No. 7 March 1962
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VOL. 8 NO. 7 MARCH 1962 Senate Meeting March 28 to Hear Report on D. P. Controversy A lively discussion of the issues raised by the recent suspension of the Daily Pennsylvanian is expected at the next scheduled meeting of the Faculty Senate on Wednes- Library Begins Transfer day, March 28, at 1 P.M. in Room W-1 Dietrich Hall. Reports on this situation and on proposals for a drastic To New Quarters in Van Pelt revision of the structure of at undergraduate education the The task of 1,000,000 books University are the principal items on the moving approximately agenda. from the main University Library to the new Charles To bring the basic issues in the organization of under- Patterson Van Pelt Library at 3420 Walnut St. began on graduate education into focus, Dr. Reavis Cox, Professor March 5. of in the Wharton School, and Dr. Robert R. Marketing the two stand 350 feet Bush, Chairman and Professor of Psychology, have been Although buildings only apart, invited the Senate's Educational Affairs Committee to the process requires the services of a small fleet of moving by vans and will continue into June. Not introduce and support three sets of alternative resolutions, intermittently only at variance, for a of books but two complete rooms, including costly wooden considerably revamping undergraduate and are programs on this campus. The resolutions will be voted panelling skylights, being transferred. upon at the conclusion of the discussion, and the results When the transfer is completed, library collections will forwarded to the University Administration. have been drawn together from the main library and The resolutions, their subdivisions, and the way in several temporary repositories into a spacious eight-story, which they will be handled, follow: air-conditioned building with capacity for 1,500,000 books. I. Courses designed primarily for professional or voca- Employees of the Atlas Storage Co. began the job by tional preparation should be excluded from undergraduate packing and moving the 12,000 volumes of the Horace programs at this University; or, (2), they should not Howard Furness Memorial Library of Shakespeareana. occupy more than 25 percent of an undergraduate pro- These were followed by the 17,000 volumes of the Henry gram, preferably postponed to the fourth year; or, (3), Charles Lea Library of medieval history, and by the rare- they may amount to as much as 33 percent of the program. book collection of some 45,000 volumes and manuscripts. Afterward a small crew of woodworkers the Dr. Bush will support the first alternative and Dr. Cox began pains- the third. There will be no discussion of the admitted diffi- taking task of dismantling the Lea and Furness rooms and them on the sixth culty of classifying courses as "professional or vocational." re-assembling floor of the Van Pelt An expressed preference for non-professional courses Library. should be meaningful to the university administration, even While other books and equipment will be taken to though some problems of definition remain. Ultimately, a the new library until about April 30, nothing will be criterion of "professional" might have to be developed in moved during that time which will disrupt the academic case-by-case application by an on-going committee con- work of the University. The first or second week of May stantly reviewing course contents in various departments. will be spent in moving the preparations division, which It is recognized that some courses in the traditional hu- includes the acquisitions, cataloguing, serials and binding manities may well be considered professional in the sense departments. that they are oriented towards preparing teachers or The main will be closed from 14, two specialists in the field. library May days after the end of the present spring term, until May 21. II. The predominantly non-professional undergraduate Thus the closing will not cause inconvenience to students. education should consist of: While the library is closed, the reserve book department (1) Courses chosen by the student from appropriate will be moved so that it can go into operation at the (Continued on Page 3) (Continued on Page 2) 2 THE ALMANAC Dr. Harnwell Urges that U.S. Antiques Show for Hospital Collectors and dealers from Maine to Virginia will dis- Pay Indirect Research Cost play exhibits at the five-day University Hospital Antiques A strong plea for the adoption of a uniform govern- Show which will open Tuesday, April 24, at the 103d mental policy which would authorize the payment of in- Engineers Armory, 3215 Lancaster Ave. direct costs of Federally-sponsored research projects to The show, extending through Saturday, April 28, is colleges and universities was made by President Harnwell sponsored by University Hospital's Board of Women on March 5. Visitors, under the joint chairmanship of Mrs. Moreau Dr. Harnwell appeared as a spokesman for the Ameri- D. Brown of Haverford, Board President, and Mrs. can Council on Education at a hearing held by the sub- Donald M. Pillsbury of Bala-Cynwyd. Honorary chairman committee on the Departments of Labor and of Health, is Mrs. Thomas S. Gates of Chestnut Hill. on Education and Welfare of the House Committee The Hospital will benefit from proceeds of the affair, Appropriations. to which 51 selected dealers throughout the East have been In a prepared address to the committee, he pointed out invited to send their best offerings of Early American, and that a recent National Science Foundation study, as yet 18th and early 19th Century English and French furniture. doubt that, for lack of a uniform unpublished, "leaves no In addition to the dealers' displays, a loan exhibit is and equitable Federal policy on payment of indirect costs feature and universities, those being organized, to distinguished pieces of early of sponsored research in colleges American which are treasured in private institutions that undertake such are forced, on the antiques presently projects homes throughout the Delaware Valley. average, to pay almost one dollar of indirect cost for each dollar of reimbursement for indirect cost received from the Federal Government." This arises, Dr. Harnwell told the committee, in part Tikal Program on WFIL-TV from limitations imposed by Congress on such research One of the most dramatic and important programs in grants as those made by the National Institutes of Health. the University's "Frontiers of Knowledge" series will be Dr. Harnwell testified further that while the Department presented on WFIL-TV on Friday, March 30, from 7:30 of Defense has been meeting the full cost of research con- to 8 P.M. tracts at educational institutions, the National Science Entitled "Tikal: Ruins of Greatness," the program was Foundation and the U. S. Public Health Service have not- filmed by a "Frontiers" team amid the ruins of Tikal, the and that the size and number of these latter contracts have ancient Mayan city in the jungles of Guatemala, where a grown considerably in recent years. research team from University Museum has been at work Discussing the University of Pennsylvania's situation as restoring the thousand-year-old ruins since 1956. It is a an example, he added: record of the progress of their efforts. "At one time, funds from the National Institutes of Health a small of the total represented relatively portion LIBRARY support from outside sources, but by the year 1955-56 it had grown to 25 per cent of support from all Federal (Continued from Page 1) sources and by the year 1961-62 to 49 per cent of all of the summer session. The of the that same of time the total opening major portion Federal support. During period book stock will be moved to the new building by June 8. volume of sponsored research and research training from all Federal sources at Pennsylvania has increased from The undergraduate library on the ground floor of Van million in 1955-56 to $17.5 million in 1961-62. Pelt will open May 21. This section, with its own entrance, $6 During will contain a area and a that period the participation by the University in National reading special undergraduate Institutes of Health due to the limitation on in- book collection which will change from year to year to programs, abreast of new ideas, discoveries and direct cost recovery alone, has increased from $184,000 in keep undergraduates 1956-7 to $890,000 in 1961-62. It is a coincidence, but interpretations. the University's deficit in its operating budget for the last Monday, June 11, has been set tentatively as the first fiscal year very closely equals the amount of unrecovered day on which the new building will be open to the public. indirect costs from the National Institutes of Health." From then until June 22 the fifth floor will be prepared In conclusion Dr. Harnwell told the committee that for the Union Library Catalogue, now housed in Logan "universities are institutions that Hall. The Union Catalogue lists by author approximately patriotic recognize fully 6,000,000 volumes in 175 libraries in the their obligations to our country and its citizens, and they Philadelphia effort to secure resources from all area. It will be moved from June 25 to 27, marking com- make a major possible of the transfer. and appropriate sources for the conduct of their programs. pletion In the field of health they have been particularly assiduous The new library is named for the late Charles Patterson in assuming as large a burden of responsibility as they have Van Pelt, son of Dr. and Mrs. David Van Pelt of Rose- been able to carry. However, we are not acting in good mont, whose gift, together with contributions by Trustees faith with the citizens who come to us for their education and other friends of the University, made possible the if we permit our programs to be distorted in character or completion of the $5,000,000 structure, begun in June, debased in quality as a result of pressures to divert general 1960.