Western European Political Science: An Acquisition Study
April 15,1993

For the Association of Research Libraries by members of the ACRL/Western European Specialists Section, Subcommittee on the ARL Study. Barbara Walden, University of Minnesota (Chair); Charles Fineman, Northwestern University; William Monroe, Brown University; Mary Jane Parrine, Stanford University

Abstract: National bibliographies from 1990 for France, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Iceland, and Catalonia formed the basis for a study of U.S and Canadian acquisitions in the field of Western European political science materials. Of the materials deemed important to be available in at least one research library in the United States or Canada, 15% of French, 30% of Italian,55% of Swedish, 19% of Catalan, 75% of Icelandic and 57% of Belgian materials were not found in a search of RLIN and OCLC. The citations were further examined for patterns of ownership and it was found that in some cases traditional collecting patterns and agreements still seemed to be functioning to bring some materials into libraries, but in other cases a lack or decline of traditional commitments meant that these countries were particularly underrepresented in research library collections. Factors in addition to acquisition funding were identified as important in providing for adequate collecting levels: these include adequate staff in collection development and acquisitions, as well attention to cataloging these materials and making information about their availability accessible via the national utilities.

Origins of the study:

In 1992 the Western European Specialists Section (WESS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries was approached by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) with a request for assistance in a major grant-funded project to study the acquisition and availability of foreign materials in American research libraries. The ARL hoped to work with both library and scholarly area-study and other groups with a stake in the availablity of foreign materials from around the world in American and Canadian libraries. A subcommittee of the Research and Planning Committee of the Western European Specialists Section was appointed to work with the ARL on this project. The preliminary report of this subcommittee (March 26, 1992) noted the linguistic and geographic diversity of Western Europe and its diverse book trade. It noted that Western European acquisitions tend to be taken for granted in many large libraries and thus have possibly not received the study and attention given to other areas where acquisitions is perceived to be more difficult. The tendency of libraries to fold Western European acquistions into general acquisitions makes it difficult to study and quantify trends in this area, also. The authors of the report also noted an increasing demand among scholars for non-book materials as well as for current materials, including so-called "gray literature" in the social sciences. One recommendation of this report was the suggestion that an attempt be made to look at library acquistions in an area of the social sciences where current information is essential and where there has been increasing interest by scholars in the United States and Canada. Political science was suggested as a potential topic for further study. This suggestion was accepted, and the subcommittee was asked to design and execute a study of recent acquisitions in political science, with the cooperation and assistance of the ARL. (Another recommended study, the checking of citations from a major recent European monograph to determine whether this monograph could have been written in the United States using these resources, has also been begun. An additional recommendation, that Germany be chosen as a country for in-depth scrutiny of trends in the book trade and American library acquistions was also accepted, Work on this project by another group is currently under way.)

Methodology:

Citations were collected from the political science sections of the 1990 national bibliographies of Belgium, France, Italy, Sweden, Iceland and Catalonia. In each case, the items selected were only those which subcommittee members, as knowledgeable bibliographers, considered to be suitable for the collections of a large research library. Due to the differences in the individual national bibliographies, other considerations, noted below, also were taken into account. In all, there were some 704 citations: 319 French, 144 Italian, 133 Belgian, 68 Swedish, 32 Catalan and 8 Icelandic. Mary Jane Parrine was responsible for the French and Italian selections, Charles Fineman created the set of Icelandic and Catalan items, William Monroe made the first pass through the Belgian national bibliography and Barbara Walden did the Swedish national bibliography and the second pass through the Belgian national bibliography and served as editor and gatekeeper for the others. This set of citations was then searched in both OCLC and RLIN. This searching was carried out by Anastasia Leshinsky of Harvard University. Items discovered to be held in no locations were noted especially, as were those in only one location, in order to see if items little-held were clustered in any particular instituions. Ms. Leshinsky also printed out the complete lists of locations for items found so it was possible to check further for clustering of lesser-held materials in individual institutions and to note which, if any, items were widely held.

Results:

To summarize the results briefly, of the items listed in BNF (the French national bibliography)--15% were not listed as being held anywhere (ie. not found in OCLC/RLIN)(In actual numbers 49 out of a total of 318 were not held anywhere). Italian National Bibliography--30% were not held anywhere (44 of 144); Swedish-- 55% not held anywhere (37 of 68); Catalan--19% not found anywhere 6 of 32); Icelandic--75% not held anywhere (6 of 8); Belgian--57% not found anywhere (74 of 133). Those found in only one location did not always cluster at such expected institutions as the Library of Congress, although this tended to vary among the countries examined. A more detailed discussion of the methods and results follows.

FRENCH AND ITALIAN POLITICAL SCIENCE

General comments:

The study has contributed useful information, even with a few qualifications that should be mentioned. Among the limitations are the relatively narrow range of titles that could be checked, the difficult bibliographic access of some works listed, idiosyncracies of the national bibliographies, and the fact that the national databases, notably RLIN, are significantly behind in the entry of new acquisitions. The observations noted below represent a subjective overview of findings, reflecting personal views and consutation with Stanford colleagues in Western European collection development, Agnes Peterson (Hoover Institution), David Rozkuszka (Foreign Documents Librarian and Head of Government Documents), and Anthony Angiletta (Director of Collections).

For French studies, the statistics indicate that of a rather large sampling (318), about 15% are neither in OCLC nor RLIN. An additional 6% are held at only one location. Though almost half of the titles held at one location are found at the Library of Congress, the others are each held by different institutions. This indicates deficiencies in our collections, but is not as clear a reading as might be possible with a fuller study. In Italian studies, the findings are more striking: of a smaller sample (144), around 30% were not held in either database. Only 3% are held at just one location, and of these only one is at the Library of Congress. Because the Bibliografia Nazionale Italiana is more selective and its titles more representative of larger categories, the types of materials not held are more worrisome. The size of the sampling represents a relatively modest cross section of publishing in the field, which ranges all over the list of subjects in yearly publishing records. For France, this can be seen in the "Resultats par categories de livres," in the yearly Edition des Livres en France. In that list, political science may be found in sections of "politique," "rapportage," and "documentation." The same may be said for Italian coverage, though the yearly statistical records are not as amenable to subject analysis.

Even within the national bibliographies the sample is artificially low, covering only a segment of titles that might be included in the field. In both national bibliographies, checking of the area "politique" (section 32 in the BNF) or "scienze politiche" (beginning with section "320 lo stato" in the BNI) leaves out larger categories such as economics and law that would need to be considered in a full analysis of this large field. Thus to estimate titles needed it would be necessary to assume an increase of perhaps 20% beyond the numbers found in these limited sections of the national bibliographies.

It is difficult to estimate total costs of obtaining all relevant titles on political science published in France and Italy. If we use just the titles identified in the stated sections of the 1990 national bibliographies and extrapolate total figures based on items that would be selected in three sample months, the totals would be approximately 348 French titles per year, or about $12,188 and approximately 204 Italian titles per year at about $7,140. Both of these figures would probably need to be adjusted upward by 20% to take other relevant publications into account.

CHARACTERISTICS OF TITLES NOT HELD:

General:

For both French and Italian studies there is poor coverage of the following areas: local administration, elections, unions, non-mainstream political parties, and memoirs of individual politicians. In both areas, dates of publications indicate that many would be out-of-print or very difficult to obtain by the time they appear in the national bibliographies, though this is more significant for Italian titles. In any case, these characteristics are somewhat provisional, since they cover only a segment of publications in political science.

French:

Of the titles not found, about 76% are mainstream, useful works, while 7 or 8 are of particular interest and 3 of marginal value. An abbreviated list of items not found shows several global studies, i.e. comparative or general studies of politics that may fall between selectors' areas, and several studies on non-European areas, mainly Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as studies of Eastern European politics. This indicates that we are doing well with area-specific selections in French studies, but not as well with French publications on other parts of the world.

Government publications are not well covered (ca. 10 of 44 titles not found). But these are very difficult to check in a quick project. Many of them may very well be found eventually, accessible only through alternate series titles or complex corporate entries that do not match citations in the BNF. This is true especially of the many gaps in publications on the "Cabinets minist‚riels" and in the various collections of Michel Rocard's papers published by Tristan Mage. And for a thorough study of U.S.holdings on French politics, it would be necessary to use other sources than the BNF. One of the most crucial would be lists from Documentation Fran‡aise, which selects and organizes official publications. Other catalogues or lists would also be preferable to the hit-or-miss coverage of the BNF, notably those of the CNRS,INSEE, ORSTOM, and the Imprimerie Nationale. The problem with the BNF alone is that it includes too much marginal government material that might not be as essential as titles that are filtered through main official publishing agencies. But for a sense of what is published, especially at the local level, the BNF is still worth checking.

Italian:

About 80% of the titles not found are solid, mainstream materials. Six are of particular value, while 3-4 could be termed marginal. The titles not held tend to be of more potential scholarly use than the comparable group of French titles. While the BNI is virtually useless now as a selection source for current publications, it is helpful as an evaluative measure, since its coverage is more focused than the expansive BNF. Of the titles not found, the majority are on Italian politics, rather than on general questions. They include memoirs of deputies and other government officials, local history, and statements of political parties. Among the titles of particular interest are a study on women in parliament, a history of the Partito Liberale, a guide to university departments of political science, a German/Italian study on the European space program, and a published speech by Norberto Bobbio, the doyen of Italian political theory, on effects of the French Revolution.

COSTS AND THE MARGIN OF DISTINCTION

Though it is impossible to assign exact costs to lists of titles not found, some general observations can be made. Using 1990 prices and the exchange rate of Feb.12, 1993 (1542 L/$; 5.61 F/$), the prices of these materials would not be substantial. They would of course be higher now due to inflation, possibly up 10 to 15%. Using the small group of titles that could be considered of greatest interest,8 identified French titles would total 661.5 F, or $118; 6 identified Italian titles would cost about 103,000 lire, or $67. The entire list of French items not found would cost approximately $1,800 to acquire, the Italian list, about $446 (the Italian should be perhaps $1,500, but the listed prices are artificially low). Adding the items held in only one location would add about $350 and $150 respectively.

But the prices of these books, even with their inflationary increase for the current year, are not the key factor in determining cost. In many cases the missing items may be termed "gray literature", or alternative publishing that must be acquired through correspondence or direct contact with authors or publishers rather than through regular acquistions methods. In all cases they are obtained through the careful attention of selectors who must spend a growing proportion of their time scanning larger ranges of selection sources and through specialized technical processing that assures timely acquistion and access. Thus the total cost must be seem in the context of staff effort and commitment, a consideration to be underscored at the end of this study.

BELGIAN POLITICAL SCIENCE:

The Belgian National Bibliography (Belgische Bibliografie/ Bibliographie de Belgique) is all-encompassing. It includes many small internal publications and much "gray literature"-- publications of societies and institutes not part of the book trade--as well as government materials and major trade publications. The political science section is defined as "political economy" and includes information on banking,sociology,finance, and economics as well as politics and political affairs. For purposes of the study, items on internal banking and finance,public administration, economics, and some of the sociology materials were eliminated. Publications on international business were included. Also eliminated were theses, publications less than 50 pages published as part of a series, offprints, sections, chapters (i.e. less than whole works), non-Belgian imprints, translations from other languages into Flemish (for materials published in both French and Flemish, French was chosen),government publications not likely to be cataloged by owning libraries, and publications not suited to academic or research libraries.

Of 133 items selected, 74 (57%) were not in OCLC/RLIN. An additional 13 items (10%)were only found in one location. A significant proportion of the items not found appeared to be fairly substantial monographs published by political institutes and organizations (i.e., "gray" literature.), as well as trade publications. Of the items found in only one location,the Library of Congress was the owning institution in most cases and also was the most frequently-reported owning institution in cases where fewer than 5 owning institutions were reported. Flemish- language materials were a large proportion of the items not found, a point perhaps worthy of additional attention in view of the political volatility of the linguistic question in Belgium.

Major concentrations of Belgian holdings:

DLC 47 (15 unique)
MH 24
InU 12 (4 unique)
CU 11
ViU 11
CLU 10
NjP 10
WU 9

No other library held more than 5 titles (IU and MiU held 5). Only two other libraries held unique titles, with one each. Overall, the holdings were shared by at least 89 libraries, with 36 holding more than one of the titles. Many of these titles could also be considered twentieth-century history. If these results are compared with the RLG Conspectus for History, two libraries indicating collecting levels of 4/4 for twentieth- century Belgian history (CtY and CSt) held only one each of the titles. NN held only three of the titles.

While not definitive, these results do seem to indicate that materials from Belgium are in need of systematic attention within the community of large research libraries, perhaps with one institution taking the lead in collecting these materials and assigning staff and funding for coverage. Unlike Swedish and Catalan, Belgian materials are not the object of special interest in one or several libraries, and so are relatively poorly covered. Further, the tradition of coverage of Belgium by linguistic specialists concentrating either on Romance or Germanic-language materials may not be the best arrangement for a country where the linguistic boundaries result in little cooperation among its people. When these linguistic groups are themselves at odds within the country, it seems more advisable for coverage within the library not to be split.

To purchase all of the materials which were not found in OCLC/RLIN would cost, at the exchange rate of February 16, 1993, 29,163. Belgian francs or $ 869 (BEF = $.03002). Inflation would probably bring the actual cost to around $1000. Since the actual costs of purchasing the materials not found was not high, these data would seem to suggest that other factors also play a role in non-acquisition of Belgian materials.

Examples of titles not found:

Les actions positives en faveur des femmes en Europe occidentale. Bruxelles, Institut syndical europ‚en, 1989. 109 p., diagr., tab. (Rapports/Institut syndical europ‚en, 35).

Cobbaut, Willy, Het fatale dwangdenken, Baardegem bij Aalst, Boekenactie Alternatief, 1988. 367 p.

Contactgroepen humane en politieke wetenschappen. Brussel, Nationaal Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, 1986.

Coppe, Michel. Les travailleurs aussi fabriquent l'histoire de la FN. LiŠge, Fondation Andr‚ Renard, 1989. 111 p.

Deboeure, Sylvia. Socialistische vrouwen uit het Antwerpse/ research en teksten. Berchem, FRESIA, 1986.

De Landtsheer, Christ'l. De politieke tal in de Vlaamse media. Deurne, Kluwer, 1987. xvii,121p. (Kluwer politieke bibliothek)

Delestienne, Paul. Questions approfondies relatives … la d‚claration … l'imp“t des soci‚t‚s et la declaration a l'impot des non-residents societes. Bruxelles, Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1988-1989. 220 p. (no edition found)

De Schuyter, Inge. Geschiedenis van het Belgisch liberalisme, 1830-1987: een selectieve bibliografie. Gent, Liberaal Archief, 1989. 76 p. (Reeks Bibliographieen, 2)

Diagnostics: enjeux sociaux et politiques en Belgique. Bruxelles, CIACO, 1989. 296 p.

Fonteyn, Guido. De nieuwe Walen: met een inleiding over het Belgisch model. Tielt, Lannoo, 1988. 143 p.

Frauenfordermassnahmen in Westeuropa. Brussel, Europaisches Gewerkschaftsinstitut, 1989. 116 p.

SWEDISH POLITICAL SCIENCE:

The Swedish national bibliography (Svensk Bokf”rteckning) divides political science into components including international relations, internal politics, public administration,general political science and politics,and political party publications. Entries follow AACR-2 conventions and are accurate and thorough. Publications of less than 14 pages are excluded, as are offprints and sections of larger publications, and purely internal materials. Gray literature such as publications of scholarly institutions is included. For purposes of this study, entries were selected from the sections on international relations, internal politics, and general political science and politics. Excluded were theses, small items in a larger series which did not appear likely to be separately cataloged by American libraries,items designated by the national bibliography as 'non- Swedish imprints,'and items judged not to be of interest to academic or research libraries.

68 items were selected. Of these 37 (55%) were not found in RLIN or OCLC. An additional 6 (8%) were found in only one location. Items with more than 5 owning institutions were almost exclusively English-language materials. Items not found included journalistic accounts, trade publications, and "gray" literature. Of items with only one location, no one institution emerged where materials clustered. For items with few locations or only one location, a group of institutions emerged as owners of these items: University of Washington, Harvard University, University of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota, University of Indiana, the Library of Congress. These are, for the most part, institutions with Scandinavian area specialists and established programs of Scandinavian acquisitions. These findings seem to suggest that additional attention to Scandinavian materials in institutions where they are already systematically collected might be a successful strategy for improving coverage of these materials. In a subsequent consultation Mariann Tiblin, Scandinavian Area Studies Librarian at the University of Minnesota, attested to the usefulness and completeness of the Swedish national bibliography as a tool for collection development. She noted that informal cooperative acquisitions arrangements have been begun among Scandinavianist librarians, and observed that many of the difficulties in this area arise not solely from lack of funding for acquistions, but also from declining availability of support staff and increasing pressure for the time of the area studies librarians to be spent outside of selection and collection development. Cataloging and making these foreign-language materials accessible is also of concern.

Prices were not available for some of the items not found; however most did have price information. The total price for all items not found in OCLC/RLIN was Kr.3,890.00, or US $535.00 at the exchange rates of February 16, 1992 (KR = $.1372). Inflation would probably make today's prices closer to $800.00.

Examples of titles not found:

60 ar for freden:Svenska FN-forbundet och dess foregangare 1929-1989/ redaktor Lars. Eriksson. Stockholm, Svenska FN-forb., 1990. 136 p.

Axelsson, Elsie, Tumma inte pa demokratin! om seniors ratt att delta i politisk beslut: redovisning av en undersokning i 74 kommuner. Jarfalla, REKO, 1990. 107 p. tab.

Bohlin, Alf. Offentlighetsprincipen. Stockholm, Juristforl.,1990. 166 p.

Dahlen, Marianne. Europeisk union: framvaxten av ett enat Europa. Uppsala, Iustus, 1990. 72 p.

The Great peace journey/le grand voyage de paix/den stora fredsresan...Stockholm, Great Peace Journey, 1989. 112 p.

Holstad, Sigvard. Sekretess i allman verksamhet: en vagledning till de grundlaggande regierna i tryckfrihetsforordningen och sekretesslagen. Stockholm, Allmanna forl. 1990. 236 p.

Martinez Wilson, Fernando. Den antarktiska problematiken. Stockholm, Editorial Latinoamericana, 1989. 66 p.

Nordic development studies: handbook 1990. Compiled and edited by Joran Carlsson. Goteborg, Nordic working Group for Development Studies (NORDDEV), 1990. 154 p.

Palme, Susanne. Hemliga krigare: om USA's militarstrategi i tredje varlden. Stockholm, Brevskolan, cop.1989. 108 p.

Petersson, Olof. Makten over tanken: en bok om det svenska massmediesmahallet. Stockholm, Carlsson, 1990. 247 p.

En varld utan vapen: nedrustningspolitken i brytningsskede; en historisk dokumentation. Stockholm, Arbetsgruppen for Svensk folkriksdag for nedrustning, 1990. 468 p.

CATALAN POLTICAL SCIENCE :

The data from the Catalan-language sample are most encouraging, even unexpectedly brilliant. When one considers that the Catalan language is still not widely taught at U.S. universities, the finding that a very high percentage of titles in the national bibliography sample are held somewhere in the U. S. gives one hope that knowledgeable selectors working at institutions which give them adequate financial leeway to make decisions, together with faculties that know their field and keep up on current developments in research and publishing will, almost on their own, acquire foreign language research materials in quantities adequate to support present and future needs.

The cost of covering this subject area for this language for the year under review even more exhaustively would have been a modest U.S. $85.00 (estimated); most of the six titles not held anywhere in the U.S. appear to be of the highest priority. With regard to the emerging national map of foreign-language resources, the biggest Catalan-language collections, not surprisingly, appear to be those at (in descending order of importance): the Library of Congress, the University of California-San Diego, the New York Public Library, Harvard, and the University of California-Berkeley. With regard to institutions holding significant numbers of Catalan-language materials in this area, the pattern with regard to issues such as geographic spread, mix between public and private, etc., would appear to be healthy. Twenty-two other institutions shared some of the other titles. In this area, at least, existing arrangements and understandings, coupled (especially in the case of the University of California-San Diego) with historic collecting strengths, appear to be working to the benefit of the research community.

Publishing in the Catalan language in this area will continue to be brisk. The specific areas covered will of course concentrate on Catalonian and Spanish issues, but there is also a very clear emerging Euro-focus to some of the titles which, one suspects, will only grow with time and further European integration.

ICELANDIC POLITICAL SCIENCE:

The subcommittee member responsible for looking at the Icelandic data wishes first to express his thanks to Andrea Johannsd¢ttir and her colleagues of the library at H skoli þslands for their invaluable assistance in providing price information and other needed background.

This was the smallest sample taken for this segment of the study, yet it adequately reflects the publishing patterns in this very small publishing universe. The results, insofar as it is prudent to extrapolate from them, are not reassuring in terms of national-level cooperation and planning in the area of collections on less-studied areas. The Library of Congress was the only institution reporting any holdings of any of the titles in this sample. A subsequent inquiry at the Fiske Collection at Cornell which has traditionally been a mainstay of Icelandic collecting uncovered one title in its uncataloged backlog.

Cost of materials is clearly not the issue with Iceland, even if locally the rate of inflation in the cost of books is quite wild and unpredictable. It would have cost only U.S. $110 to acquire the six titles in the sample not held anywhere in the U.S., and at least two of these six were, roughly speaking, government publications which would have been available for free upon request to the appropriate office of Parliament. What has now come to be labelled the North Atlantic area of Western Europe (i.e. Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland) is poorly represented in U.S. collections today. The three indigenous languages are small and (generally speaking) little studied except by specialists, yet despite poor current economic conditions, publishing there is fairly active. Whether in the post-cold war environment this area can again be seen as having strategic importance for the U.S. is still a debatable point; where research libraries are concerned, the most modest of efforts would certainly be repaid.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS:

There is cause for concern about materials from larger areas such as France and Italy, and smaller areas such as Iceland, as well as some pleasant surprises as in the case of Catalan. In the case of both Catalan and Swedish, there is some indication that the work of a few institutions is providing some national support for collections. In the case of Belgium and Iceland, the Library of Congress seems currently to be the only national support for in-depth collecting. It is striking that the dollar amount needed for acquisition of additional materials in political science is relatively small. However, it does seem unwise to infer from this that little additional acquistions funding is needed to bring library collections up to desirable levels; it should be remembered that this study involved a deliberately small sampling of one subject for one year. Nevertheless, this brief study would seem to indicate that other factors are also important. These too involve funding and a choice of priorities.

Rather than consider price alone, the crucial factor is the whole range of costs involved in acquiring material. Here, the importance of committed staff is essential. This means both quantity and quality of selectors and their support staff, as well as institutional commitment to insure full use of staff to obtain material that goes beyond a minimal or basic level of collecting. Without that commitment, we will never be able to reach the margin of distinction exemplified by the group of titles that are not held in either of the national databases.

As the subcommittee described its work at meetings of the Western European Specialists Section, two additional areas of concern surfaced. These were: cataloging backlogs and the national utilities. Questions of the availability of uncataloged materials were not addressed by this study, yet several WESS members voiced concerns that some of the unlocated or underreported items might actually be owned but not yet cataloged by owning libraries, or not yet reported to national utilities. Further inquiries at libraries expected to own some of these materials did in fact turn up a few additional holdings in cataloging backlogs, but for each country the numbers were not large enough to change the original results substantially; generally between one and three additonal items were discovered.

Some collection development librarians also reported "selection backlogs" as the press of other duties brought selection of current materials ever more into arrears. These cataloging and selection backlogs involve the major countries and languages of Western Europe, not just smaller ones or those perceived as marginal.

The function of the bibliographic utilities as bearers of information for the scholarly community in the age of the Internet also impinges on these questions of availability and access. Perhaps it is time to take a closer look at the national databases: how can they be improved to indicate a fuller range of what is in U.S. libraries? There appears to be a need for better access in both national and local consortia. It seems unwise to put too much weight on the move toward Internet access to individual OPACs without also improving the larger networks. Authority control is an important part of this, especially as libraries increasingly treat foreign language material with minimal or intermediate level cataloging.

The Internet does offer some new possibilities for access to European databases. For France, for example, can we save by using Questel and Francis, as well as the BNF and other catalogues on CD-ROM? Even MINITEL may eventually save us from acquiring some lesser-used French publications that might be provided, on demand, for our clients. This would require dealing with the issues of access to information, delivery of materials, and commitment to collecting in assigned fields on an international as well as a national level.

Yet there are some encouraging signs also. Informal or traditional arrangements in Swedish and Catalan,for example, still seem to be acting to make these materials available, although not at levels sufficient to encourage complacency. It would be well to build on and nurture such existing arrangements for smaller areas, and perhaps to create some new ones for areas not yet covered and to revive old ones which have fallen away. As recent tragic events in Europe suggest, no force on that continent is at present more potent or has a greater destabilizing potential than nationalism. Here is a lesson for librarians concerned about our country's ability to document all facets of Western Europe, and an indicator of the need to be concerned with publishing in the so-called "smaller" or minority languages of Western Europe. The example of Catalan is, in this respect, almost atypical: publishing in the Catalan language flourishes because cultural, political, and economic arrangements have been peacefully made within the Spanish state to accommodate a language with a large speaker base and permit its manifestations, publishing among them, to flourish. While the case of Basque is less spectacular, progress has been made, though in the United States only one institution is on record with a commitment to collecting materials in Basque and making them available to researchers. Comparatively little attention has been paid to materials appearing in languages such as Irish and Scots Gaelic, Raeto-Romance, Gallegan, Sami, Frisian, Low German, or Occitan. The relative non-availability of Flemish political science materials was noted in the Belgian study. Some of this material is elusive and would require special labor before libraries could identify and acquire it. Thus we may also need to revive the issue of primary collecting responsibilities. A better version of the RLG program and the Farmington plan needs to be formulated, one that incorporates both funding and staffing commitments.

It is clear that attention must be paid both to the large Western European publishing areas, such as French-language materials, and to languages and book trades which are less well- known. Strategies for both of these areas may vary, but both involve commitments and priorities in addition to acquistions funding alone.