College and Research Libraries


offset printing, mass production· of cheap re-
prints, a shift from verbal to pictorial pres-
entation, all these factors seem to spell the 
doom of the typographic art as a valid ex-
pression of intellectual content. 

Jan Tschichold's D esigning Books is a vivid 
demonstration of the kind of values we stand 
to lose if we surrender thoughtlessly and 
without a struggle to forces primarily moti-
vated by efficiency demands and economics. 
That is one important function of this book. 
From this follows another one: The loss of 
these standards is by no means a matter of 
inevitable necessity. The task of meeting the 
cultural challenge of mass production lies still 
much more before than behind us. Such 
books as Jan Tschichold's are important 
yardsticks of quality against quantity. Above 
all, they demonstrate the values that may 
very well prove capable of transfer or re-
definition in mass production, if enough people 
believe that such a thing is not unimportant. 
This is a question in which the vote of the 
library profession carries a great deal of 
weight.-H ellmut L ehmann-Haupt, N ew 
S chool for Social R esearch. 

Library Practice Abroad 
B iblioteksprob!em; nagra synpunkter pd bib!io-

t eksarbetets organisation och rationalisering. 
Ed. by Valter Ahlstedt, Knut Knutsson, 
Folke LOfgren. Stockholm, N atur och 
Kulter, 1952. 172p. Sw. Kr. 8.25. 

The Bibliotekstekniska Klubben is a group 
founded in Stockholm in 1943 'to bring into 
open discussion some of the more urgent 
problems of modern librarianship. The pres-
ent volume contains six essays, five by Swedish 
librarians and one by a Danish librarian, 
which were presented to the club. Four of 
the contributors are members of the staff 
of the Stockholm Public Library; and all 
three of the editors, including head librarian 
Knut Knutsson , are officers of the same li-
brary. There are English summaries of each 
of the essays on p. 167-172. 

The first three essays deal with problems 
of cataloging and classification. Valter Ahl-
stedt, an amanuensis at the Stockholm Public 
Library, writes on "Enhetskatalogisering" 
("uniform cataloging" rather than "unit cata-
loging," as defined in the English summary). 
Ahlstedt argues for intrinsic uniformity based 
on the three main functions of the catalog 

(entry, description, and location). He frow"ns 
on the stern rigidity of codes such as the 
Anglo-American and the Prussian Instruk-
tion, the two most influential, which enforce 
uniformity rather than encourage it. In his 
essay on "The Relations between Cataloging 
and Administration" E. Allerslev Jensen, an 
inspector in the Danish Directorate of State 
Libraries , reviews some of the American dis-
cusions of cataloging problems during the last 
decade and studies their applicability to the 
Scandinavian scene. He argues for simplified 
inter-Scandinavian cataloging rules with 
printed cards issued coordinately with the 
national bibliography (precisely what was 
started within the last year by the Deutsche 
Bibliothek at Frankfurt am Main). His 
contention that cataloging as a technique is 
subordinate to the basic purposes of the library 
represents a refreshing viewpoint. 

Carl Bjorkbom, librarian of the Royal 
Technological University in Stockholm, con-
tributes a study of "Principles of Bibliographi-
cal Classification" in which he expounds the 
virtues of a "synthetic classificatory language" 
as opposed to natural language. He uses the 
Decimal Classification as the point of depar-
ture for his discussion. He points out that 
clas~ification is not to be viewed primarily as 
a scheme for arrangement of books on the 
shelves but rather as 'a device for the codifica-
tion of knowledge (thus making it an indis-
pensable tool in the mechanization of bibli-
ography). 

Folke LOfgren, "first librarian" at the 
Stockholm Public Library, reports on the re-
sult of job analysis and work measurement 
at his library, an operation which resulted in 
substantial reassignment of clerical and pro-
fessional duties through reduction of the pro-
fessional staff and expansion of the clerical 
staff. 

Pertrus Jonsson, an amanuensis at the 
Stockholm Public Library, examines the pe-
culiarly Scandinavian problem of satisfying 
the claims of creative writers for a certain 
subsidy based on the circulation of their books 
in public libraries. ("The Library Fee Ques-
tion" is a somewhat misleading translation 
in the English summary.) In Denmark and 
Norway creative writers receive a subsidy 
based on the circulation of their books in 
public libraries; and while the Swedish 
Writers' Guild has made similar demands, 
Jonsson rejects them for an alternative pro-

278 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



gram of his own providing for increased subsi-
dies to Swedish authors on a somewhat dif-
ferent basis. It would seem clear that the 
larger a country is, the less applicable is the 
demand of an author for a subsidy as reim-
bursement for free circulation of his books. 

The last essay, by Helge Berthelson, an 
amanuensis at the Stockholm Public Library, 
deals with the libraries of the U ppsala student 
corporations (not "fraternities" in our sense of 
the word , as the author of the English sum-
mary translates nation). Ranging in size 
from 2,000 volumes in Gotlands Nation to 
some 34,000 in Vestmanlands-Dalas Nation, 
these libraries go back to the eighteenth cen-
tury. Recent proposals include a union catalog 
(in process) and the establishment of a li-
brary of curricular reading to be selected from 
the present · holdings of the corporation li-
braries. 

This first collection of lectures at the Biblio-
tekstekniska Klubben is at once an informative 
and a provocative volume, and readers will 
look forward to the publication of a second 
series. -Lawr ence S. Thompson , Univ ersity 
of K entucky Libraries. 

Punched Cards 
Pun ched Cards,· Th eir Applications to Scienc e 

and Industry. Edited by Robert S. Casey 
and James W. Perry. New York, Rein-
hold Publishing Corp., 1951. viii, so6p. 
$10.00. 

Though the general problem of the organi: 
zation of knowledge and the specific matter of 
discovering the ways in which bits of data 
are interrelated are perhaps as old as recorded 
history, both have recently become matters of 
great and pressing concern. As the amount 
of time and money going into scientific re-
search increases, the failure of conventional 
methods of literature control gives rise to 
experimentation with various mechanical de-
vices. This book is a collection of papers on 
practices and philosophies developed for the 
most part by scientists who see the punched 
card as " ... opening up new possibilities for 
coping with the growing mountain of research 
publication." (p. g) 

Over thirty individuals with first-hand ex-
perience in using punched cards or with an 
interest in them as a possible basis for solving 
the problem .of bibliographic control have 
contributed to this book. Leading off with a 

JULY, 1952 

rather brief but fairly detailed description of 
the major varieties of punched cards , the edi-
tors then have rounded up a group of 14 case 
histories in a variety of fields , 10 papers on 
basic issues such as coding, indexing, and 
classification, and one on future possibilities , 
and have reproduced as the last section the 
extensive bibliography previously made availa-
ble through the American Chemical Society. 

As with most collections , the papers vary 
in quality considerably, and are to some extent 
repet1t10us. A few of the contributors ap-
proach their subject as though they had dis-
covered both a problem and a solution hitherto 
unknown. Consequently, some bits of specious 
reasoning and rather elementary statements 
of philosophy are included which may amuse 
or annoy, depending on the reader. Some 
of the papers included are to be found in other 
sources, and few of the ideas expressed in the 
book are unique. However, for either the 
specialist with a problem to solve , or for the 
general librarian who proposes to keep in-
formed on recent developments, Punch ed 
Cards should be of interest. For the special-
1st, it provides a handbook dealing with such 
specific matters as the spacing of code fields 
to such general considerations as a theoretical 
discussion on the number of combinations 
possible with various codes. The specialist 
w~ll find a kind of ready-made literature 
search more complete than he could develop 
for himself for ten dollars' worth of time. 

The general librarian will find less of inter-
est. Punched Cards adds little, if anything, 
by way of new or unusual thinking; indeed, 
some may be annoyed by the rather airy dis-
missal of topics which have baffied experts 
in classification for years. For example , what 
constitutes "ample capacity for future ex-
pansion" of either a coding system or a classi-
fication scheme? Some of the papers in this 
book approach that problem , but none pro-
poses any generally acceptable answer. None-
theless, the book does provide a review of the 
uses of punched cards-both hand-sorted and 
machine-sorted-in information services of 
various kinds. 

One of the most valuable parts of Punch ed 
Cards is its twenty-five page annotated "Bibli-
ography on the Uses of Punched Cards." 
This reviewer had occasion to make extensive 
use of the bibliography in its original form 
(in the 1 ournal of Docum entation) and found 
it to be the most helpful single source of 

279