University of Virginia Library

Dormant Books

Buried somewhere in the darker recesses of
Alderman Library lie thousands of books,
uncatalogued and unused except by those few
who care to wade through the list of titles and
find the books on their own. These
stepchildren of the Library's acquisitions
department have been obtained by various
open order programs, some federally subsidized,
designed to assist the library in
maintaining a modern and comprehensive
collection of native literature for use in
foreign area study programs.

Books from Latin America, Southeast
Asia, the Middle East, and many other areas
of the world keep pouring into the Alderman
Library. Until a few years ago, library
appropriations were such a neglected part of
the budget that it was difficult even to get
them; now that situation has been ameliorated
to some degree. But getting them is only half
the battle. After that, each book must be
catalogued before it can be placed on the
shelves for use.

When it comes to cataloguing, Alderman
Library is in a bind for a number of reasons.
Until the past couple of years, when new
positions were created in the budget at the
rate of 12 per year, the Library staff was
severely shorthanded. That pressure has been
eased somewhat, but the difficulty with
cataloguing remains. As it is in many similar
cases concerning non-faculty employees, the
state of Virginia and its archaic employment
policies are at fault. The state sets rigid and
impractical standards for cataloguers, excluding,
by the way, anyone trained in the state,
because Virginia does not provide librarian
training sufficient to pass its certification
tests. To get the highly trained and much in
demand personnel it requires by law, Virginia
provides salary and fringe benefits which
cannot compete with those offered by other
libraries in other sections of the country. The
books sit there, and the research stalls.

In recent years, the situation at the Library
has improved a great deal, at least with respect
to what it was in the 50's and early 60's. The
cataloguing problem is just one of many that
can only be solved by continuing to assign
Library problems high priority, both here and
on the state and national levels. The
University's ability to attract top graduate
students and faculty depend a great deal on
the research facilities available, and the
Library is perhaps the most important of
those. We are tired of hearing that Alderman
Library is one of the best in the South. It
ought to be one of the best anywhere.