King College Library: Online Databases vs. Hard Copy Subscriptions
| Published date | 01 January 1983 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb047483 |
| Date | 01 January 1983 |
| Pages | 63-68 |
| Author | Mark Herring |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
King College Library:
Online Databases vs. Hard Copy Subscriptions
MARK Y. HERRING
[It is a real pleasure to begin online reference
reports with these papers. Herring and Tschudi
write in a style that is upbeat and witty, yet their
essays make significant statements about online
services. Herring discusses how a small academic
library replaced printed index subscriptions with
online access, while Tschudi calls for a radical im-
provement in the way we educate and train online
searchers. Future contributions will be as practical,
informative and entertaining.
—
Marty Kesselman]
In this essay I relate my experience at King
College
—
a small, four-year, liberal arts, undergradu-
ate,
private college faced with difficult budgetary
decisions in a modestly automated library. In many
ways I am like Hamlet when it comes to automation.
He didn't know a hawk from a handsaw and I am still
not sure of the difference between a byte and a bit.
Consequently, this article may shed light on the way
to the wrong path. But even in that, it will have
served a purpose.
All librarians know what a pain it is to balance a
small budget. To face a firing squad often seems
more inviting. When I walk to work each morning, I
am greeted by a most optimistic phrase above our
library doors: "Lux lucet in tenebris"
—
light shines
in darkness. Often I think rather of Dante's phrase:
"Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate"
—
give up
hope all ye who enter here.
Sometimes it is necessary to choose the unpopu-
lar road and go against current wisdom. This article
talks about my experience when forced into that
corner. I hope some readers will find it helpful; but
I have no illusions. I am not a bearded prophet on
the Isle of Patmos, but a bearded librarian in Bristol,
Tennessee. While this article may be read long after
Homer and Virgil have been forgotten, I hope many
will not wait until then to read it.
In his book,
Farewell
to Alexandria, Daniel Gore
tried to educate librarians regarding library size. In
answering the question, "How large should a library
Since 1979, Mark Herring has been director of
the King College Library in Bristol, Tennessee. Pre-
viously he has worked for the Vanderbilt University
and Nashville Public libraries.
be,"
Gore rightly answered for the majority of our
profession with the word, "larger,"1 Just exactly how
this notion came about cannot be answered in one
word or one sentence. It is clear, however, that too
many librarians have answered this question wrongly.
Larger is not always better and it certainly may
not be in regard to small or medium-sized libraries.
What the sixties promised in a dream, the seventies
laughed out in a nightmare. Unfortunately, it is
taking many librarians more than two decades to
figure this out. But even for hard-headed learners,
inflation has been and will continue to be a very
stern, if not cruel, teacher.
Probably every librarian, upon assuming his/her
role in the library, ideally hopes that he/she will have
at his/her and his/her patron's fingertips everything
he/she and they need. As a novice, I was not any
different. The Alexandrian notion of collection de-
velopment appealed to me strongly. The idea of
"free"
always has and always will appeal to the con-
sumer. The possibility of having endless rows of
books in a building that somehow housed everything
needed by its clientele often occupied my dreams
and my waking thoughts. The bare reality, however,
was not unlike those bare, ruined choirs.
King
College:
The Situation
The college library where I am employed had just
escaped certain closure shortly before I came. A new
Board of Trustees was formed, and life in the ivy
towers assumed its familiar hub-bub once more. While
a certain amount of catching up had to be done (the
library had been the most talked about place on cam-
pus but one of the least funded), it was clear to me
that in the middle of my second year, the honey-
moon of "retrospective collection building" had
ended.
The handwriting was on the wall. Certain de-
cisions had to be made about expenditures and it was
my job to make them. The question was, what do I
do? On the one hand, the faculty wanted more of
everything. On the other, the Business Office wanted
about $12,000 worth of
cuts.
Just where to make the
cuts seemed the greatest mystery until three nagging
inconsistencies showed their ugly faces.
First, our building was bursting its seams, and
SUMMER 1983 63
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