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

46 The University of California Libraries
prompt and ready physical access to the entire collection." 3
6. Maximum efficiency and minimum "user cost" is likely to be
achieved if the available funds are spent on providing more duplicate
copies and faster access to frequently-used titles, "rather than on
local ownership for faster access to titles infrequently used." 4
7. The presumptive necessity for immediate availability of all
materials must receive closer examination when the cost of providing
it is compared with possible alternatives, "particularly when the number
of books is extremely large." 5
Additional Conclusions. To those conclusions may be added two more
that must also be considered in designing a new system.
1. The costs of electronic data processing systems, in terms of
the units of work performed--i.e., in productivity--have been increaseing
at a much slower rate than library labor costs, and in some instances
have actually been declining, so that the user of computers in
libraries offers hope (and in a few instances, actual proof) that the
rate of rise in library costs can be substantially lowered. The use
of computers, in fact, will be necessary if other changes (such as the
provision of complete bibliographic access) are to be accomplished.
In Bryant's words, "the changes in libraries which will enable them
to provide ever more, and ever more varied, resources for scholarship
could not be contemplated without the application of sophisticated
and sensitive computer technology to bibliography and library operations."
6
It is also clear that the use of computers will be most effecttive
as a tool in developing and operating cooperative bibliographic
networks, and that the "cost-effectiveness of the localized type of
3 Ibid.
4 For a discussion of this point, see Gordon Williams et al., Library
Cost Models: Owning Versus Borrowing Serial Publications, National
Science Foundation, 1968, p. vi.
5 Herman H. Fussler and Julian L. Simon, Patterns in the Use of Books
in Large Research Libraries, University of Chicago Press, 1972,
pp. 1-2.
6 Douglas W. Bryant, "The Changing Research Library," Harvard Library
Bulletin, v. 22 (October 1974), p. 370.