A History of the Farmington Plan (review)

Ralph D. Wagner's History of the Farmington Plan chronicles the program from its inception in the 1940s to its demise in the early 1970s. While the focus is on the Farmington Plan, the book also gives a fair amount of consideration to the history of the National Library Collection (1876-1942), early cooperatives and acquisition programs, the National Program for Acquisitions and Cataloging (NPAC), and Public Law 83-480 (PL-480), as well as strategic plans for country and subject responsibilities.

After the prologue, chapters 2 through 4 outline the history of the National Library Collection. Chapters 5 and 6 are dedicated to the war environment and the first Farmington meeting in 1942. Wagner writes that on 9 October 1942 an advisory board appointed by the Library of Congress (LC) met in Farmington, Connecticut, during which, after much discussion, a proposal was drafted for a national program of cooperation among research libraries. The goal of the program was aimed at acquiring "at least one copy of every book published anywhere in the world following the effective date of the agreement, which might conceivably be of interest to a research worker in America" (1). Participating libraries were expected to acquire books in assigned subject areas, catalog them, and send cards to the National Union Catalog. Over time, the cooperative was named the Farmington Plan, and it began operation in 1948 under the sponsorship of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). In 1972 the plan was abandoned, but the idea of cooperative acquisitions of foreign library materials remains possible under several other programs today.

In chapter 7 Wagner describes the Library of Congress Mission and Cooperative Acquisitions Project (1945-47). He blames wartime blockades and boycotts for forcing the ARL consensus to wait and begin a cooperative program for foreign acquisitions after the war had ended. Initially, options for a postwar acquisition project were divided between a cooperative program through the ARL and a program under the LC, which "was philosophically opposed to engaging in any activity that would resemble competition with commercial booksellers" (99). But the LC agreed to serve the nation as an acquisition and distribution agent if participating libraries agreed upon and carefully planned a program of cooperative buying. Once the LC was recognized as the official agent, the program was named the Library of Congress Cooperative Acquisitions Project and was carried out in Europe by a team called the Library of Congress Mission. In this program, the LC charged participating libraries one dollar per book with the provision that surplus funds would be returned to payees in books. (Initially, the costs were anticipated at fifty cents per book but ended up at about seventy-five cents.) Many participants requested a listing of the materials by title and asked for the opportunity to select by individual titles, but the LC's response was that a selective approach would greatly increase the cost per item (100).

In many respects, writes Wagner, the Farmington Plan was a natural outgrowth of the Cooperative Acquisitions Project. The plan was built on the project's system of blanket orders as well as subject assignments based on the LC classification scheme. Yet the plan was different from the project in that it was directed by an ARL committee and a small staff and its ultimate goal was designed to fill in the gaps of participating library collections; moreover, "the need for rapid acquisition of collections ruled out the elimination of duplication and even billing based on the price paid. Such a system could not long survive in the normal commercial book trade" (106). Complaints about unwanted materials were common in both the Cooperative Acquisitions Project and the Farmington Plan. In fact, Wagner repeatedly focuses on the plan's problems with supplying unwanted materials or materials not deemed acceptable for a research collection.

Wagner devotes chapters 11 through 14 to outlining ARL-designed strategic plans for country and subject responsibilities. The Korean War brought on a revision of...