OXB-C. LIBRARY NEWS Volume III, No. 4 April, 1970 Vancouver, B.C. NEW CHECKLIST OF B.C. GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS ' For the past twenty-seven years, the Library's Government Publications Division has been receiving at least two copies of everything published by the British Columbia government. Apart from the Library's own files, however, there has never been a really complete guide to this mass of material. No comprehensive indexes have been issued by the government, and those compiled elsewhere are incomplete, outdated, or both. The Provincial Library in Victoria is now trying to improve this situation. In January it began issuing a monthly checklist of publications received from the British Columbia government. The listing covers virtually all provincial government publications, including those meant only for departmental distribution. Items are entered under the names of the issuing departments or committees, and information on ordering is also given. The Government Publications Division has begun a file of the monthly checklists. For more information, please see the staff at their reference desk or phone local 3858. ;■ ,GIFT HELPS CRANE EXPAND SERVICES A few weeks ago UBC's 1970 graduating class voted to give $4,400 to the Crane Memorial Library for the Blind. The gift will be used to establish a complete tape transcribing studio, equipped with tape recorders, portable playback machines for student use, a high-speed tape duplicator, and a braille typewriter. The two dozen blind or partly sighted students on campus must rely almost completely on tape-recorded books for study and research materials, as comparatively few universityTlevel texts or assigned readings are available in braille. Unfortunately, the books needed are difficult to obtain even on tape. Most local transcribing is done by the Vancouver office of the C.N.I.B., which will not assign more than one reader to a book. Thus it is not unusual for taping of a single book to take from one to four months, depending on the length of the book and the amount of time the reader can spend at the C.N.I.B. studios. The other major source of tapes, Recordings for the Blind in New York, may take two or three months to fill an order. Paul Thiele, the head of the Crane Library, feels that there is a real need for a fast, efficient tape transcription centre here on campus. Now that the gift of the graduating class has made it possible to buy equipment, plans for staffing are being drawn up. It should be possible to operate the centre eight to ten hours a day, with most of the taping being handled by volunteer students and staff members. Whenever possible, readers with special knowledge of a subject will be called on to record material in that area. If all goes well, the new centre should start operations this fall. ■ FACULTY PUBLICATIONS FOLDS For almost half of its forty-year history, the annual record of UBC faculty publications has been compiled by the Library. Now this association is coming to an end: the University has decided not to continue the listing beyond 1970. The publications record first appeared in the President's Report for 1928/29. At that time it numbered 87 entries, or rather less than one-twentieth of the number expected this year. For the next twenty years,'faculty publications were recorded by Dean D. Buchanan's office, and a listing was issued annually as part of the President's Report. Acting as advisor and assistant during much of this period was Miss Anne M. Smith, Head of the Library's Reference Division. Finally, in 1949/50, Miss Smith took over as editor, and the publications record began to be issued by the Library as a separate numbered series. Except for the four-year period from 1961/62 through 1964/65, when it was edited by Dr. Malcolm MacGregor of the Classics Department, the annual listing has continued under the auspices of the Library. Over the past few years, however, the number of publications produced by UBC faculty has risen sharply, meaning that far more staff time has had to be spent in collecting and preparing information for the annual list. The cost of printing and distribution has also gone up steadily. The only thing that has not increased notably, in fact, has been actual use of the list by those for whom it was intended. Only a minority of faculty members and campus departments find it really valuable. As a result, the Committee of Academic Deans decided this month that use of the list no longer justified the expense of preparing it. The final edition will come out in June. The editor, Mrs. Emily Woodward, wishes to thank everyone who has helped with the publication - particularly, of course, those faculty members who have patiently submitted records and copies of all their publications over the years. DELAYED SUBSCRIPTIONS; OR WHY LIBRARIANS GO GREY A frustrated reader once drew up a set of Library Laws. Law No. 1 read: "The book you want most tyMtff is always out; the journal you want most is always missing." Journals that go astray are a constant problem in this library, as in most others; but what most readers do not realize is that many "missing" issues were never here to begin with. Delays and gaps in serial subscriptions are all too common, and almost always the fault lies with the publisher rather than the Library. Currently the UBC libraries subscribe to over 12,100 journals. One major responsibility of the Main Library's Serials Division is to keep track of each subscription and investigate whenever an issue is delayed or goes missing. If an item has been overdue for a month or more, a blue "claim" form is sent to the publisher, asking him to either supply the missing issue or explain the delay. If nothing has been received on a subscription for two months or longer, a personal letter is sent. In return, every mail delivery brings in a new batch of answers, apologies and excuses from journal publishers or their agents. Most are familiar ones: "ceased publication", "publication delayed", "production difficulties", and, more recentiy, "postal strike". Some give more details: Delay was caused by the change-over in late 1968 from an academic-year to a calendar-year publication schedule, with the consequent need to add a fourth number to Volume III.... Owing to a dispute at our printers we have been obliged to cancel publication of for the issue of February 14.... The same dispute accounts for the delay in delivery of the issue of February 7. A few go to some lengths to be unhelpful... is not being published at the present time. This series may at some future date be republished again ... should you wish to place a standing order. . or unpleasant: May we frankly observe that it is inconceivable that we could have failed to supply bulletins to libaries (sic) having this series on standing order ... since none of the hundreds of libraries maintaining this series have complained of non-receipt. In any case, if you still want any or all of these at this point, you would have to initiate a one-time order for them. A very few are classics. Take this one, from a journal based in San Francisco: Thank your for writing to us about your subscription. ... We have reviewed our files and find that, because of a computer error, the subscription was made inactive before the April, 1969 issue. ■ Unfortunately, we no longer have in stock the April, May, June, July and Review Number issues. We are sending you today, under separate cover, the August through December, 1969 issues. To compensate for the 5 issues ... not in stock, we are extending the expiration date of your subscription to May, 1970. The January, 1970 issue will be mailed to you as soon as it is received here; all other 1970 issues will be sent from our printer in The Hague (allow six weeks for delivery). All such messages are recorded by the Serials Division, and reappear as notes on the daily and weekly "Serials Holdings" print-outs. These computer indexes are held at most public service desks. Their main purpose is to list the serials received by the library system and to note, under each title, the volume and date of the most recent issue held. Almost as important, though, are the entries beginning with the word "MISC" (for "miscellaneous notes"), which will be found after many of the titles. These tell readers if there is something irregular or unusual about any issue of that journal. Items which are missing, delayed, on order, misnumbered, or worth noting for any other reason, are listed here and often nowhere else outside the Serials Division. Readers who have not seen or used these lists should make a point of doing so; they can save hours of frustrated searching. Copies are at public service desks in the following areas: MAIN LIBRARY Science Division Social Sciences Division Humanities Division Fine Arts Division i Periodicals Desk (rear of stack level 5) Main Concourse Information Desk BRANCH LIBRARIES Forestry/Agriculture Library Mathematics Library Woodward Library Reference Desk MORE ON SERIALS DELAYS As this issue was going to the typist, a memo was received from the Head of the Serials Division. We quote it in full. "Due to the present mail slowdowns and strikes the Serials Division will have difficulty claiming for missing issues in those areas affected. Until further notice no mail is being accepted for the New York/New Jersey area by the Canadian post office and, of course, all of the mail enroute to us from the Eastern States or Europe will be seriously delayed. Chicago is also a central clearing point for much U.S. to Canada mail and we expect that much of our mail will be tied up there as well. "The fire in Montreal will add to the difficulties, as the estimates indicate that as many as 30,000 pieces of mail were destroyed. "Every effort will be made to supply missing issues as soon as claims and correspondence are possible." ) CRL: RESOURCES UNLIMITED | Few students or faculty members know that they have access, through the UBC Library, to the enormous collection of research material available from the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago. CRL is a non-profit corporation which was set up to increase the resources available to cooperating institutions. Its activities lie in four general areas: 1. The deposit into a common pool of any infrequently used materials held by participating libraries. (This means that CRL can make available more complete collections than any one library could reasonably maintain for its own use.) 2. Cooperative purchase, along with centralized cataloguing and storage, of infrequently used research materials that were not already adequately available to participants. 3. Centralized acquisition and cataloguing of materials acquired by participants for their own collections. 4. Coordination of acquisitions for individual participating libriaries, so that unnecessary duplication is avoided. UBC pays an annual membership fee for access to CRL resources. There is no cost to individual faculty members and students. Anyone at UBC may borrow material: undergraduates, graduate students, faculty or staff. CRL reserves the right to call in items after two weeks if another borrower needs them, but this rarely happens. Otherwise there is no time limit on loans. Requests for material may be made on the standard Interlibrary Loan forms or by TWX, telephone, or teletype. CRL will pay all charges. CLASSIFICATION OF PROJECTS. Unless stated otherwise, any member library or its users may borrow material from the following collections: 1. AFRICANA: Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP). Set up to acquire, for joint use, microform copies of rarely held Africana. Items may be borrowed by CRL members and by non-members who subscribe to CAMP. 2. ARCHIVES: Microform copies of archival records. These are collected and owned by CRL. The Center will also purchase (within the limits of its available budget) any archive in microform that is needed for immediate research. Suggestions for future purchases of archives in microform are welcomed. 3. ASIAN TRADE STATISTICS: Microform, by country. 4. AUSTRIA, ALLIED COMMISSION FOR: Microfilm records of ACA meetings held in Vienna, 1945-55. 5. BUSINESS RESEARCH BUREAUS: The collection in the University of Illinois Library is available to Center members. CRL also tries to acquire all post-1951 studies which have been issued by university business research bureaus and which are not held by Illinois. (N.B. CRL holdings may not be complete in this area.) Some studies of earlier date are also included. 6. CHILDREN'S BOOKS: Most are published after 1950, and most retain their original dust jackets. 7. CHINA: Newspapers, periodicals and classified files published from 1949 to 1966; Chinese newspapers in western languages; press summaries; selected Mainland China news items; archives; the Edward Hunter Collection. 8. COLLEGE COLLECTION: Basically catalogues and administrative reports from U.S. colleges. Major Canadian and Mexican ones are also represented, and there are scattered holdings for institutions in Europe, Asia and South America. 9. COMMUNIST TRIALS (U.S.): Transcripts and records of 23 important trials involving the issue of communism, including those of Rosenberg, Hiss, Coplon and Dennis. 10. CORPORATION REPORTS: Post-1935 registration statements and annual reports, required by the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission for companies whose securities trade on the Midwest Stock Exchange. These contain much more information than appears in published annual reports. 11. COURSES OF STUDY: Issued by all levels of U.S. governmental agencies. - 12. COURT BRIEFS AND RECORDS: From selected U.S. appellate courts. 13. DISSERTATIONS: It is the Center's policy to provide any foreign doctoral dissertation requested by a member institution. The Center already has a collection of some 600,000 titles. 14. FOREIGN OFFICIAL GAZETTE PROJECT: Covers about 100 countries. Only subscribers to this project may borrow material. 15. GERMANY: Archives (including records seized during World War II); War Crimes Trials documents; literature and drama; technology; miscellaneous items. 16. GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS - FOREIGN: A collection of several hundred thousand volumes, representing over 100 foreign governments. Includes a variety of economic and statistical reports issued by the national bank or banks of the country, and/or the principal private banks. SEE ALSO PUBLIC LAW 480 PROGRAM. 17. GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS - U.S.: Since 1952, CRL has received all non-depository documents (i.e. those not printed by the Government Printing Office but issued directly by government agencies). Holdings include some documents which do not appear in the Readex Microprint edition (also held by CRL) or in the Monthly Catalogue. There are also a number of special U.S. government collections, such as the 12,000 glossy prints of photographs taken by the Office of War Information during World War II. 18. INSURANCE COMPANY REPORTS: Detailed manuscript annual reports (which contain much more information than do the published annual reports). Covers reports from most of the major insurance companies in the U.S. - about 1,500 companies. Most files run from 1930 on. 19. INTERNATIONAL GEOPHYSICAL YEAR: Collections of the meteorological data collected during the IGY, 1957-1958. 20. ISRAEL: CRL has received, since 1955, the more important documents from Israel including parliamentary proceedings and most statistical publications. A few miscellaneous serials and monographs are also available. • 21. JAPAN: Records of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (World War II); historical studies on the war in the Pacific; a Guide to Japanese Monographs and Japanese Studies on Manchuria, 1945-60; archives of the Japanese Social and Labour Movement; several hundred Japanese journals, all of which are abstracted in either Chemical Abstracts or Biological Abstracts; bank reports; and a government information bulletin. ., 22. LITERATURE: EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN: Fiction, poetry, drama, essays, criticism etc. Users are reminded that the Center is likely to have "any book in English with an imprint of 1640 or earlier,... any book printed in the U.S. before 1801, ... any American fiction published before 1901, ... any English or American play published before 1900, ... any French play of 17th, 18th, or 19th centuries," and countless other items — British, Belgian, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. 23. MEDICINE: A large collection of publications in clinical medicine and in the basic sciences of importance to medicine. 24. MEXICO: Archives; most records consist of diplomatic and consular despatches, 1910-1929 but there are others too. 25. MUNICIPAL AND COUNTY DOCUMENTS: The Center has plans for a comprehensive, worldwide collection of city and county documents from major urban areas. So far, however, the collection is small and consists of non-U.S. material only. 26. NEWSPAPERS: Within the limits of its budget and the existence of suitable files, the Center will try to provide in microfilm the run of any U.S. or foreign newspaper requested by a member library to satisfy a patron's actual present research need. The Center also accepts suggestions for future acquisitions, but does not automatically authorize such purchases unless they fill an immediate need. The Center also lends its original newspaper files. As of 1968, CRL held about 2,000 newspaper titles, in three main areas: a. U.S., including U.S. foreign language newspapers b. Civilian Conservation Corps Camp newspapers c. Foreign - see FOREIGN NEWSPAPER CATALOGUE at end of this article 27. PATENTS: The Center has a few major runs of foreign patents, but will no longer collect or accept further holdings. 28. POPULAR MAGAZINES AND COMIC BOOKS: A sample collection augmented by twice-yearly selected purchases. 29. PRESS SUMMARIES: Covers China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Rumania and Yugoslavia. 30. PROGRAMMSCHRIFTEN: Published by European universities and gymnasiums in connection with memorial programs, holiday celebrations, graduation ceremonies, inaugurals, and the like. 31. PUBLIC LAW 480 PROGRAM: A special program under which the CRL receives government documents, newspapers and scholarly serials and mongraphs on a continuing basis from the following countries: Ceylon, India, Indonesia, Israel, Nepal, Pakistan, United Arab Republic and Yugoslavia. Items from PL 480 which CRL does not receive, but which are received by other libraries who subscribe to PL 480, are usually available to members of CRL also. 32. RADIO BROADCASTS - REPORTS AND SCRIPTS: Monitor reports of foreign broadcasts, the Voice of America, and i a few-others. 33. RAILROADS: Annual reports; other financial and administrative reports; timetables and guides; Chicago Railroad Terminal Studies; monographs and serials dealing with all phases of railroad engineering (motive power, rolling stock, maintenance, right of way, etc.); and journals of various railroad labor unions. . 34. RELIGION: A fairly large number of materials including these special items: a. English Religious Pamphlets. b. Church Missionary Society (London). Correspondence and records, 1803 1914. c. Microfilm corpus of American Lutheranism. 35. RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES: A nearly complete set of all publications from 1726 to date. 36. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: Since 1956 CRL has had a project to acquire all journals and serials abstracted in Chemical Abstracts and Biology Abstracts. About 4,000 titles are being received. In addition, CRL currently receives several thousand other scientific and technical journals and serials; and, of course, many of the publications received under other special projects such as PL 480 are scientific and technical. CRL has a collection of reports on technology, engineering and industries, chiefly in Germany, during and immediately following World War II. CRL has also some U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Publications, U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development publications, and several collections of significant meteorological data. 37. SOUTH ASIAN MICROFORM PROJECT: CRL operates SAMP in cooperation with the South Asian Microform and Library Committee of the Association for Asian Studies. It makes available on microfilm copies of South Asian materials now unavailable, or inadequately so, in U.S. libraries. Microforms are available only to subscribers to SAMP, whether or not they are members of CRL as well. However, non-subscribers may purchase positive prints for tbeir own use. 38. STATE DOCUMENTS: Files from 1951 on are fairly complete. The pre-1951 collection has over 100,000 volumes, and the Center is adding more. 39. TEXTBOOKS: Eighteenth century to date. Includes primary and secondary school books only, plus foreign grammars and readers at all levels. ■ 40. U.N. DOCUMENTS: Microprint edition. Holdings begin in 1954. ■ ■ 41. U.S. NATIONAL WAR LABOR BOARD RECORDS 42. VIETNAM: About 840 Viet Cong Documents, 1959-1966; typed record of Jeffrey Race's interviews with South Vietnamese Provincial Chiefs and other government officials. 43. WAR CRIMES TRIALS: a. GERMAN: Held in Nuremberg beginning in 1944, one of the more complete sets of records. b. FAR EASTERN: Most complete set outside the U.S. Army and the Library of Congress. Covers the records of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. ■ CATALOGUES. i. GENERAL: The Main Library's Social Sciences Division holds copies of all catalogues published by CRL describing materials available for loan. Among these are: a. Center for Research Libraries Handbook, 1969. (Additional copies of which are available in several other divisions of the Library) b. Center for Research Libraries Catalogue. Comes in three separate series of volumes: Monographs (five volumes); Serials (one volume); and Newspapers (one volume). 2. FOREIGN NEWSPAPER CATALOGUE: UBC Library has recently compiled a list of foreign newspapers (excluding U.S.) available to students and faculty members of UBC, SFU, and UVIC. This computer-produced list reflects holdings of UBC, SFU and UVIC, who may borrow from each other, and also those of CRL (including CAMP - see AFRICANA above), from which UBC may borrow on behalf of SFU and UVIC. Regular revisions in order to update holdings are planned. The list is arranged by country, then city, then alphabetically by title. In order to reduce the number of cross-references and title histories, major title variations are entered separately. For example, there are separate entries for GUARDIAN and MANCHESTER GUARDIAN, reflecting two different periods of publication under two different titles, even though it is the same newspaper. But as the list is arranged by country and city, such entries are brought close together in the list, and the relationship should be easily discernible. A few original files (as opposed to microfilm files) held by CRL have been omitted from this list, since holdings were not available at the time of compilation. However, as these files tend to be short, and as it is CRL's policy to obtain files on request whenever possible, few users will be affected. These holdings will be added in the first revision. Sample entry: FRANCE PARIS LE MONDE UBC-CRLMFILM: DEC. 19, 1944+ ORIG: CURRENT UVIC ORIG: CURRENT SFU ORIG: CURRENT i.e., UBC may borrow from CRL on microfilm Dec. 19, 1944 to date. UBC, UVIC and SFU have a subscription and keep current issues only; in original format. The catalogue of FOREIGN NEWSPAPERS is available in the Social Sciences Division of the Main Library. Now that our readers know what resources are available from CRL, the Library hopes that more faculty members and students will make use of them. It's all there for the asking! SILENT SPRING? With exams just around the corner, most students are coming to the Library in search of a quiet place to study. This year they may even find it, because the Library and the Alma Mater Society have joined forces in an anti-noise campaign. Nearly three hundred copies of seven eye-catching posters will go up in the Main Library, Sedgewick, and the Brock Hall study areas. All are a little offbeat, and all are variants on the same theme, best expressed by one of the posters: "Silence is Groovy". Sedgewick may have found an even better solution to the noise problem, though. Recently manufacturers' carpet samples were laid down near the card catalogues for testing under actual traffic conditions. Almost immediately voices, as well as footsteps, were hushed, the overall noise level dropped, and staff and students seemed able to go about their work with fewer distractions. Unfortunately, any type of permanent carpeting in Sedgewick or the Main Library is still beyond our means. However, anyone with more samples for testing is hereby invited to try them out anywhere in either building! BROCK HOURS EXTENDED DURING EXAMS From Monday, March 16 until Thursday, April 30, the Brock Hall study areas will remain open two hours longer on weekdays. The new schedule is given below. MONDAY - FRIDAY 8 a.m.- 2 a.m. SATURDAY - SUNDAY 8 a.m. - 12 midnight Editor: Mrs. Elsie de Bruijn Information and Orientation Division ■ ■ ■ ■ Uoo ■ ■ ■. ■ . ■ ■ ■ ■'