College and Research Libraries


a description and outlines of the curriculum 
as it existed in 1941. On the bases of these 
outlines, a series of objectives for each course 
was listed and graduates were questioned as 
to their feeling that the objectives had been 
attained. The percentage of graduates re-
porting high attainment of objectives in the 
college field was smaller than that in other 
fields. It occurs to the reviewer that this 
may be in part due to the fact that philosophy 
and practices in the college library field are 
less standardized and less tangible than in 
other fields. 

Students were asked also to rate instruc-
tional methods. The class lecture was con-
sidered the most effective learning activity for 
the attainment of nearly 75 per cent of the 
objectives listed. Required problems as an 
activity scored 16 per cent, and required 
reading 10. Voluntary reading and class dis-
cussion were rated relatively low. In no case 
was experience in the field rated as of more 
value than courses, in attaining objectives. 

On the basis of these findings and of further 
discussion and study, several outlines were 
radically modified, including the course in 
college and library administration and a 
course in problems of college teaching. The 
administration course is broken up into less 
of a grand logical plan and more of a group 
of wieldy units. Some of the materials of 
the second course, formerly "Selection of Ma-
terials for Higher Education," have been put 
into administration, while the title has been 
changed to "Problems of College Teaching." 
The reviewer is personally quite pleased to 
see this added emphasis on higher education 
as the field in which the college librarian 
must serve. 

Included in the final section is a discussion 
of the place of practice work and the diffi-
culties in arranging practice work to the 
mutual advantage of student and library, and 
a plea for further integration of program and 
staff with the joint university libraries.— 
Charles F. Gosnell. 

Influences on A m e r i c a n C u l t u r e 

Foreign Influence in American Life; Essays 
and Critical Bibliographies. Ed. by David 
F. Bowers. Princeton, Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1944. ix, 254P. $3. 
Despite every effort to advance national 

unity, particularly in the early days of the 
republic, through the achievement of cultural 
independence, American life in almost all of 
its phases, economic, political, and social, has 
always been fundamentally derivative. This 
does not mean that the milieu of the new 
world has not molded, and in many instances 
substantially altered, the imported cultural 
patterns. But the fact still remains that 
American culture, as we know it today, for 
all of our desire to consider it indigenous or 
at least strong in "native" elements, is still 
a borrowed culture. Our social mores, po-
litical objectives, economic patterns, and ar-
tistic and literary forms have been brought 
to this, continent by the successive waves of 
immigration that, throughout the last three 
centuries, have battered the Atlantic seaboard. 
Furthermore, it is important to remember 
that here is represented the contact of cul-

tures which were often dissimilar. In this 
new environment unfamiliar groups met, dis-
covered each other, and joined in a hard 
relationship that necessarily resulted in either 
acculturation or conflict. As such, the quali-
ties of the environment subtly conditioned the 
forces involved and frequently exercised a de-
termining influence upon their evolution. 
Therefore, because of its complexity, the 
problem of evaluating the foreign influences in 
America presents an especially difficult task 
and one which has hardly yet been touched. 

Between 1820 and 1930 no less than thirty-
eight million immigrants arrived in the 
United States, and to survey in eight short 
lectures the impact upon American institu-
tions of these mass population movements 
would be manifestly impossible. Recognizing 
that such a treatment can have no pretense 
to finality, the editor of the volume here re-
viewed speaks with a disarming candor of his 
objectives: "to seek merely to define the prob-
lem, to describe the basic forms of cultural 
impact and assimilation, to trace something 
of their history in American life, and to sur-

JANUARY, 1946 95 



vey or illustrate their more manifest effects" 
(p. vi). He frankly admits that, even when 
attention is confined largely to the nineteenth 
century, as is here the case, one can do no 
more than be selective, and in some measure 
quite arbitrary, but there has been a real 
endeavor to choose topics of a representative 
character. 

Accordingly, the first half of the book con-
sists of eight lectures, each of which, except 
for the introductory essay which is a general 
survey by the editor himself, treats of some 
specific phase of the problem. Stow Pear-
sons, of the department of history at Prince-
ton, discusses the Americanization of the 
immigrant; James G. Layburn, professor of 
sociology at Yale, considers the ethnic and 
national impact from the sociological point 
of view; Frank D. Graham, professor of eco-
nomics at Princeton, surveys the foreign fac-
tors in the American economic ethic; Oscar 
Handlin, who has done some of our best writ-
ing on the acculturation of the immigrant, 
views the problem from the standpoint of its 
influence on American politics; Donald Eg-
bert, of the department of art and archeology 
at Princeton, traces the foreign influences in 
American a r t ; R. P. Blackmur, of the Prince-
ton program of creative writing, has 
contributed a study of the American literary 
expatriate which is the best of its kind known 
to the reviewer; and the editor, David F. 
Bowers, concludes this portion of the volume 
with an essay on Hagel, Darwin, and the 
American tradition. The several papers were 
presented originally at the regular under-

graduate conference sponsored in 1942-43 by 
the Princeton program of study in American 
civilization, and their form and content is 
largely conditioned by the fact that under-
graduate participation in both discussion and 
reports is assumed. One would naturally ex-
pect, then, general surveys of existing knowl-
edge rather than new contributions to the 
fields discussed. Nevertheless, Oscar Hand-
ling treatment of the immigrant in American 
politics is much more than the recapitulation 
of the obvious that it might well have been, 
arid as previously noted, R. P. Blackmur's 
discussion of the American literary expatriate 
is outstanding. 

College librarians will also be interested 
in the especially full and excellently selected 
bibliographical essays which comprise the lat-
ter half of the volume. These are directly 
related to the topics discussed by the lecturers 
and each consists of a broad statement of the 
problem, a list of general reference works, and 
a well-chosen and balanced group of titles 
dealing with special topics. Librarians could 
read the expository lectures with profit, but 
whether or not they are themselves interested 
in the subject, they will find the bibliographies 
useful in a number of ways. 

Finally, a word should be added about the 
conference itself which this book represents, 
for if this is the kind of intellectual fare which 
Princeton undergraduates are getting, the re-
viewer can name a number of American 
educational institutions which would do well 
to consider it in the light of their own aca-
demic menus.—Jesse Hauk Shera. 

A.C.R.L. J\[ominating Committee, 
Paul N o r t h Rice, chief, Reference De-

partment, N e w Y o r k Public Library. 
Robert Bingham Downs, director, U ni-

versity of Illinois Library and Library 
School, U r b a n a . 

M r s . Carabelle G . Dickey, reference li-

brarian, State Teachers College, T e r r e 
H a u t e , I n d . 

Jackson E d m u n d T o w n e , librarian, State 
College Library, East Lansing, Mich. 

Helen Frances Pierce, librarian, Modesto 
J u n i o r College, Modesto, Calif. 

96 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES