Coop Admits Text Shortage Exists

The Harvard Cooperative Society yesterday admitted that this year it had the most critical shortage of textbooks in its recent history and promised to take immediate steps to correct the problem.

Stanley F. Teele, Coop president, told the annual membership meeting that Arnold Swenson, a 24-year director of the Columbia University bookstore, has been named director of the Coop's book department. In an interview last night, Swenson pledged to take action by next fall to end the recurring book shortages.

Teele offered no objection at the meeting to a Harvard Undergraduate Council statement protesting "the astonishing inadequacy in the number of textbooks available." "The textbook situation isn't good and there's no point in minimizing it," he said.

But he insisted that most of the empty space on Coop shelves is due to late information--or lack of any information--from professors.

"Certain faculty members are naturally lazy," John G. Morrill, Coop general manager, said. "We usually don't have problems with more than ten or fifteen per cent of them, but this turned out to be the worst year we've ever had."

According to Morrill, book lists for a quarter of the courses being offered this term were still missing Sept. 24, three days before the beginning of classes--even though all professors received a Coop order form last May. Several of the missing lists were for large lower-level courses, he added.

Swenson, who will assume his new post Jan. 1, said last night that he plans to spend a great deal of time speaking and writing to professors. "I think that establishing personal contacts will go a long way toward solving the problem," he explained.

The Columbia bookstore receives all textbook orders through department chairmen and has almost no shortage problem, Swenson said. The Coop textbook staff frequently asks department heads for help in obtaining book lists, but it is often referred back to the individual professors.

Swenson said he is also confident that the Coop can find a fairly accurate way of estimating class sizes in advance. This term the Coop ordered too few books for about 15 per cent of the courses.

At the meeting, Morrill explained that the high cost of keeping--or of returning--an unsold textbook forces the Coop to rely heavily on previous years' enrollment figures and book sales. "All we can hope to do is cut our shortages down to 10 per cent," he said.

Morill agreed to meet Nov. 3 with members of HCC to go over the textbook problem--and to discuss an HUC suggestion that the Coop call on graduate students and teaching fellows to keep it informed about course book lists.

Few Attend Meeting

The textbook discussion was the only lengthy one of the meeting, attended by 25 Coop members, 13 of whom were officers and directors. A student who asked whether the Coop's expansion would some day threaten his patronage refund was quickly assured that the interests of Coop members would receive full attention.

Morrill said yesterday that there will probably be no change in the current refund rate of 8 per cent on charge purchases and 10 per cent on cash purchases until next July, when the Coop's Palmer Street annex will be completed. A cut of less than one per cent "will be a very slight possibility at that time," he added.

Missing from the meeting was Sheldon Diets '41, who had planned to attend in order to continue his fight against the new annex. At the time of the meeting, Diets was swearing out an affidavit about the alleged inadequacy of the Coop annex loading facilities.