Chapter XIV

Conclusion

Word count: 11400

∣📄 p.183 Since the first edition of this manual was issued in 1931, the whole scene has been changed by technological developments. Predictions of that time have been realized in the actual appearance, not alone of new apparatus, but of enterprises on a large scale committed to the development of microphotography in scholarly documentation. It has seemed almost impossible to close the book, because the rush of innovation makes a chapter out of date almost as soon as it leaves the typist’s hands. Even at this writing, information of future developments that may overturn some of the cost tables is in hand, though it cannot at this time be published.

Nevertheless, from this study there emerge certain general principles that seem to have constant application. If these principles are rightly understood, they can easily be applied to the new techniques and cost situations as they arise. Foremost among these principles is the importance of breaking away from the standards that are deduced from the technique and costs of ordinary publishing in print, and of viewing the whole problem of preservation and distribution of the records of civilization and the materials of scholarship in terms of a variety of techniques. The point of view must be functional, and the functions of technics in this field are simple; to convey to a certain number of readers a certain number of words with a certain degree of legibility and convenience, at a certain cost. If publishing can be treated as a process in which these four variables appear, and to which any one of a number of technical devices may be applied, the results will be nothing less than revolutionary.

How is a choice to be made among techniques? How is the most appropriate method of distributing a given text to be determined? When printing is assumed as the sole method of reproducing the material, the formula is very simple. There is given a certain number of words. The cost of ∥ printing that number of words is calculated easily. Then the actual or probable number of buyers must be calculated. If sales to these buyers at the price they are ready to pay will not liquidate the cost of printing and selling, a subsidy must be found. In order to make the number of buyers as large as possible, certain standard promotion expenditures are made and financed into the production cost. The equation works out with great regularity in the conclusion that any number of words can be published provided 2000 buyers will purchase them in book form at normal prices ($1.20 per 100 pages octavo).

Ordinary commercial publishing will take care of the distribution on any material desired by 2000 paying customers. But a vast amount of material for scholarly use and a great many of the products of scholarship do not and should not receive such distribution. This is the penalty scholarship must pay for specialization. Therefore the problem of scholarly publishing and of the distribution of materials can be approached more realistically if another question is placed first on the list, another of the four variables first determined. Let us ask then, how many copies of a given text ought to be distributed? and analyze the various techniques from the standpoint of size of edition.

Size of Edition. The Efficiency Point

Every technique of reproduction that applies the principle of first cost and running cost has some edition size at which it reaches an efficiency that corresponds to some other edition size in the ease of another process. Of course, in all such techniques the point in edition size is ultimately reached when running costs are virtually the only costs that need to be considered. In the printing technique, for instance, editions of one or two million copies incur so large a running cost that the first cost appears only as a negligible item in the total. In microcopying ∣📄 p.184 short items to order, as in the Bibliofilm Service, where administrative costs are such that it is more economical to make a new negative for every order than to save negatives and make copies from them, the distinction between first cost and running cost disappears. The two costs are the same. Between these two extremes all the techniques of reproduction can be arranged in order in accordance with the size of edition at which they reach efficiency.

The efficiency point is specific for each technique. The simplest point at which to set it for each technique is at the size of edition at which running costs are just equal to first costs. In an edition that is smaller than the efficiency edition, a preponderant element in the cost of each unit is the first cost; in an edition that is larger than the efficiency edition, the preponderant cost element is the running cost.

The efficiency point, thus defined, can be calculated for each process from the tables of costs in the foregoing chapters. The simplest common denominator for finding this point is the percentage relation of running cost of 100 copies to the first cost of an edition. In photo-offset, for instance, the first cost of an 8½” x 11” page is estimated at $2.00 for 100 copies, and running costs at $.50 for each additional 100 copies. It will cost $.30 to increase an edition from 100 to 200, and it will also cost $.30 to increase an edition from 2000 to 2100. The $.30 running cost is 15% of the $200 first cost. The corresponding percentages for all techniques are tabulated below in running costs per hundred copies.

Each technique has a certain minimum edition which must be reckoned as a part of the first cost. In printing quotations, for instance, an edition of 50 costs as much as an edition of 100, and therefore the edition of 100 is a minimum. The running costs really begin after the 100 mark is passed. In photo-offset quotations the minimum is sometimes 50, sometimes 100; in mimeograph, it is 50; and in hectograph it is 10. In photostat and microphotography the minimum edition is one copy. Running costs for 100 copies, stated as percentages of the first cost in minimum edition, stand as follows: ∥

From these percentage figures on running costs, the points of comparable efficiency in edition size can be calculated for each process. Cost of reproduction can be plotted as a curve rising as the size of the total edition rises. At a certain point the curve will rise to twice the height of the starting point. In printing, this point will be reached at 2000 copies, in photo-offset (including composition) at 1000, in mimeograph at 400, etc. The full table stands as shown on the following page.

It would be possible to select some other point in edition size for purposes of comparing the various processes. For instance, we might ask, “At what size of edition will the unit costs be so compounded that only 10% of the cost of a copy is ∣📄 p.185 incurred as a first cost in setting up the edition?” The edition sizes for the various processes would then stand as follows: ∥ On the chart (Table LII, on the following page), the curve of cost-per-copy has been computed for three processes.

These tables indicate edition sizes so far out of line with the demands of scholarship in all techniques, save those of microcopying, that the better point of comparison is certainly the size of edition at which running costs and first costs are equal. ∥ with data taken from the tables in foregoing chapters. The curves for printing, photo-offset and microcopying are set to different scales, but the behavior of the cost curve is the same for each. In each case most of the economies in cost-per-copy that are obtainable are secured before the ∣📄 p.186 efficiency point is reached. When the edition is carried beyond the efficiency point, the cost-per-copy continues to fall, but it does not fall so rapidly. This fact is of supreme importance in the strategy of publishing. It means that for any given number of copies there is some technique of reproduction that will function at or near its efficiency point. It means that the most accurate comparison of processes can be made if each is considered as functioning at its efficiency point. If only ten copies of a given document are needed, printing and photo-offset are out of the question, for their costs-per-copy are above photostat. If 2000 copies are needed, most of the cost advantages of microcopying disappear. ∥

Comparative Costs per 100,000 Words at Efficiency Point

If each technique is understood to be functioning at its efficiency point, there is a sound basis from which comparative costs can be computed in numbers of words. It is true that they photographic processes, when divorced from composition costs, apply to page or film areas, rather than to number of words, and that the number of words on a given area of paper or film is related to a factor of legibility and convenience. But this variable can be taken into account in the statement of comparisons. (See Table LIII on the following page.)

The highest production cost at the efficiency point is that of the hectograph ∣📄 p.187 (including composition), roughly $1.50 for 100,000 words in an edition just short of 100. Another cost comparison of processes is that determining the edition size at which other techniques will multiply words at the same cost-per-copy ($1.50 for 100,000 words). The figure is a reasonable one to accept as a standard, because it is a manufacturing cost that will permit the ∥ distribution of books at prices that would be regarded by the book-buying world as moderate. (See Table LIV on the following page.)

The comparisons have been made with the costs of printings as a base line. But scholars often encounter another situation; they are familiar with another cost level. They will often wish to have a unique copy ∣📄 p.188 of a document made and will face the alternative of having it photostated or copied on a typewriter.

The material which is normally thus photostated or copied in typescript is of two kinds: printed books, or stacks of loose typescript or manuscript pages. in order to compare the various techniques applicable to this demand situation, the same unit of 100,000 words can be used as an example. This would mean 250 pages of an ordinary book (400 words per page), or 144 pages of a book with 700 words to the page, or 664 pages of typescript at 300 words to the page.

Moreover, it is possible that a ∥ scholar might wish to make more than one copy by the devices that are primarily applied to the production of a single copy. The zone of edition size above the unique copy and up to the edition of fifty is very little developed in ordinary practice, although there are a number of reasons for regarding it as a very important zone. An edition of fifty copies will make any document accessible in all of the greatest libraries of the country, and in every section of the country. Therefore scholars should have in hand information on costs of production in this low-edition zone.

With these small-edition processes the reproduction of the book or typescript ∣📄 p.189 of 100,000 words begins always with one of the two basic procedures: a recopying on the typewriter, or a photographing, of the text as it stands. The first, being a composition cost, is the same for any unit of 100,000 words, whether it stands originally as a printed book or as a stack of typewritten pages. The second, being an area cost, is dependent upon the total area of page (the size of the page multiplied by the number of pages), and upon the degree of enlargement or reduction given to the material in photographing it.

The two techniques—copying on typewriter and photographing the existing pages—furnish alternative starting points. But there are a number of combinations in which the typescript copying is followed by some use of a photographic technique. The photographic techniques, since they permit reductions in size, lead to problems of legibility, and at a certain point begin to demand auxiliary reading devices, such as reading glasses, binocular microscopes, or projection reading machines.

The simplest classification of these processes is one that divides them into two main groups: first, those beginning with the making of a typescript copy of the text; and second, those beginning with the making of a photographic copy of the text. The second, or photographic, techniques will exhibit different costs, following the number of words per page and page area. A minimum for an octavo book is perhaps 400 words, a maximum 900 words. The table on the following page is calculated on the basis of a 400-word page, 6” x 9”, and hence 250 pages of print as against 334 pages of typescript. The larger the number of words per page in the book, the greater will be the advantage of the photographic processes over those that begin with a retyping. The processes will yield two classes of result: those legible without optical aid, and those requiring the aid of a lens or projector reader.

The Allocation of Costs of Reproducing Materials

From the welter of figures and estimates set forth in the preceding chapters, and epitomized in the tables above, the conclusion follows inescapably that printing is no longer to be regarded as the sole technique by which the materials and ∥ products of research are to be reproduced.

It follows also that the financing of the reproduction and distribution of research materials may now be accomplished in ways that depart from the standards and practices of normal commercial publishing. The essential elements of commercial publishing finance are derived from printing technique. There has always been a high first cost, a low running cost, and consequently a profit in the large edition. There must, therefore, be promotional expenses to extend the market and draw in the largest possible number of purchasers. Commercial publishing will be most profitable if it can distribute the largest number of copies of the smallest number of titles. The needs of research pull in the opposite direction, toward the distribution of the largest number of titles in the smallest editions.

Microcopying techniques bring into the picture an entirely new pattern of financing. They impose upon the consumer the kind of “first cost” that printing imposes on the producer. Since the consumer, whether a library or an individual, must have a reading machine, he must make a substantial investment before he can read any microcopies. But after his investment is made, he pays only a small price for his reading matter. The more reading matter he procures, the more completely his first cost is absorbed.

Moreover, the microcopying techniques reach their efficiency point in so small a number of copies that promotional expenses are cut to a low minimum. It takes very little promotion to reach the necessary number of purchasers. And after the efficiency point is reached, later purchasers can be cared for by running off for each one the copy that he requires, without incurring the costs of a new edition. The problems known to commercial publishing as promotion, overprint, and risk are substantially modified or absent when the microcopying technique is used.

The use of the techniques that are operative in the range below a hundred copies permits a similar change in the financial perspective. Here also the high promotion charge can be avoided, because the effective market is pretty well known in advance. Moreover, some of these techniques, notably the hectograph, operate at so low a ∣📄 p.190 ∣📄 p.191 cost level that the author himself can absorb the cost of production and the risk of loss. A substantial amount of scholarly publishing is carried on at present by means of subsidies from the author or from some institution representing an author interest. By shifting the technique of reproduction to one of the cheap, small-edition processes, the subsidy requirement can be diminished far below that which would be needed for publication in print.

Of course if an author expects to receive revenue from his research writing, he cannot get it unless his writing is of the type that is appropriate for commercial publishing. The technical problem in the reproduction of his writing appears at another level, where the author is interested in the intangible rewards that are offered by the world of scholarship. In these cases the author sometimes makes a substantial investment in the reproduction of his work, either in the form of a subsidy to the press, or in the purchase of copies which he distributes to his colleagues. Author-financed reproduction of materials is far less burdensome with small edition techniques than with commercial publishing techniques.

The possibility of choosing a technique to respond to the demand for a product encourages the development of another financing device, which would pro-rate the costs of production and distribution among purchasers. This device was examined in 1933 by the Joint Committee, and an experiment in its use is under way in 1936.

The essential element of the plan is the pro-rating of the cost of production among the purchasers, who are brought together before the production is launched and the sales price per copy fixed. This involves as a corollary the appraisal of the value of the work prior to its publication.

Publication Service of Microcopying

Another plan, utilizing the microcopying technique, is being launched in 1936 under the auspices of Science Service, with the collaboration of the Bibliofilm Service. The announcement of this plan, which is essentially one of deposit for microcopying in lieu of publication, is given out by Dr. Watson Davis in the following circular to the editors of scientific publications. ∥

The development of photographic techniques makes it possible for Science Service to extend to you an invitation to participate in an auxiliary plan of publication which, we believe, will be of aid to you in editing your journal, proceedings, or other media of publication, and to scientific publication in general.

You, in common with other scientific editors, are probably under pressure from authors to publish papers of too great length or of too specialized content. Or there are papers that you would like to print in extenso if finances permitted. To a small specialized audience, these papers in complete detail should be made available.

The following suggested procedure will secure effective publication and conserve your finances. It is hoped that you will join with us in putting it into effect:

Publish as much or as little of a paper as you wish in your journal. In the case of a very technical paper, this may be merely an abstract or summary. State at the end of the published item: “For detailed paper order Document ________ from Science Service, 2101 Constitution Ave., Washington, D.C., remitting ________ cents for microfilm form and ________ cents for photocopies readable without optical aid.” The author will have his paper typed in an acceptable standard form (black fresh ribbon on 8½” x 11” bond paper, single spaced, preferably pica type) and he will have photographs mounted separately on same sized sheets. This material will be deposited by you with Science Service as a document. Science Service will assign a serial document number and set a price per copy of the document in microfilm or photocopy form. Those who wish to have the document will be able to obtain it by ordering it directly from Science Service in response to the notice published in your journal.

The operation of this plan of auxiliary publication will be simple and uncomplicated. Science Service desires that you and other editors use it when, how, and if it is helpful. We ∣📄 p.192 ask no financial participation or guarantees on your part or the part of the author. We only ask that you signify your intention of using this publication method if and when it fits into your editorial plans, and that you give the paper to be deposited such editorial supervision as you deem necessary.

The agreement to be entered into by the editors of scientific publications using the service is drafted as follows:

COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT FOR UTILIZATION OF THE PUBLICATION SERVICE OF THE DOCUMENTATION DIVISION OF SCIENCE SERVICE

THIS AGREEMENT made and entered into this ____________ day of ________, one thousand six hundred and thirty-six by and between the ________________ hereinafter called the Cooperator, and Science Service, a non-profit Delaware corporation with offices at Washington, D.C., hereinafter called Science Service.

WHEREAS, the Cooperator is desirous of obtaining the publication of scientific papers and monographs that can not now secure prompt and complete issuance, and

WHEREAS, Science Service has developed and operates means of publication of scientific papers and monographs by photographic processes, and

WHEREAS, it is the intention of the parties hereto that such cooperative work shall be for their mutual benefit and for the benefit of the scientific world in general.

NOW, THEREFORE, for and in consideration of the promises hereinafter set forth, the parties hereto, do hereby mutually agree with each other as follows:

The Cooperator shall:

1. Obtain from authors acceptably prepared typescripts and illustrations of such material to which it is desired to give publication by means of the Publication Service of Science Service, performing such editorial services as in the Cooperator’s opinion should be performed.

2. Deposit with Science Service such material as documents, with the understanding that all rights of the author and the Cooperator are thereby transferred to Science Service. ∥

3. Publish a summary, abstract or short paper of each document so deposited, stating that the complete document may be obtained upon order from Science Service, and specifying the document number, the price of the document in microfilm form, and the price of the document in photoprint form, the size of the document, the name and address of Science Service, in form prescribed by Science Service.

4. Publish in each issue of journal or other publication containing such document notice as specified in paragraph three above, a statement of approximately one hundred words descriptive of the documentation activities of Science Service, such statement to be supplied the Cooperator by Science Service.

5. Allow the photocopying by Science Service’s Bibliofilm Service of journals or other material published by the Cooperator, whether material is copyrighted or not, provided a period of one year has elapsed between date of publication and date of photocopying.

Science Service shall:

1. Receive documents approved by the Cooperator.

2. Assign to such documents serial document numbers and set prices for which copies of such documents will be furnished on order in form of microfilms (photographic images approximately 6” x 8” on paper).

3. Make photographic negatives of documents received and file them so that microfilms and photoprints can be reproduced from them when orders are received.

4. Arrange for the keeping of the originals of the documents in a permanent depository.

5. Furnish photographic copies of documents when and as ordered by individuals or institutions, at the price agreed to as provided in paragraph two above.

It is mutually understood and agreed:

That this cooperative agreement shall not limit in any manner the cooperation of either party with any other agency or person in any way.

That the provisions of this agreement relating to the furnishing by Science Service of documents in form of photoprints shall not be effective until approximately March 1, 1936, or later, when the judgment of Science Service deems that this service can be furnished expeditiously and at reasonable cost.

∣📄 p.193 That this cooperative agreement shall take effect upon the day, month and year first above written and extend to and including March 31, 1937, subject to renewal thereafter by mutual agreement of the parties.

IN WITNESS THEREOF, the parties hereto have executed this agreement on the day, month and year first above written.

SCIENCE SERVICE, INC. ________ By _________ Director By ________

Title ________

Publication Service by a Deferred Payment Plan

Edwards Brothers of Ann Arbor have a standing offer intended to facilitate small-edition publishing by a simplifying of the distribution of risk between publisher and author or subsidizer. The terms of this proposal are the following:

1. They assume 50% of the initial cost.

2. The author, institution, or foundation assumes the other half, either in cash or in the form of advance orders on the book.

3. The advance is made for six months from date of publication, with a carrying charge of 10% based on the cost of the edition.

4. Repayment of the advance is made through first sales. Their experience has been that the author is seldom called upon to repay in cash—sales usually taking care of his indebtedness to them.

5. At the end of six months, any unpaid balance is to be paid; if this is not feasible, arrangements can be made for an extension.

6. If the book sells better than estimated, the author within three months can assume the entire cost, in which case their 10% carrying charge is eliminated.

7. All net sales, after the advance is repaid, are credited to the author towards royalty, payable April and September 15 each year.

8. They store, ship, and bill all books published under this arrangement, thus sparing the author or institution all mechanical sales routine. ∥

In addition to these services, Edwards Brothers offers a publishing service described as follows:

1. They prepare and mail to a list of logical readers a circular describing the book and reproducing specimen pages from it so that the prospective purchaser may see the format.

2. This list may be furnished by the author or made up from the proper directories, membership lists, faculties, etc.

3. They list all books, according to title, author, format, date of publication, price, and publisher, in the appropriate indexes and in Publishers’ Weekly, the book-trade journal.

4. They send out review copies of books to the important periodicals in the field concerned. Their list of 1400 periodicals classified by subject enables them to select for publicity purposes those magazines and journals which concern themselves particularly with the material treated.

5. For this service their charge is $25 for 250 names circularized, and $20 for each additional 250. There is no charge for publicity beyond this.

The production technique used in this case is photo-offset from typescript. The offer is really a breakdown of publishing service into separate elements of which the author can purchase as many or as few as he chooses, and a credit scheme that will give the author a chance to get 50% of the production price from book purchasers.

According to a letter just recently received, Edwards Brothers report that their plan is working quite successfully. They have had a number of books, ranging in an edition of from 300 to 400, which are selling and which are paying their own way. Their experience has been that they can, with an edition of 300 or 400 copies, produce a book which will sell at approximately current book prices of comparable material. In addition, they are finding that there is little if any objection to the format in which these books are prepared. Reviewers no longer comment on the format, and if they do, their comments are almost always favorable. An indication that there is no objection is the fact that the number of orders which they receive each day is ∣📄 p.194 constantly increasing. At the present time it averages from thirty to fifty orders per day.

This up-to-date information coming directly from the publishers using the plan is very encouraging, in that it indicates the favorable reception accorded the plan, and also the fact that these smaller editions will sell and pay for themselves.

The Services of the H. W. Wilson Company

The H. W. Wilson Company has had extensive experience in a special method of pro-rating costs of production among purchasers. The series of guides to periodical literature published by this company are priced on the basis of the number of analyzed periodicals to which the purchaser subscribes.

Another service of the Wilson Company is its vertical file service, which circulates among libraries a classified subject list of pamphlets and similar material that may be available either gratis or at cost of supply. It will be easy to arrange with the Wilson Company to receive titles of near-print memoranda issued by scholars on scholarly subjects, to circulate the notices of the material in the classified list, and to arrange for distribution to the libraries upon demand.

Plans for the Photo-Offset Reproduction of Rare Items

The proficiency with which the photo-offset technique will bring rare books into print has led to a number of systematic experiments in organizing reproduction of them.

The Facsimile Text Society was organized with a list of subscribing members and an editorial board to choose titles for reproduction. It could not escape the need for a large-edition sale, nor could it pro-rate actual costs among actual subscribers to a given title. In short, while it did not use printing techniques, and tried in its promotion to find a plan halfway between that of a journal with a subscriber list and that of a book publisher, it did not escape the accountancy and risks of book publishing.

Mr. John A. Neu of the Library of Congress has been a promotor of a large-scale plan for rearranging and rationalizing book holdings of American libraries. ∥ One part of his plan called for the multiplying of rare books. The idea that the production of the reprints should be planned to fit into a comprehensive arrangement of book resources in the country was new. The scheme did not get beyond the memorandum stage.

The H. W. Wilson Company has developed an effective book exchange service that should prove very sensitive in registering reprint demand. The company published a catalogue of essays and general literature as a kind of checklist for libraries. Since many of the items on this list were out of print, it issued a special list of the out-of-print books, and invited libraries and secondhand dealers to report copies for sale. Six titles were so much in demand, and so little in supply, that the Wilson Company made reprint editions—in this case from plates rather than by photo-offset—but the results were not a striking success. It may be that the immediately effective demand for the reprint of a particular rare and out-of-print book does not often pass the efficiency point of the reprint process, whether by photo-offset or from the plates. The problem, again, is one of financing the smallest possible edition.

Concentration of Scholarly Book Production

In the past few years there have been a number of proposals that look to the achievement of economies of consolidation in scholarly book publishing. It will be proposed, for instance, that university presses should merge to avoid wasteful duplication, or that a gigantic) union publishing institution should be set up to compete with existing prices for profitable manuscripts, and expend its profits in the production of small-edition, loss-sustaining research books. The evidence accumulated in the preceding pages amply warrants the conclusion that the mere increasing of the size of present publishing operations will not meet present needs. What is necessary is a new design, and the use of new techniques, to the end that editions will finance themselves regardless of the number of buyers—whether it be ten or ten thousand. ∣📄 p.195

Concentration of Processing Services for Microcopying

The development of microcopying on paper and film promises to yield low prices that will result in widespread use, and the widespread use will then reflect back in low prices. The critical problem of the moment is the maintenance of a low price level during the period of development that is bringing about the widespread use.

The institution which is probably most necessary for the achievement of this objective is a photographic processing center which can offer the following services:

1. Accept microcopy negatives, either 16 mm, or 35 mm., both in short and long runs, and service them to buyers by making on order positive prints in the same size, or in enlargement or reduction, and possibly on paper.

2. Pro-rate the costs of making a negative among purchasers of the positive on a non-profit basis.

3. Guarantee the highest technical standards in the care of the negative and the processing of the positive.

While it is highly desirable to encourage the development of a number of alternative photographing and reading machines, there is no advantage in splitting up the work of processing among a number of agencies. Efficient machinery is very expensive and calls for large footages. The scholar who returns from Europe with a few thousand feet of microcopies of unpublished material, the library that has made a negative of its newspaper file, the group of libraries which may be organizing an undertaking such as the copying of English books published before 1640, could all make use of a processing center. The accountancy standards remain to be worked out; they will show marked differences from the accountancy of publishing. They should be established on the assumption of large footages.

Five years ago, when the first edition of this report was issued, it seemed that the most important need in the field of microcopying was mechanical—the efficient camera and reading machine. At this date of writing, the mechanical problems are so well on the road to solution that they need not cause concern. The next prob∥ lem is one of institutional development and of the standardizing of a low price level.

Allocation of Costs, and the Problem of Appraisal and Listing

The problem of allocation of cost is intimately related to the problem of appraising the research value of material that is to be multiplied by any technique for any number of users.

The cost may be assessed against the author (or some institution interested, like the author, in promoting distribution), or against the library and the individual consumer, or it may be distributed among them. It may be met by any one of the three interests identified in the first chapter of this book as the producer, consumer, and custodian interest, or by all of them in different proportions. But the allocation of cost cannot be made except in the presence of some kind of appraisal.

If the author bears the whole cost of multiplying the book and distributes it free of charge to libraries, no act of appraisal of the book is necessary except that which the receivers of the book will perform in deciding whether to shelve the gift or put it in the wastebasket.

If the people who are to acquire the book are to be asked to contribute toward the cost of multiplying it, the work of appraising must precede their decision to assume part of the cost of multiplying.

At present this appraising is done in two ways. The most common is that used in the publishing trade. An editor appraises a manuscript and makes a decision to publish; then reviewers step in, and on the basis of their reviews purchasers make their decisions.

Sometimes the editors assume so much responsibility, as in bringing out a series, that the purchasers do not await the second appraisal made by reviewers. This is the second of the two systems now in use.

These methods do not place a large proportion of the cost on the purchasers of books; the author of a Ph.D. dissertation bears) most of the cost.

Both of these methods of appraising books and distributing their cost between authors and buyers leave a large margin of risk. While they have been developed in ∣📄 p.196 connection with the technique of printing, they are not necessarily tied to that technique.

A third arrangement would be possible. The appraising of the book could be made, not only prior to the multiplying of it, but prior even to the distribution of its cost between author and purchasers. This is the system proposed in a memorandum of the Joint Committee on a publishing service.

There are two functions in connection with the distribution of the results of research which are more intellectual than mechanical. The first is the entering of information regarding the research product in bibliographical guides; the second is the appraising of the merit of the research product. This work is done by professional scholars, who may or may not be remunerated for it.

The two functions are related. A bibliographical entry implies a degree of appraisal; at least the research product must be assumed to relate to the topic under which it is entered. This amount of appraising can be left to the author or, in the case of Ph.D. theses, to those under whom the work was done.

The more complete appraising that is necessary before asking purchasers to contribute toward the cost of multiplying a book is not so properly left to the author or his advisor.

No matter what techniques of reproduction are used in multiplying a text, these problems of appraisal and assessment of cost arise.

The rational use of these available techniques requires, however, that the intellectual elements of the distributing process, namely, bibliographical entry and appraisal, should be made available regardless of the technique of multiplying.

Intellectual Implications of Technological Change

A change in the procedure of appraisal of material and a development of bibliographical services to include material not commercially published open the way to far-reaching changes in the intellectual standards of scholarship. At the same time the prospect that a scholar may be able to have material that was otherwise inaccessible brought to him, and that he ∥ may be able to communicate to his colleagues writings that he has hitherto been unable to communicate to them, open the way to new intellectual opportunities. An analysis of these new standards and opportunities points toward a large-scale redivision of scholarly labor, which may take a course parallel to that which industrial technology introduced when it opened to the semi-skilled a great field previously occupied by the highly skilled.

The semi-skilled in scholarship have played a very small role in intellectual life for the past few generations; the amateur has given way to the professional in research, and the vast corps of teachers in the secondary schools have not been mustered into the army of productive scholarship. The concentration of scholarly work has taken place not only in respect of personnel, but also in respect of location. Large library resources have become so necessary that most of the work has been drawn to great cities and university centers. We look out now upon a prospect of change, which can be examined in several aspects. First among these aspects is the prospective disintegration of the distinction between collecting and publishing.

Microcopying and the reproduction techniques that are operative in the zone of ten copies tend to obliterate this distinction, because they mean that any collection of material—whether in manuscript, typescript, or book or pamphlet form—can be duplicated or multiplied in whole or in part upon demand. If a library has collected the theatre programs, political broadsides, or other documents originating in its community, this material has not only been preserved from destruction, but also prepared for distribution. Moreover, a collection of material can be made logically complete, regardless of the accident of the market, and become in that way an organized unit, as if it were a vast and well-designed book. Collections of documents in the hands of any librarians or individuals who are willing to permit their copying become part of a great reservoir of documentation, open to all comers, irrespective of whether or not any item is a “book in print.”

This conception—that collecting and publishing are functionally merged—should operate to expand and dignify the ∣📄 p.197 role of the collector, and at the same time to clarify the position of the research worker. It should become increasingly difficult for scholars to publish undigested material in the expectation that their work will be credited as if it were a true product of research, provided only that the texts as published had not previously appeared in print. Already the effect of the new techniques can be felt. A number of scholars have gone into European archives and brought home collections of documents numbering into the thousands in microcopy form. If they had gone with pen and ink or with typewriter, and laboriously copied out a few hundred documents they might have been tempted to confuse the result of their physical labor with an intellectual product. Since it is now evident that the camera can not only copy documents by the thousands, but also permit their duplication to order and upon demand, the difference between the mere collection of documents and their research use stands out with a clarity it could not previously have possessed.

This observation does not decry the value to culture of that work which tends to improve and expand records, to make them more accessible, and to notify those who should be interested in them of their existence. This is an essential service which must be rendered. But there should arise a new conception of division of labor in scholarship, combined with a willingness to apportion tasks to the abilities and opportunities of those who are available to do the work.

The labor of research is doubly divisible. It can be divided vertically into ever narrower fields, and it can be divided horizontally into different stages in the preparation of material. At the first level stands the collection of records—the function generally left with librarians and archivists. Between the collection of texts and the distribution of conclusions drawn from their study, there stands a long intermediate series of operations, to each of which there corresponds some appropriate intellectual technique in the treatment of the material, and some appropriate mechanical technique for its reproduction.

Many of the obstacles to be overcome in the development of the full material resources of intellectual life are found in the attitudes of the scholars themselves. ∥ Too often there is a veneration of book print at the expense of typescript, and too frequently a disposition to take for granted the finality of the existing distribution of labor. But an examination of the whole problem of materials for research discloses the fact that the problem can not be solved in terms of book publishing on the one hand, and the labor of professional scholars alone on the other.

The nature of the whole problem of materials for research will be clarified if it is examined as a series of operations that begins with the collecting of original material and ends with the dissemination of the results of research.

The First Stage: Collecting and Preserving Material

We are called upon to manipulate a civilization based primarily upon the use of two substances—metal and paper. Just as our economic life has come to be based upon the use of metals, so our intellectual life has its material foundations in the use of paper.

The world of paper is a world of vast dimensions. Primarily, it is not a world of books. A single copy of the New York Times contains more words than a full-length novel. Books constitute only a small part of the printed reading matter that is laid before our eyes. Most of the printed material that is distributed is distributed in newspaper form. But the newspapers absorb only a fraction of the actual writing that is done. In every business office there are typewriters that clatter all day putting words and numbers on paper. That which is printed is only a fraction of that which is written and communicated. For every ton of paper that is converted into records, there are, perhaps, only a few pounds that will ever be added to the permanent heritage of records to be utilized in the study of our civilization, and preserved for the future.

How is the selection to be made of records that are to be preserved? How are they to be segregated from the records destined for destruction? And how is the scholar to be guided among those that are preserved, to the end that their preservation will prove to be worth while? Our libraries operate efficiently in respect of certain classes of books and periodicals, ∣📄 p.198 and even of newspapers and some kinds of old manuscripts. But there are vast domains of records which our libraries cannot be expected to govern. The records of business and of government and the private papers of families must, in the long run, be cared for by business and government and the family. Only by inculcating in people who are not professional scholars a sense of the value of records, and by teaching a technique applicable to their selective destruction and preservation, can this great bulk of record material be given a rational treatment. A program that would attempt to solve the problems of preserving and improving materials for research, without any resources but those of professional scholars and research libraries, will leave the great decisions to the play of accident.

Even the ample and intelligent selection and preservation of records that are made in the course of practical life would still leave a great gap in the documentation. Are there not many kinds of information that are of intrinsic interest and value to research scholarship, even though they do not take the form of records unless a deliberate effort is made to record them? This is true not only in the field of linguistics, but also in political and business history, and in family history as well. The development of radio, which, does not automatically make a paper record, imposes a special duty of recording for permanence, if the archive of culture is to be complete.

The field of original record is so vast that the conclusion must be self-evident; only the recruiting of forces supplementary to those of professional scholars and research libraries will bring ample and intelligent action in the preserving of old records, in the selection of contemporary records for preservation, and in the making of new records.

The human interests that may be turned to account to improve our resources of record are many. Chief among them are the genealogical interest, the interest of people engaged in business in the background and prospects of their business, the collector’s interest in a good collection of anything from postage stamps to incunabula, and perhaps a feeling for the prestige-value of contributions made to the intellectual world.

∥ We are not yet intellectually prepared to develop these human resources. We do not yet know exactly how to instruct the college student of today, the business man of tomorrow, in the techniques and values that he ought to know if he is to participate in a great common enterprise in the development of record resources. We have not yet worked out fully the institutional arrangements by which collections of records, preserved from the past or made in the present, can be appraised, reported, and brought to the attention of those who can use them. We have not yet analyzed thoroughly the categories into which research materials fall, nor devised for each category appropriate principles to govern their preservation, selection, creation, or listing for use. This intellectual problem would exist for us, even if we were still dependent upon book publishing for all multiplying of research materials. But the new techniques, since they render collecting almost equivalent to publishing, make the problem far more pressing, and the opportunity far greater, than it has been in the past.

The Second Stage: the Improvement of Different Types of Material

The creation, preservation, and collection of research material in vast quantities will embarrass rather than aid scholarship, unless appropriate measures are taken to improve it by arranging it properly, and controlling it by means of lists, inventories, calendars, and other ways.

The classes of record that account for the greatest bulk of paper tonnage are the following:

(a) Books, Periodicals, and Printed Public Documents

Present library techniques are adequate to care for this material, although library resources are in some cases insufficient. The public documents of the American states and of foreign governments are very inadequately represented in American libraries. But the method of meeting this deficiency will probably be found to involve no other changes than an increase in library resources or a distribution of library responsibilities, to the end that the holdings and acquisitions of one library may dovetail with those of another, and the technique of microcopying provides ∣📄 p.199 inter-library service. The union catalogue of libraries and the union lists of news- papers and public documents are the tools required for the improvement of this situation. The Wilson Company has made a union list of periodicals and of public documents, and a number of union catalogue projects are under way, notably the great Project B of the Library of Congress, and the union list of the holdings of libraries in Philadelphia.

(b) Newspapers

The newspaper resources of the country, taken as a whole, reveal just such gaps as are shown in periodical and foreign public document holdings. A newspaper union list is in the making, but newspapers present two additional tasks. The paper upon which newspapers have been printed since the last quarter of the nineteenth century is so highly perishable that the whole newspaper record will be lost unless large-scale copying or preserving is done. Probably the best plan will be to microcopy the files, but, despite the low costs of the process, this will be a long and expensive process.

The bulk of newspaper files is so great and the miscellaneous character of their contents so general, that a distinct step forward in the improvement of this type of record can be made by indexing, calendaring, or digesting the files. The Joint Committee has experimented with the technique of making a newspaper digest in Cleveland, adapting the procedure to the training and abilities of a high-school graduate relief worker, and planning to multiply the resulting digest by means of the multigraph process. Though the hectographed digest will not be permanent, it will last long enough to provide many years of study, and a microcopy of the digest will be made to give absolute permanence to the work.

The labor cost of indexing or digesting newspaper materials is so great that the work can hardly be accomplished except under one of two conditions–either it can be developed by paid labor as a part of a relief program, or it can be done in small increments by people interested in the variety of information that the old newspapers reveal, and willing to work to put the material into near-print form for ∥ the sake of the intangible reward of scholarly recognition. The newspaper digest is a halfway product, intermediate between the raw newspaper material and the finished result of research.

There is one great news source that is not at present preserved in any form. This is the typescript material that passes over the wires of the great news services. It is the raw material of news, nearer to source than the newspaper itself, and more independent of the whim of the city editor. Dr. T. R. Schellenberg has taken the lead in promoting the preservation of this type of material by the microcopy technique.

(c) Public Archives

The erection of a National Archives building and the creation of a National Archives administration mark a new day in the treatment of public records in the United States. This country has hitherto been backward—almost barbarous—in the care of its public records. The conjunction of the establishment of the National Archives and the promotion of white-collar relief projects under the Works Progress Administration is changing this picture. Two large-scale and systematic inventories have been organized throughout the country under the Works Progress Administration, the one to make an identification inventory of the records of local public bodies, the other to make an inventory of federal records outside of Washington. The Historical Records Survey, under the direction of Dr. Luther Evans, is also covering some of the manuscript records, especially those in historical societies, and consolidating information regarding them.

There are three questions relating to public archives which deeply concern research scholars. First is the question of record destruction. No archive administration can or should preserve everything, and yet the selection of material for preservation, and the decision on what to destroy, are not easily made. Second is the question of inventory. Even if records are preserved, they are of little use to scholars until they have been inventoried and arranged. And third is the question of access and administration. As local archives come to be better known and their research uses better understood, it will follow that ∣📄 p.200 people who are not close to large libraries will have an increasing array of opportunities for research. It may be that techniques comparable to that which is being developed in the making of a newspaper digest can be worked out, to result in an equivalent increase in the accessibility and utility of local archival material.

Though sociologists have utilized local data very effectively, the historians, economists, and political scientists have devoted far more attention to the national scene. A leading political scientist, who is undertaking a study of the rise of machine politics in American cities, found that the basic preparatory work has not been done. The practical need for the study of regional economic opportunities finds economics far better equipped with statistics on national trends than with scientific analyses of local situations. Newspapers and the local archives are a vein of raw ore inviting the labor of a host of workers to dig out material and refine the product.

(d) Business Records

The archives of business are no less important than the archives of government, but they are not ordinarily administered with a view to their research value in the future. When an office manager is employed to increase the working efficiency of a business office, one of his first points of attack is the storage of old records. He tries to get them destroyed to save storage space. No business can afford to retain all records in their original and bulky form, The Recordak Corporation offers to business firms an opportunity to reduce greatly the space required for the preservation of old files. Nevertheless, the introduction of sound scholarly archival principles into the care of business records is a program for the future, rather than a fact of the present.

The Joint Committee made an experiment in inducing a firm to apply the principle of sampling to the preservation of records. Halle Brothers, a Cleveland department store, withdrew from the normal course of destruction sample runs of all its types of records to cover a period prior to the introduction of NRA and a period subsequent thereto. Most American business firms have already destroyed the orig∥ inal pay rolls, materials cards, work cards, etc., that would document the story of this experiment in large-scale change of working standards. At the suggestion of Professor N. S. B. Gras, of Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration, Mr. Ralph M. Hower was employed to draw up a report on the records and methods of record preservation used by ten different companies of considerable age and importance. The Business Historical Society is interested in developing a technique for the preservation of the important segments of business records. But the road forward is not so clear in the case of business records as it is with public archives, newspapers, and the books and periodicals handled by libraries through the book trade.

(e) Ephemeral Materials and Non-Trade Documentation

Though the library technique for dealing with books, periodicals, and newspapers is well established, the same can hardly be said of ephemeral items such as political posters and broadsides, pamphlets, advertising matter, theatre programs, and a great variety of near-print matter.

Dr. Kuhlman of the University of Chicago Library is preparing a manual for librarians on the collection and arrangement of this type of material. But here also there is a great field for the individual collector. During the World War a large number of individuals in Germany and many in France began their “war collections.” There were several journals published to serve the collectors. With the close of the war this interest diminished. But there are an almost infinite number of subjects upon which the serious and comprehensive activity of an individual collector can bring valuable results. Every labor dispute in a modern city gives rise to its little budget of leaflets and announcements from the different labor groups and the management. Every demonstration of relief clients is accompanied by its paper shower. These documents are a part of the record of civilization that will not come to be preserved and organized, except as individuals or local libraries take a special interest and apply a sound technique.

(f) Family Papers

The restricted space in which the ∣📄 p.201 modern family lives, and the frequent moving from apartment to apartment that becomes normal in urban civilization, make the hoarding of family papers, whether ancient or current, a burdensome load. Surveys of historical documentation in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and other places have disclosed a wealth of valuable records in the form of old letters. The complete rationalization of the care of family papers would call for at least three things: first, the reporting of holdings of old papers; second, the proper selection, preservation, and care of current papers; and third, a responsibility in each family to record the history of itself, or the biography of its members.

The interest that many individuals develop in genealogy can perhaps be channeled in such a way that it will yield results valuable to the world of scholarship. Dr. Jean Stephenson, Chairman of the Genealogical Records Committee of the Daughters of the American Revolution, is sounding out this possibility and is prepared to develop it in a forthcoming manual on genealogical research.

Thus the collection, selection, listing and care of records, whether public archives, business documents, or family papers, is a vast task in which a large element of the population can be trained to share. The value of everything they do will be increased by the greater mobility that all records possess by virtue of the new techniques of reproduction.

Simplified Research Techniques

Above the level of the simple collecting and organizing of material, there lies a zone of possible activity intermediate between the higher research, to which the highly trained professional scholars may be expected to devote their time, and the more humble task of accumulating and arranging. The proposal has been presented to the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council that steps should be taken to devise simplified research techniques, by which the semi-skilled in scholarship could make their contributions, and those who have only a limited amount of time or limited documentary equipment for research, may be brought to contribute their share. The development of simplified re∥ search techniques in the social studies and some of the humanities would result in an increase in the actual working personnel of American scholarship, especially by drawing in the following types of workers:

a) University, college, and high-school teachers who, because of limitations of time, materials or training, are not able to keep the pace set by the most advanced research workers.

b) College graduates, not engaged in academic work, but having at their disposal time and interests—in some cases money —that can be devoted to scholarly purposes.

c) Business men whose interest in their own business or the economic setting of their own community is guided toward accurate and sound methods of investigation.

The broadening of the base of the pyramid of scholarly activity would contribute to the whole field of education. The schism in the intellectual world that resulted from the preoccupation of those interested in pedagogy with methods of instruction, at the expense of content of learning, and of research workers in content, at the expense of methods of instruction, has not strengthened, but rather has weakened intellectual life. It has resulted in a situation in which the teaching career, especially in the secondary school, is made less attractive in terms of intellectual dignity than it would need to be. A good teacher can always teach more effectively if she is able to illustrate generalizations in history, social studies, or other fields from local and familiar instances. But such illustrations presuppose a sound investigation of the local data in relation to the general findings of a discipline; and if such an investigation is made, its result is more than an item of teaching materials; it is, in fact, an additional datum in the inductive structure of the discipline itself.

The present generation should not be surprised at the conclusion that a technological revolution has in it the seeds of a cultural revolution. Such may indeed be true in this instance. The cultural revival of the small town as against the monopoly of the metropolis, and the democratization ∣📄 p.202 and “deprofessionalization” of scholarship are on the horizon which seems to lie ahead. And these things, themselves, accord with other elements of our social and economic prospects—notably the possible decline in the centralization of population in cities and the development of a ∥ new leisure in the hands of a well-educated people. The same technical innovations that promise to give aid to the research worker in his cubicle may also lead the whole population toward participation in a new cultural design.