College and Research Libraries


Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul's, scores 121 en-
tries; Bishop Jeremy Taylor, 138; and Bishop 
Edward Stillingfleet, 123. Yet the palm for 
the greatest number of entries goes to that 
unappeasable pamphleteer, William Prynne, 
with 344. William Penn, no unprolific writer 
himself, comes up with 153. 

Being an age of civil war and its aftermath, 
thousands of pamphlets appeared anony-
mously. The anonymous pamphleteer, how-
ever, displayed a singular lack of originality 
in his titles. There are 107 entries beginning 
with "Short," "A Short Way," "A Short Re-
lation," "A Short Cut"; there were 53 "Sea-
sonables," 131 "Reasons," 111 "Stranges," 
and no less than 806 beginning with the word 
"True." These were the key words. 

Seldom does any book deserve the too much 
abused description of "indispensable." Wing 
does deserve it. All scholars of 17th century 
England, and all the librarians who serve 
them, have already recognized what it means 
to have easily and accurately available a list 
of all books and pamphlets printed in the 
period, and their dependence on Wing will 
grow in the years to come. If the Index 
Society never sponsors another "index," it will 
have justified its formation by the publication 
of Wing.—Stanley Pargellis, The Newberry 
Library. 

Studies in Bibliography 
Studies in Bibliography. Papers of the Biblio-

graphical Society of the University of Vir-
ginia. Edited by Fredson Bowers. Vol. 4, 
i95I/52, Charlottesville. ($6.00, free to 
members.) 
A wondrous sight, familiar to many librar-

ians, is that of mortification being publicly 
performed en masse by the initiates of a bibli-
ographical society. I refer to the custom of 
their meetings at which on fidget-hard chairs 
or soporific seats the membership is expected 
to assimilate audially papers which are visual 
in their appeal. The Bibliographical Society 
(London) and its American counterpart are 
confirmed practitioners of this traditional rite, 
and I am rather certain that if one were to 
suggest to their officers that meetings should 
be devoted entirely to visual representation of 
bibliographical topics—exhibits, slides, etc.— 
the heretic would be quickly water-marked 
and sent down river. 

Five years ago a hopeful augury was the 
founding of a new bibliographical society at 
the University of Virginia, and although one 
of its founding high priests, Professor Fredson 
Bowers, personifies the apotheosis of Scientific 
Bibliography, humanistic amelioration was 
furnished by his co-founding fellow Virgin-
ians, John Cook Wyllie, Jack Dalton and 
Linton Massey. 

The papers gathered into print in Volume 
4 are a nice blend of historical and statistical 
bibliography and of British, Continental and 
American topics. Shakespeare is the subject 
of four contributions; the moderns include 
Sherwood Anderson and T . S. Eliot. Useful 
feature is a "Selective Checklist of Biblio-
graphical Scholarship" compiled by Hirsch 
and Heaney. Issuance of a bound annual 
volume has advantages over quarterly papers, 
such as those published by the Bibliographical 
Society of America, which are awkward to 
use in parts and increasingly costly to bind. 

Publication of these studies is but one of 
the activities of this lively Virginia group. 
They also sponsor a student book collectors' 
contest, and a contest for the best printing in 
Virginia. The Society richly deserves the 
world-wide interest it has elicited.—Lawrence 
Clark Powell, University of California Li-
brary, Los Angeles. 

Library Trends 
Library Trends, Volume I, Number 1, July 

1952. University of Illinois Library School, 
Urbana, Illinois. Quarterly. $5.00 per 
year. 
Library Trends is the new quarterly of the 

University of Illinois Library School. It is 
the outcome of a four-year study of the avail-
able library literature by the school's faculty 
and marks its decision that there was a place 
for a new professional journal—a journal 
which would "present in each issue a synthesis 
and evaluation of a single topic relating to 
librarianship . . . review and evaluate current 
practice and current thinking in librarianship 
. . . [and] be even more concerned with the 
probable future of such current developments 
in librarianship." 

"Current Trends in College and University 
Libraries" is the subject of the first number 
(July, 1952). In a brief introduction, the 
editor of this issue, Robert B. Downs, sum-

JANUARY, 1953 99 



marizes the aims and scope of Library Trends 
and underscores the significant problems and 
conditions surveyed in the twelve contribu-
tions by well-known librarians. Their papers 
fall under such conventional rubrics as: trends 
in higher education (Raynard C. Swank, 
Stanford University) ; readers' services 
(Leslie W. Dunlap, University of Illinois) ; 
resources of libraries (Robert Vosper, Uni-
versity of Kansas) ; technical processes 
(Wyllis E. Wright, Williams College); or-
ganization (Arthur M. McAnally, University 
of Oklahoma) ; management (Donald Coney, 
University of California) ; personnel (Law-
rence J. Thompson, University of Kentucky) ; 
finances (Stephen A. McCarthy, Cornell 
University) ; public relations (Robert W . 
Orr, Iowa State College) ; and buildings and 
equipment (Ernest J. Reece, Columbia Uni-
versity and University of Illinois). The final 
paper by Edwin E. Williams (Harvard Uni-
versity) questions some aspects of library 
cooperation as embodied in the Farmington 
Plan, the Midwest Inter-Library Center and 
the proposed Northeastern Regional Library. 

For the most part, the inventories of de-
velopments cover the decade of the forties, 
although Ellsworth on higher education goes 
back to the beginning of the century while 
Coney on management confines his discussion 
primarily to years after World W a r II. 
Trends affecting current practices and theo-
ries, of course, do not neatly fit into the same 
chronological patterns but vary from one par-
ticular field to another. The papers conclude 
by pointing out the gaps in the knowledge in 
the area covered which research and study 
must fill. The literature cited is largely of 
post-war vintage, hence the selective bibliogra-
phies accompanying each paper bring similar 
lists of references in such standard works as 
Wilson and Tauber's The University Library 
and Lyle's The College Library up to date. 
The similarity in handling the individual topics 
gives the main subject an even treatment. 

In addition to the methodological unity 
there is a unity provided by the several basic 
factors underlying the development of aca-
demic libraries. Down's introduction points 
up one of these factors. In his own words: 
"This is that the college or university library 
is emphasized as an educational force, and 
growing out of that fact, increasing attention 
is being paid to the needs of individual library 
users, ranging from entering college freshmen 

to the established scholar, in all types of in-
stitutions from the junior college to the large 
and complex university." The other element 
is sheer size and its effect on college and uni-
versity libraries. Ellsworth states that "the 
rapid and extensive growth of colleges and 
universities is perhaps the most important 
factor in determining the nature of the insti-
tutions" and this remark might as aptly be 
made about the academic library. Vosper's 
study of resources and Williams' appraisal of 
library cooperation center around growth and 
the problems of constantly expanding collec-
tions. The McAnally and Coney summaries 
on organization and management stress how 
size of book stock and staff have spawned 
problems of administration and operation. 

The fundamental importance of these sev-
eral elements account for some repetition 
throughout the volume. Vosper discusses the 
Farmington Plan and M I L C which bulk large 
in Williams' analysis of library cooperation; 
both McAnally and Swank touch upon subject 
division organization; the administrative as-
pects of technical processes are examined by 
Wright, Swank and McAnally. Wright and 
Dunlap scrutinize the problems of the reader's 
approach to the book collection through the 
card catalog. Such occasional duplication 
naturally results from the overlapping of the 
topics themselves. It is logical, for example, 
that Wright on technical processes should 
examine the studies made of reader use of the 
card catalog while this same literature is 
revelant to Dunlap's synopsis of the status of 
our knowledge of readers and their library 
habits. Interestingly enough, only Merritt's 
study of the use of the subject catalog at the 
University of California Library was cited by 
both contributors—the other research on 
reader use of the catalog cited was unique to 
each paper. 

The reviews vary from seven to seventeen 
pages in length and the appended references 
range in number from eleven to fifty-five 
items. The scope of the topic plus the quantity 
and importance of the literature can account 
for much of this variation. Library Trends 
promises to draw upon the results of research 
in librarianship, but some, nay, many areas are 
barren of any such store. For example, Orr, 
in his treatment of public relations, confesses 
that "in many instances, the subjective opinions 
of the author have been injected into the dis-
cussion because the available literature is 

100 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



either w h o l l y lacking or seriously deficient in 
description and e v a l u a t i o n . " 

T h e w o r t h of a new j o u r n a l cannot, obvi-
ously, be intelligently evaluated on the basis 
of a single issue. T h e "unique characteristics" 
of Library Trends which presumably justified 
its birth, w e r e announced as reviewing, synthe-
sizing, evaluating and predicting the f u t u r e of 
c u r r e n t developments in librarianship. E a c h 
issue w i l l have an editor chosen because of his 
or her competence in the area to be covered 
by the issue and the guest editor w i l l be re-
sponsible f o r the selection of the contributors. 
T h e idea of limiting each issue to a single 
topic, patterned a f t e r the Annals of the Ameri-
can Academy should make it possible f o r 
l i b r a r i a n s to have at hand in a single source 
an up-to-date analysis of those subjects cov-
ered by Library Trends. V o l u m e I , number 
I , stands up rather w e l l to these announced 
criteria. N o one could question the compe-
tence of issue editor, R o b e r t B . D o w n s , D i -
rector of the U n i v e r s i t y of Illinois L i b r a r i e s , 
and D i r e c t o r of the School of L i b r a r y Science 
at the same institution. L i k e w i s e , the roster 
of contributors to the initial issue promises the 
authority demanded of a professional j o u r n a l . 

T h e question may be raised, h o w e v e r , as to 
w h e t h e r both college and university libraries 
should have been included in one issue. T h e 
contents are definitely weighted on the side of 
the university l i b r a r y . S w a n k and V o s p e r 
explicitly limit their discussions to university 
libraries and M c A n a l l y ' s paper on o r g a n i z a -
tion and C o n e y ' s on management deal pri-
m a r i l y w i t h developments in the l a r g e l i b r a r y . 
In his resume of the financial support of col-
lege and university libraries, M c C a r t h y illus-
t r a t e s his text w i t h ten tables, nine of which 
present data almost exclusively f o r university 
libraries. In several papers, of course, the 
topics themselves dictate this e m p h a s i s — f o r 
the problems of administrative organization 
and management presume an institution of a 
certain size. W i t h o u t impugning the objec-
tivity of the w r i t e r s , it also seems plausible 
that the f a c t that ten of the eleven practition-
ers come f r o m the university l i b r a r y field 
might contribute to the issue's preoccupation 
w i t h the university l i b r a r y . 

F u t u r e numbers of Library Trends w i l l 
cover m a j o r types of libraries, including 
special libraries, school libraries, public li-
braries. T h e s e publications w i l l lay the 
foundation f o r later treatment of more 

specialized topics, such as education f o r li-
brarianship, library personnel administration, 
cataloging and classification, among others. 
Such subjects are of constant interest to li-
brarians, and re-evaluation of practices and 
the basic assumptions underlying them and 
their f u t u r e developments w i l l be valuable. 
I t is hoped, h o w e v e r , that w h e r e feasible, the 
analyses w i l l d r a w upon l i t e r a t u r e relevant to, 
though not necessarily produced by, l i b r a r -
ianship. F o r example, the library problems 
of personnel selection and administration, and 
w o r k simplification, to name but two, could 
certainly benefit f r o m knowledge of some of 
the f u n d a m e n t a l and operational research 
done in business and industry. T h e l i b r a r y 
profession needs access to such information 
and Library Trends should be an excellent 
medium to supply such i n f o r m a t i o n . — R o b e r t 
T. Grazier, University of Florida Libraries. 

Notre Dame Survey 
Survey of the Library of the University of 

Notre Dame. B y L o u i s R . W i l s o n and 
F r a n k A . L u n d y . Chicago, A m e r i c a n L i -
b r a r y Association, 1 9 5 2 . xiii, I95p. $2.00. 
T h i s report, prepared by t w o experienced 

librarians and surveyors, cannot f a i l to help 
both the administration at N o t r e D a m e and 
the l i b r a r y professional elsewhere w h o is f a c e d 
with similar problems. 

T h e Survey is comprehensive in its v i e w 
and coverage of the N o t r e D a m e situation; it 
is even repetitious, although this is probably 
more a precaution than a f a u l t . A s w e all 
know, administrators w h o must read and use 
such surveys, inevitably have to skim and skip 
about among the sections. 

T h i s review of the Survey, h o w e v e r , is 
directed t o w a r d librarians, w h o w i l l rightly 
w a n t to use it as part of our professional 
l i t e r a t u r e . A s such, the survey deserves at-
tention f o r the long and generalized comments 
on the essentials of a university l i b r a r y pro-
g r a m , the government of a university l i b r a r y , 
and its means of serving a campus community. 
T h e s e cover f o u r chapters ( I I - V ) and extend 
over f i f t y pages, which make c l a r i f y i n g and 
down-to-earth reading f o r any campus l i b r a r -
ian. F o r example, w h a t are those elements of 
its l i b r a r y ' s government which should be 
spelled out in a university's basic s t a t u t e s ? 
Repeatedly throughout the Survey, similar 
administrative theories and problems are 

JANUARY, 1953 101