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 



mt10n of its parent foundation as "a large 
body of money completely surrounded by 
librarians who want some." 

If our only method of dispensing finally 
with suggestions is to try them out-and 
some would be fairly costly if they should 

. prove to be mistakes-does this not com-
mit librarians always to a trial-and-error-
method of improvement? Does not the blind 
faith put in trial-and-error rather painfully 
indicate the lack of any general theory 
which would provide for a choice between 
experiments? 

As an example, let us grant that Mr. 
Pefialosa's facts and statistics are beyond re-
proach. Certainly a failure of communica-
tion somewhere is indicated. How shall we 
correct it? We could say that the failure is 
in the classes in the use of the library which 
many institutions of higher learning con-
duct. We could suggest an elaborate study 
of such courses and a very concerted effort 
to improve them by such grants and pilot 
projects as will quickly correct the condi-
tion. Or we could say, with justice, that stu-
dents using the catalog should have some 
idea of the nature of the book they may 
wish to consult. Let us provide that the 
main entry card-which conforms to rules 
so complex that only librarians can reason-
ably be expected to know in advance how 
to find the main entry card for a book-
shall have complete bibliographic informa-
tion. The subject and title cards will have 
only those headings, plus the title and date 
of publication, to identify the book and an 
annotation explaining how much of the 
book pertains to the major subject entry, 
which would explain how much pertains to 
other subjects . There are other methods, but 
given only these three, how would we de-
cide which to try? 

If we choose the experiment that seems 
cheapest at present, we may be saddled with 
the one that will be most expensive to give 
up and the one that will be least fruitful. 
'"' e need, in order to make predictions, 
some body of scientific theory that enables 
us to calculate results in advance. That is 
precisely what we do not have. We do have 
standards that avoid the issue of cost. We 
have a list of aspirations, but no real com-
pilation of reasonable expectancy. 

The statement of the plans for the Coun-
cil on Library Resources, Inc., was painful 
in another way. The emphasis seems to be 
on importing experts to come in and assist, 
if not bail out, librarians. Other disciplines 
are to be evaluated for their usefulness in 
this crisis of the "glut of publication"; li-
brarianship's methods and procedures are 
to be re-evaluated. While we can all be glad 
for help when we need it, does it not come 
bearing the motto "you have been tried in 
the balance and found wanting?" A further 
painful fact is the insistence on machines 
and devices, obviously instructed b y people 
smart enough to deal with them. But how 
can we develop a machine to solve our prob-
lems until we know what the problems are? 

May I respectfully suggest that the prob-
lem of research libraries is perhaps of longer 
range than the Council of Library Resources, 
Inc., seems to indicate in its statement. In-
deed, librarianship is about at the point that 
medicine was in the period preceding Pas-
teur. What we must have is the basic re-
search which will not only uncover the way 
of dealing with the continuing and growing 
demand for information, which libraries 
uniquely can answer, but prove theory 
which will enable libraries to perpetuate 
themselves, and improve-to the point 
where the increase in available material will 
not be considered a crisis but an opportunity 
for added service. What we need, I think , 
much more than devices, are the methods 
by which we can test the success or failure 
of our procedure by purely objective tech-
niques, so far as scientific method has en-
abled good researchers to rid themselves of 
preconceptions and protect themselves from 
unseen bias. 

The problem of research libraries is of 
sufficiently long range to make investigation 
of the education of librarians a prime ne-
cessity, to make the encouragement of basic 
research into pure theory the major en-
deavor of any organization in the field, and 
to provide for such legislative acts among 
librarians themselves as will replace their 
desire for dictation in the methods and pro-
cedures of their cooperation .-Jay E . Dailey> 
Paula K. Laz·rus 1\1emorial Lib rary> National 
Conference of Christians and Jews> New 
York. 

342 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES