Coop Get Tough On Professors?

The Coop would really like to have all your textbooks on the shelves all the time, its officials insist.

The reason it doesn't, they explain, is that many professors won't cooperate. They don't make up their reading lists until the last minute; they don't tell the Coop when more people show up for a course than expected or when they drop the name of a new book in lecture.

So this spring, after years of nothing but friendly persuasion, the Coop wants to try getting tough.

It plans to tell professors in mid-April that it wants their Fall reading lists within ten days. Those who miss the deadline will get a reminder, followed two weeks later by another. Then department heads will be asked to get after the professors the Coop still hasn't heard from.

Coop officials will ask Dean Monro and John P. Elder, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, to approve the plan next week.

If it's approved, and if it works, all the books would be on the shelves before the term begins, and the textbook department could spend its time adjusting for course enrollments and last-minute changes.

"We're taking quite a risk," says Al Zavelle, the Coop's new merchandising manager. "If we put on all this pressure and then the books aren't there, we'll be in for a lot of criticism. But I'm sure we can do it."

One reason for his confidence is that Edward T. Wilcox, director of general education, has volunteered to supply reading lists for all Gen Ed courses.

Wilcox called the Coop last spring, offering to round up the reading lists if the textbook department promised to supply the books on time and help get desk copies for section men.

Wilcox Offer

In fact, Wilcox's offer came as the Coop was looking for a way to make sure that the textbook shortage of Fall, 1965--the worst shortage in the Coop's history--wouldn't be repeated. Arnold Swenson, former manager of the Columbia University book store, had been hired in January as a sort of ambassador to the Harvard Faculty. But he was seriously ill all spring.

Thanks to Wilcox, and thanks to the larger shelves in the Coop's new annex (previously, in the height of the buying rush, books had lain for days in Coop storage rooms), Coop officials estimate that the textbook shortage hasn't got above 15 per cent this term. Last year, there were times when 30 per cent of the books were missing.

But, as every student knows, the text book supply is still sporadic in many courses. Zavelle, who formerly ran the Coop's M.I.T. bookstore, thinks the Coop's new plan will reduce the shortage further. When it was tried out at M.I.T., he said, every single book was on the shelves at the start of classes.

"And we didn't lose any friends," he said. "The professors recognize that it's part of their responsibility to help students get books, and that it's easier to teach when they have them."