A History of the Farmington Plan

In 1942 the Executive Committee of the Librarian’s Consultants decided to acquire copies of books worldwide that would be of interest to researchers in the US, making them available in libraries throughout the country. This was the Farmington Plan. In 1972, nearly a decade after a two-year investigation revealed the project was failing, the plan was abandoned. However, a few other plans, associated with the Farmington Plan, carried on similar endeavours. A chance encounter with a long forgotten copy of The Farmington Plan Handbook led Ralph Wagner to investigate the most famous failed experiment on library cooperation . This text covers the plan’s shortcomings and achievements. It is at once three histories - the history of the 1942 Farmington proposal, the history of foreign acquisitions programmes created by the Association of Research Libraries, and the history of the term itself and the numerous connotations attached to it.