College and Research Libraries


of rules for the strategy in which both cat-
aloger and user are engaged. We cannot 
say that we know how users prefer items 
filed in a catalog, whether a certain user 
really expects identical items to be together 
or believes that the alphabetic order has, 
naturally, scattered them. We have always 
guessed that we are doing what a mythical 
majority of the users want, but we have 
never really known how . many of the users 
even have a preference, let alone know 
that some variation is possible. One won-
ders why the new filer, eager to show his 
knowledge of the alphabet, does not repre-
sent the untrained user. If a rule is hard 
for him, it is almost certain to be hard for 
those like him. 

Would we be playing this game of strat-
egy with more skill if we established a rule 
and stuck to it, regardless of where the card 
landed? If so, the rule would have to be 
devised by catalogers themselves, and it 
would have to ordain, once and for all, the 
choice of entry, whether main or added, 
whether subject or series, according to some 
objective analysis of which signs and sym-
bols are going to equal what. We would 
have to presume that our object is not to 
give the user the exceptions we guess he 
wants, but in every case we would have to 
show him that we are honestly acihering to 
the rule which we insist that he must learn 
if he wants to play at all. 

One wishes that the Filing Rules could 
be made a standard part of a high-school 
course in the use of a library. But, actually, 
as the alternate rules indicate, they are not 
quite standardized even for the Library of 
Congress itself,. and, in any case, no high-
school student could read that there is usu-
ally a reason for a seemingly arbitrary ar-
rangement without thinking that the un-
reasonable arrangements predominate, and 
that the word usually is an outright misap-
prehension, if not a lie. He is quite free to 
assume that the aim of the cataloger has been 
to play a fierce game of hide-and-seek with 
him , though he has neither the disposition 
nor the time , nor-to tell the truth, as he 
might not-does he have the knowledge to 
win, even many years later when he is work-
ing on his dissertation.-Jay E. Daily) Paula 
K. Lazarus Memorial Library ) National Con-
ference of Christians and Jews) New York. 

Documentation in Action 
Documentation in Action; Based on 1956 

Conference on Documentation at West-
ern Reserve University. By Jesse H. Shera, 
Allen Kent, [and} James W. Perry. New 
York: Reinhold; London: Chapman & 
Hall, 1956. 

The conference recorded in this book (re-
ferred to throughout the text as the Con-
ference on the Practical Utilization of Re-
corded Knowledge-Present and Future) 
was held on January 16 to 18, 1956. Some 
670 persons attended, including librarians, 
documentalists, scientists, lawyers, and ex-
perts on machine computing, operations re-
search, information theory, and language. 
The object of the conference was "the pro-
motion of understanding and cooperation 
among organizations and individuals repre-
senting a wide variety of interests, with four 
particular foci: 

a. The use of information and its rela-
tion to the structure of recorded infor-
mation and the patterns of recourse 
to it. 

b. The contribution which certain spe-
cialized fields of knowledge, e.g., op-
erations research, information theory, 
etc., might make to improving the uti-
lization of graphic records. 

c. The development and improvement of 
methods, systems, and equipment for 
the organization and correlation of in-
formation. 

d. The training of personnel." 

The book is made up of five parts. Part 
one consists of seven " 'state of the art' 
chapters" on fields chosen as basic. These 
were prepared by committees and distrib-
uted before the conference. Part two sketches 
out what machines, systems, education, co-
operation, and language study might con-
tribute to better documentation. Parts three, 
four, and five respectively "summarize the 
panel meetings," report discussions on pos-
sible cooperation in documentation of vari-
ous subjects, and assess desirable future re-
search. 

This is a review of the book, . not the con-
ference, which the reviewer did not attend. 
The book is disappointing in matter and 

340 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



presentation. Parts one and two, the for-
mal contributions, are mostly ponderous 
and repetitive to an exasperating degree 
and often verbose. Matters which must have 
been commonplace to all present, such as 
the difficulties caused by the rising flood of 
publications, the need to base decisions on 
sound information and the inadequacy of 
language for exact communication are dealt 
with repeatedly, at elementary level, and 
length. Some authors beat about a number 
of bushes before tackling their subjects. 

Clotted jargon like "the point of discon-
tinuance of implementation" for "the time 
to stop" (p.46) is mercifully rare, but trip-
ping over verbiage is less so, e.g. "Consider 
the possibilities inherent in the projected 
construction of the Aswan High Dam Proj-
ect on the Upper Nile" (p.172). As a result 
of all this the " 'state of the art' chapters" 
make 159 pages (over seventy thousand 
words). One art that might, in the circum-
stances, have been fairly fully treated, the 
established methods of documentation j li-
brarianship, gets less than eleven pages. 

There is a good chapter in this section 
on education in librarianship by Egan , 
Focke, Shera, and Tauber, and a glossary, 
especially useful for computer terms, by 
Mack and Taylor. The use of recorded 
knowledge, a difficult theme, is ·well , if 
rather tediously, covered by Egan and Hen-
kle. They, unfortunately, repeat Bradford's 
dubious statement that only about one-third 
of useful papers in science are abstracted,' 
without later comments on it. 

Of the six chapters of part two, "Pro-
grams for the future ," that by Grosch on 
machine computers is refreshing in style 
and downright in approach. Part three , 
"Discussion," which records very little dis-
cussion, has sixteen papers and a report of 
a discussion on education. The papers are 
short and more to the point than earlier 
chapters but uneven in quality. Six are on 
cooperative and centralized processing in 
various -fields; the four on language and doc-
umentation are useful introductions. Three 
more are on the application of operations 
research, information theory, and machine 
computing to documentation. 

The eight chapters of part four report 
six meetings on information processing in 

.JULY 1957 

various fields, one on machine translation 
and a paper on the programs of UNESCO. 
The single chapter of part five discusses 
needed research. 

How is it that a book written by many 
distinguished people adds so little to our 
knowledge? It looks as if the conference 
tried to do too much. "Cooperative infor-
mation processing" has failed in many 
fields; the sections on it deal largely with 
centralized processing, and the whole could 
probably have been assigned to a separate 
conference without loss. Education for li-
brarianship has been discussed much and 
often by those competent to do so. Little 
good was done by fresh discussions with 
others. There seems to have been little con-
trol or coordination of papers read ; far too 
much irrelevance got in. It is ironical that 
so many writers on this subject do not see 
the importance in "utilization of record a 
knowledge" of the cle ar and concise record-
ing of knowledge. The feeling among schol-
ars that short, clear words and sentences are 
unscholarly dies hard. All this could have 
been overcome by thorough editing and se-
lection, and the book cut by at least a third. 
As it is, the librarian and documentalist 
will learn little from it, and the laymen who 
(judging from the blurb) are expected to 
read it will probably lack the needed perse-
verance.-D. ]. Campbell, Aslib, London. 

Solving Library Problems: 

A Comment 
The article by Fernando Pefialosa and the 

important announcement of the establish-
ment of the Council on Library Resources, 
Inc., both in the November, 1956, issue of 
CRL , called to mind a rather puzzling 
thing about librarians. Why is it that so 
many suggestions, such as that by Mr. Pefia-
losa, are made and so little is done about 
them? May I offer as an answer that we have 
no valid way of testing the suggestion in ad-
vance? Our only way of dealing with these 
and other suggested improvements is to re-
treat behind the statement that trying it 
out would cost too much money. This makes 
me wonder if the Council on Library Re-
sources, Inc., will not come to merit the defi-

341