University Libraries Are
Indispensable Too

CARL M. WHITE
 

UNIVERSITY libraries are becoming a public issue.
They are becoming a public issue because of financial
necessity. University Ubraries have had to do two things
at once since World War II. They have had to expand their serv¬
ices and to cope with inflation. For some libraries, costs have
doubled in spite of brilliant feats of economy. The tax-supported
library has simply passed along this larger bill to the taxpayer, and
any form of public service which reaches into the taxpayer's
pocket for millions of dollars a year causes him to sit up and take
notice. University Ubraries are becoming a public issue in the
second place because the activities of the friends of the libraries
are aggressively making them so. If the George WashingtonBridge
were to contract a few yards on either side of the State line, the
gap would suggest the plight of these independent libraries.
Their friends are calling attention to the fact that the contraction
has not stopped yet and that the gap is already too wide to be
safely bridged by economies alone. They are becoming a public
issue in the third place because all of this is turning up with the
morning newspaper on the doorsteps of men and women who
have in no way been closely associated with university libraries
in the past.

The issue is very simple. It is whether the university library is
worth the price of closing the gap between its income and its
obligations. Under our system, this is an issue which wUl have to be
settled by lay citizens, not by librarians. It is peculiarly fitting to
have the future of the independent library settled in this way,
for it is one of those happy embodiments of free enterprise which

17