0.9 Chapter seven: retrenchment and the struggle for survival, 19  (Page 16/20)

Negotiations between NYU and the Society continued through July, and on August 1, 1993, the Society and NYU agreed to a one-year partnership for NYU to manage the Society's library. Under the agreement, the Society would pay NYU a monthly fee for consulting services to be provided by NYU's library staff. Savings attained by not hiring a librarian and through economies of scale would allow the Society's library to be open five days a week again beginning Septem­ber 1. In addition, NYU agreed to load the Society's electronic catalog (forty thou­sand records) into the system at NYU, which was part of a more widely used network that would make this portion of the Society's collections accessible to scholars all over the world. NYU also agreed to oversee all acquisitions, process­ing, and cataloging for the Society and to begin work on the Society's cataloging backlog. In an article that appeared in the New York Times, Wilbur Ross said he be­lieved the Society could "do all this at 14 percent less cost [for five days]than when we were operating three days a week."

Both the Society and NYU were hopeful that their initial arrangement might evolve into a more permanent affiliation. There were obviously advantages for the Society in associating itself with a financially stable institution. In addition, the potential benefits to NYU were also significant. The opportunity to merge its American history collections, which are strong in late-nineteenth-century and twentieth-century materials, with one that is truly distinctive in the earlier period would strengthen NYU's research capacity in the humanities. Moreover, the linkage of the NYU and N-YHS libraries would help NYU's library qualify as a "collection of record," enhancing its prospects for grants from government funding agencies.

In September, little over a month into the arrangement, NYU's library staff was finding the job of managing the library far more difficult than expected. First, upon closer inspection, Rochell and his staff were surprised by the general con­dition of the Society library's holdings. Surveys of the shelves revealed that many items on the shelves were not only uncataloged but also not even property stamped. Furthermore, bibliographic information about volumes that had been duly recorded and cataloged was likely to be included in any of seven different catalogs. This made it impossible to provide services to scholars in an efficient manner.

In addition to the concerns regarding the collections, Rochell had also be­come embroiled in the long-running territorial battle between the library and the museum. In this battle, there were two primary matters of contention: (1) the determination of what were museum and what were library collections, the pri­mary question being whether the prints, photographs, and architectural drawings ought to be considered part of the museum or the library, and (2) the relative allocation of space to the museum and to the library in the capital renovations. Rochell saw it as NYU's responsibility to defend the interests of the library col­lections, and he considered those interests to be threatened.