College and Research Libraries


magazine that has grown into something else. 
The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, 
The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, and 
The Virginia Quarterly Review are described 
as "fellow travelers" of little magazines. Not 
mentioned at all, not anywhere in the book, 
are such magazines as The American Scholar, 
The Antioch Review, Science and Society. 

Interesting as many of the details are in 
this section, its ineffective organization and 
incompleteness make it less important (and 
useful to librarians) than the latter half of 
the book, which is given over to a two-part 
bibliography—the much larger first part to 
little magazines, the second to the fellow 
travelers of little magazines—and a first-rate 
index. Reading the history section, for in-
stance, leaves one quite unprepared to dis-
cover that of the 540 little magazines listed 
in the first bibliography, 134 were published 
outside the United States—in such countries 
as England, France, Mexico, Australia, Ire-
land, Germany, Denmark, and Russia. (An 
even larger percentage of the fellow travelers 
are foreign, 43 out of a total of 96.) 

The significance of the geographical spread 
of the little magazine becomes clearer when 
one examines the informative bibliographical 
notes under particular entries. Clearly one 
of the most important results of the little 
magazine—and in some instances it was an 
avowed purpose—was cultural interchange 
between the nations. Translations and criti-
cal estimates of foreign authors have been a 
frequent feature of the little magazine at all 

times in the last thirty-five years. Interest-
ingly enough, the authors list the publication 
date of the first modern little magazine as 
1891. They might well have made something 
of the fact that this was the year in which 
Congress passed the International Copyright 
Bill. For the act gave American literature a 
chance to come of age in relation to other 
literatures; American writers were freed 
from the frequent practice of foreign pirating 
and from the unfair competition that existed 
when foreign fiction and magazine articles 
could be republished here without the consent 
of the authors. The little magazine, more 
than any other part of the publishing industry, 
seems to have taken advantage of the oppor-
tunity. Be that as it may, cultural and liter-
ary interchange with other countries has been 
as much a mark of the little magazine as the 
publication of experimental writing. 

Digging out the elusive facts about brief, 
fly-by-night journals published over half the 
world is not the easiest of tasks, and it was 
a foregone conclusion that a number would 
be missed. Yet I am sure of only one omis-
s i o n — T h e W astebaskeX. published in the M i d -
dle West (at St. Paul?) about the end of 
World W a r I. For the care of detail and 
intensive labor lavished on their bibliography, 
the authors (and presumably Miss Ulrich in 
particular) are to be congratulated. For the 
literary researcher and the librarian they have 
provided a wealth of material which should be 
useful for some time to come.—Paul Bix-
ler. 

Books and Libraries in W a r t i m e 

Books and Libraries in Wartime. Edited by 
Pierce Butler. Chicago, University of Chi-
cago Press, 1945. 
In the spring of 1944 ten lectures were de-

livered under the auspices of the Graduate 
Library School, University of Chicago, to 
describe the impact of war on libraries, books, 
the press, radio, and motion pictures. The 
volume under review, published a year and a 
half after the event, contains eight of the 
lectures, well-edited by Professor Butler. It 
is unfortunate that they did not appear in 
print earlier. Timeliness is of minor im-
portance in presenting results of systematic 

research, but a collection of essays on current 
trends and events loses much of its value by 
delay in publication. T h e fact that some of 
the contributors did pay attention to postwar 
problems, however, renders publication at so 
late a date somewhat more justifiable. 

T o university and research librarians, the 
contributions by MacLeish, Beals, and Butler 
will be of greatest interest. MacLeish's 
statesmanlike address shows how vital re-
search libraries are to the security of a free 
nation. Library materials should not serve 
any particular group but the entire genera-
tion of living men. Such an ideal is to be 

372 COLLEGE AND RESEARCLI LIBRARIES 



reached through world-wide interlibrary loans 
aided by photographic reproduction, more re-
gional union catalogs, and international divi-
sion of responsibility in acquisition policies. 

Beals describes, in impressionistic fashion, 
the effect of war on university libraries, with 
special reference to the destruction of research 
collections, cuts in student enrolment, dis-
ruption of faculties, restriction on construc-
tion of new buildings, depletion of library 
staffs, increased government publishing, and 
the closing of foreign book markets. For 
the postwar period he predicts reduced reli-
ance upon library classification and wider use 
of subject catalogs and bibliographies. He is 
also concerned about the distribution of con-
fidential and secret documents after military 
security restrictions have been removed, a 
problem today handled on a national scale by 
the Office of the Publication Board, U.S. De-
partment of Commerce, although not quite 
in the fashion envisaged by Beals in 1944. 

Butler's attention is focused on war's de-
struction of rare books, manuscripts, histori-
cal records, and the dissolution and reshuffling 
of library collections. His elegantly written 
account is enriched by anecdotes and illus-
trative historical references. Impartial ob-
servers might question his statement that the 
westward stream of rare books from Europe 
to the United States during the inflation fol-
lowing the First World W a r was a "glori-
ous" chapter in American library history. 

Brandt deplores the tendency of publishers 
to cater to the taste of the masses, although 
he fails to show how such a trend is related 
to the occurrence of war. More concerned 
about "culturally worth-while" books than 
profits, he expresses the opinion that reading 
will reduce the "cultural lag in the United 
States," but leaves the reviewer in the dark 
as to his definition of "cultural lag" and fails 
to specify in what manner reading is to con-
tribute to the process. 

Contrasting best sellers of the two World 
Wars, Carnovsky concludes that World W a r 
II produced better and more serious books. 
In addition, he attempts to describe what 

the general public read in World W a r II. A 
week's circulation of a suburban community 
library (Montclair, N.J.) is taken as partial 
evidence for such inferences as the following: 
More women and fewer draft-age men bor-
rowed books; most books borrowed were of 
recent date; no evidence of a return to reli-
gion; greater interest in books on Russia than 
Japan. Comparison with a prewar sample 
of library loans in terms of categories re-
lated to some meaningful sociological or psy-
chological hypothesis might have brought to 
light additional and more reliable facts about 
book borrowing during the war. 

The inequities and excesses of military cen-
sorship are criticized by Mowrer, his special 
target of attack being the Navy. T o improve 
conditions he enumerates the principles that 
should govern the administration of war cor-
respondents. Although admitting that war 
reporting was not always objective and fair, 
he commends newspapers for having done a 
good job. 

Lasswell discusses the use of radio and 
movies as political weapons, with special ref-
erence to German propaganda. He stresses 
the importance of monitoring of broadcasts 
and advocates quantitative analysis of the 
content of communications, adding little to 
the methodology outlined in his previous 
publications. 

Trautman's straightforward report on the 
Army library program includes a list of book 
selection principles, slightly oversimplified. 
He expresses the hope that reading habits 
developed by soldiers will be carried over 
into civilian life. 

On the whole, the volume covers too wide 
a territory without sufficient penetration. 
Books contributed heavily to the war effort. 
Libraries in combat areas were destroyed. 
Academic libraries in the United States were 
neglected during the war. Public libraries 
lost some patrons. Freedom of speech was 
curtailed. These are some of the themes 
elaborated on by the contributors, but objec-
tive evidence still remains to be presented.— 
Robert H. Muller. 

OCTOBER, 1946 373