciences collection here at Sacramento, a large part
of it simply must be available if the students and clinicians
are not to be seriously deprived in this regard. Nothing is